Respect but Ignore
Commemorating the sixteenth anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s courageous and long overdue (thank you, John Howard) apology for past mistreatment of Australia’s Indigenous Peoples, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also reported on statistics reflecting on the failure of government policies —
Sixteen years after the apology, only 11 out of 19 socio-economic outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are improving…Just four are on track to meet their targets. What should give us pause is that have worsened in four critical targets: children’s early development, rates of children in out-of-home care, rates of adult imprisonment and tragically, suicide.
Such sad and disheartening statistics should be a reality check for a leader intent on pursuing the very same failed policies in order to ‘bridge the gap’.
Repeated failure usually calls for a fresh approach rather than renewed effort. Consequently, while we hope that the government’s ‘new’ Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program creates jobs for Aborigines living in remote areas, I sense that it doest not signal the start of a fundamental reevaluation of past policies. As Opposition Leader Peter Dutton stated —
It’s an admirable aim. Prime ministers, successively, have made similar announcements, provided additional funding, talking about opportunities to grow jobs, to build houses, to address health and education needs…But in many cases, the aspiration has just not been achieved.
By merely ‘respecting’ (accepting the reality but not the merits of) the nation’s clear rejection of The Voice referendum, Albanese continues to ignore the referendum’s message that we must consider a new approach, one that prioritised specific problems over symbolic gestures.
The statistics our PM cites underline the failure and inappropriateness of his and previous governments’ well intentioned but misguided and unrealistic policies. The courage required is to be prepared to go back to square one and re-evaluate the currently off-limits assumptions underlying the failed doctrinaire policies .
