While I was away, the health, welfare and abuse issues in some indigenous Australian communites has flared into the political spotlight.  The issues aren’t new, but several new reports and issues have focused the debate markedly.  That said, I was still quite suprised to hear Australia Prime Minister John Howard comparing these issues to the 2005 Katrina disaster in New Orleans:

“Many Australians, myself included, looked aghast at the failure of the American federal system of government to cope adequately with hurricane Katrina and the human misery and lawlessness that engulfed New Orleans in 2005,” he said in a speech to the Sydney Institute last night. We should have been more humble. We have our Katrina here and now. That it has unfolded more slowly and absent the hand of God should make us humbler still.”

The religious tones here seem particularly unhelpful, and casting this as Australia’s Katrina makes light of the fact that these issues are a systemtic issue which have been around for some time.  Sending in the troops (literally) may not be the best approach for communities which still have very real memories of children being forcibly removed from families a generation earlier.  That said, change has to happen, and I tend to agree here with Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett:

There has been a fair degree of cynicism amongst many of the responses to the government’s plan, including from many Indigenous Australians. Given the past history of many grand government announcements which have not been followed up with adequate resourcing or implementation once the headlines have died down, there is every reason for people to be cynical. However, that should not be a reason to try to tear this plan down, it should be a reason to keep the focus on it, to do everything possible to translate all the current waves of rhetorical flourishes into real and lasting positive change.

For your own reading, please …

[X] Read The Northern Terrtitory Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse and the many, many problems it describes (or, at least, look at the Foreward);

[X] See North Queensland Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson being interviewed last week on the 7.30 report about some of the strategies being implemented (which were recommended in a report he chaired);

[X] But also keep in mind that the timing of this is political since former WA premeir Geoff Gallup called this issue a “national disaster” in 2002 and called for broad-scale national and state-level action in that year (“There needs to be a national approach to this, it’s not just a Western Australian issue”). None happened until a closely run Federal election was looming.  (That’s a reason to try and ensure that the energy galvanised here is directed in a sustained way, not a short-burst political way.  And, to be honest, even gettings things right here doesn’t make up for all the years that the Howard goverment has done nothing, despite the issues being clear as day.)