AUSTRALIA:Australian government plans to stop parents' welfare payments if children do not attend school, writes Pádraig Collinsin Sydney
Australia's indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough has said Aboriginal children should be forced to learn English so they can escape lives of poverty in remote, economically untenable communities.
With tomorrow marking the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum that allowed indigenous Australians to be counted as citizens, Mr Brough said Aboriginals should follow the example of Italian and Greek immigrants and become bilingual. He said learning English, along with a "basic grasp" of maths and improved school attendance, would allow the next generation to find work and escape disadvantage.
Mr Brough said that in many communities, "most of the children don't speak any semblance of English. So what chance have they got? They speak the language that in many cases only a handful of people do." He said it was particularly a problem in the troubled Northern Territory community of Wadeye.
"There are seven separate language groups amongst a population of just over 2,000 and they can't understand each other's language well.
"We should be forcing, imposing, requiring - whatever term you want to use - school attendance and the basic grasp of English, mathematics, and the spoken English," Mr Brough said.
The Australian government is finalising a plan that will see indigenous parents' welfare payments stopped if their children do not attend school.
Some remote communities refuse to learn English because it is not an Aboriginal language - a situation Mr Brough dismissed as a "cop-out", particularly when there were already several languages in each community.
He said his conviction was reaffirmed after speaking to grandparents in indigenous communities who lamented the fact they spoke better English than their grandchildren. Of the 250 indigenous languages spoken at the time of white settlement, 225 are either already gone or close to extinction.
A great many Aboriginals are unconvinced of the government's commitment to indigenous affairs, though, particularly on the question of the "stolen generation" - the at least 100,000 indigenous children who were taken from their parents between 1915 and 1969, ostensibly to improve their lives. Those taken were generally, though not always, of mixed descent and were labelled "half-castes".
Prof Lowitja O'Donoghue, co-patron of the Stolen Generation Alliance, lambasted prime minister John Howard's attitude to the stolen generations.
She said indigenous people were dying of despair while the government looked the other way.
"It is for this reason that I have no expectation of an apology from our current prime minister," she said.
Speaking in parliament, Mr Howard said his view remained that today's Australians should not be culpable for actions taken decades ago. He said the best way to help Aboriginals was to absorb them into the mainstream.
Mr Howard's own department is leading a campaign to recruit indigenous people to the public service and to provide non-indigenous staff with "cultural awareness" training.