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Video Remote communities subject to poverty

Louisa Rebgetz

Human rights lawyer Father Frank Brennan discusses Anti-Poverty Week and the need for awareness in remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.


LOUISA REBGETZ, PRESENTER: You don't have to travel far in the Northern Territory to see people living in poverty with conditions in some remote communities labelled almost third-world. This week marks Anti-poverty week and human rights advocates travelled to Darwin to raise awareness of the plight of Indigenous Australians. I spoke to human rights lawyer Father Frank Brennan during his visit to Darwin.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Father Frank Brennan welcome to the program.

FR FRANK BRENNAN, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER: Thanks it's good to be with you Louisa.

LOUISA REBGETZ: It's anti-poverty week, how big of an issue is disadvantage and poverty in the Northern Territory?

FR FRANK BRENNAN: It's a huge issue here as your viewers would well know, as it's been for many years up here the situation of remote Aboriginal communities continues to be very difficult and governments of both persuasions have found it an intractable issue and so-called interventions haven't provided magic answers. We're now one of the least egalitarian societies in the western world and the gap between rich and poor is increasing, now where that really impacts is with Aboriginal Australians. I mean for example, lot of talk going on about increasing the life expectancy of Aboriginal people, sure but the life expectancy of non-aborigines is increasing more rapidly and so the large gap that's there at the moment within another 10, 20 years it'll be a 21 year gap.

LOUISA REBGETZ: There has been an enormous investment in housing and infrastructure through the Northern Territory Intervention, surely that's going to be doing something to breakdown the cycle of poverty?

FR FRANK BRENNAN: It is but it's only a start and what people down south often don't understand is that there's just been such a paucity of resources invested for so long that there's still just so much to do and in terms of housing of course there have been issues about dealing respectfully with traditional Aboriginal owners and not just being seen to ride in over the top but there's no magic in providing a house if it's full of 30 people and there's no magic in providing a house if you're still looking at issues to do with education and health.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Do you think it is a matter of more cash, more money?

FR FRANK BRENNAN: More cash and more money always helps but as we've seen in anti-poverty week one of the advantages of this sort of week is that we can do a bit of lateral thinking, looking outside the square and some of the more detailed research which is being done by bodies like the government's own social inclusion unit, and guess what their first principal is to say it's not just a matter of what you deliver it's how you deliver it, and you've got to do it respectfully. They have a second principal - they say there's no point in just one off injections and thirdly you've always got to be looking at structural change.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Why have you been such a critic of many aspects of the Northern Territory intervention?

FR FRANK BRENNAN: I've been critical of the racially discriminatory parts, you might say it's just the lawyer in me, but I think it's more than that it's that I've been involved in Aboriginal affairs on and off for 20 or 30 years and I've seen that Aboriginal people, they always react adversely when anything is being said to be done for their benefit when they're not consulted and when it's different from everyone else.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Jenny Macklin says the next phase of the Intervention will focus on education and maintaining alcohol restrictions - expanding the policy that parents who don't send their children to school will have their welfare payments suspended. Do you support that approach?

FR FRANK BRENNAN: The problem that the Government confronts is where they say we apply carrots and sticks to increasing or decreasing your welfare payments you don't actually have many carrots or sticks to work with and in the end you're not going to get kids to school unless parents and extended families are wanting that sort of education and I don't think you're going to get that unless you've got a fully cooperative exercise so I wish her luck but where it's not the result of a grounded local community initiative and cooperation then the small number of carrots and sticks you can apply to either upping or reducing people's welfare payments I don't think will get kids to school.

LOUISA REBGETZ: But Jenny Macklin says the message is loud and clear from Aboriginal people through her consultations, that they in fact want this tough kind of approach?

FR FRANK BRENNAN: Yes the Government has engaged in a consultation but as your viewers would know who responds to those consultations - it's those who are already in some sort of relationship with government and they say yes, bring it on, we'd like more of this. I'd be more interested in those that haven't participated in the consultation - they're the ones most likely to have kids who aren't yet attending school.

LOUISA REBGETZ: Frank Brennan thanks so much for talking with us.

FR FRANK BRENNAN: Great, good to be with you.

7.30 NT