May. 27th, 2015

5

May. 27th, 2015 04:25 pm
emma_in_dream: (Highlander)
or the benefit of those living out of Western Australia, there’s a move to defund services to remote Indigenous communities. The Government is pointing out that it is impossible to provide adequate services to people so far away from anyone else. As a bureaucrat myself, I do have some sympathy with this argument, but there are elements to their argument that are definitely not ‘reality based’.


There’s a talking point which says that the average size of the communities being shut down/having services removed is 5. This may be true, but it also includes those with larger populations.


Kiwirrkurra with 165 people, Warralong with 155, Burringurrah with 150, Jameson/Mantamaru with 115, Karalundi with 106, and Tjuntjuntjara with 102. This list seems really concentrated in the central deserts – looks like it will wipe out even the ‘big’ communities in the Western Desert. That means no one living between, say Balgo and Laverton and the border, which is fairly much all an area with a strong cultural connection to the land. The people in the Western Desert did not come off their land til the 1950s and 60s when the Laverton mission made a concerted effort to bring them in. One family just decided not to follow and stayed out there, on their own, til the 1980s. People began leaving the missions and going back to the lands pretty much as soon as it became legal for them to do so (when their movements were no longer controlled by the Department of Native Affairs in the early 1970s).


I don’t know what the solution is to this. There is never going to be a massive employment boom in the central deserts and it will always be expensive to provide electricity, water, housing, education. But it is important to people to live on their own land. And I can bet that if there were a community of 165 white people in the middle of nowhere, the Government would find a way to fund it. Look at what happened at Wittenoom – the town was shut down in 1966 (because it was an asbestos mine) but those residents who chose to stay kept getting services like water, electricity, etc until 2006.


I am trying to be fair handed in my comments, but I cannot help but suspect that part of the motivation to remove people from the central desert is a hope that one day it will be possible to mine the vast reserves of uranium under there. Breaking cultural contact with the land would mean no native title over it, which would make it easier for future miners. Anyway, that is speculation.


What I can say with confidence is that the average of 5 people talking point is rubbish.

Profile

emma_in_dream: (Default)
emma_in_dream

December 2020

S M T W T F S
  12345
6789101112
1314 1516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 21st, 2025 05:16 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios