As the mooted “review” of the intervention comes up the cynic in me sort of expects that Labor will drop back into it’s well worn habit of conceding ground to the “indigenous industry” and losing the momentum for change that has begun to show real improvements in the lives of indigenous children.
“A lot of things in the communities have not actually changed,” Dr Gordon said yesterday. “There has been some small change. The biggest change has been awareness.”
She said she feared that once the intervention’s taskforce and a large part of its operations centre was disbanded, government departments might return to working in isolation.
The magistrate, who was the first Aboriginal person in Western Australia to head a government department, called for a review of the government spending that propped up the indigenous service-provider industry.
Excepting Aboriginal health services, which she said operated very effectively, Dr Gordon said other services such as youth programs and employment programs should be run by indigenous people from within their communities, generating employment and ending the paternalistic approach to service provision.
“Over the years that I first got involved in Aboriginal affairs in the early ’70s, the Aboriginal industry has just grown in leaps and bounds,” she said.
“The Government ought to sit down and have a desktop study of the amount of service providers and look at the amount of money that’s eaten up, where that could be better spent.”
Dr Gordon again called on the Government to abolish the Community Development Employment Projects work-for-the-dole scheme.
Ms Macklin has announced a review of CDEP, which is expected to be reformed but not abolished.]
Sadly If Labor fails this test of their political courage it will not be the government members who suffer it will be the children …
Same as it ever was Comrades
My Bold
Filed under: Australian Politics, Education, Federal politics, Indigenous Issues, Leftism, Political Correctness, Racism | Tagged: The intervention
