Measure 1: Welfare Reform and Employment
1.1 Income Management and Community Stores
Prior to the NTER the local store, which is owned by the community, was one of the best stores in the Central Desert region. Apart from personal testimonies, this is also verified by the Territory Health Services “Market Basket Survey” which in the last few years, found that the local store had the widest range of fresh fruit and vegetables of any remote store surveyed and at prices comparable to a corner store in Alice Springs. The store also followed the Territory Health Services Nutrition guidelines for remote community stores. The store over the last five years was able to pay back a debt incurred by previous management and return profits to the community. This was despite being one of the most distant stores from a major supply centre with the associated costs of transport and problems of staff recruitment and retention.
The NTER has required the store to indicate that they have the financial systems in place for income management. Doing this now requires a staff member to spend an estimated extra 75% of time in administrative work alone. Apart from entering income management reports as required by Centrelink, many community people now require the assistance of the shop staff to an increased degree to answer questions about their money. The store had to upgrade their computer systems to ensure income management requirements were met. The cost of doing this was borne by the store. The store was unable to access any assistance with this extra administrative work, beyond an initial Centrelink orientation. Any cost’s associated with this extra administrative work, including employing and housing more staff is borne by the store and ultimately the community.
The accounting requirements of income management have also increased waiting times at the till, so in place of one till, two are required to process the same amount of people. This increased level of staffing and the requirements to house the staff, is borne by the store and thus again by the community.
Initially more money was spent on DVD’s and other luxuries, however recently a trend has been noted for more money to be spent on food and clothing at the store.
Indigenous community members would like to explain that with income management they are finding it difficult to travel. Money is held either at the local stores or available in Alice Springs to be spent at nominated stores. They say it costs $300.00 to travel from Alice Springs to the community in their own vehicle, requiring two fuel refills on the way. With income management they find they do not have enough funds available to refuel while they travel as the money is held elsewhere. The same thing also occurs when they need to travel across borders. Community members traveling to other states have access to less money for their daily needs and a greater reliance upon family members in other communities to support them, which in turn places strain upon interstate communities.
It is my perception that community members are adjusting to income management and do not find it affects them markedly as they still spend their income at the local shop. However I also feel that there has been an increase in reliance on other sources of income not affected by income management. Such sources include various other government benefits, art sales, car dealing, illicit substances dealings, begging from white people, sharing among family members, royalties, store profits, gambling and “in kind” income such as receiving food and goods from various well intentioned bodies. From my observations moving around the local community there seems to have been an increase in marijuana use, gambling, more art work being done and more vehicles changing hands.
From discussions with both Indigenous and Non-indigenous community members I feel that people do not understand their “pay slips”. One comment was from a Non-Indigenous person who said she was a tertiary educated person in a responsible job who had not thought of herself as unintelligent. She said that she could not make “head nor tail” of peoples “pay slips” and questioned how an illiterate person could manage their money and learn budgeting on the information available to them.
In the past six weeks there has been a swift down turn in the range of goods available at the local store. Previously I purchased my weekly shopping at the store and did not need to access “bush orders” from Alice Springs. However the long term managers have resigned, one in particular due to the increased work load and stress from the NTER, and the new manager does not appear to have the interest and commitment to maintaining a wide range of goods at an equitable price in the store.
1.2 Increased participation opportunities for people on income support in remote communities
1.3 CDEP transition to jobs and employment services
Transition to jobs and employment services presupposes that such opportunities are available in the geographical area. Of a community with a population of approximately 320 people, 150 fit into the working age population of between 15 and 50 years. Eliminating those unable to work due to illness, disability and home duties still leaves a population of approximately 80 – 100 people needing employment. This community is in an area that has never been used for agriculture, no suitable mining material has been found and tourism is limited due to distance and location. Current employing agencies in the community include the council, now shire, shop, primary school, secondary school, adult education, youth team, aged care centre, clinic and various short term “project” schemes. Currently these organizations are staffed by approximately 20 non-Indigenous community members with varying assistance from community members. Should all these organizations be staffed by Indigenous community members there would still be a shortfall in jobs available to the working age population. That is even if people worked part time and shared jobs there would still be up to 30 -40 people for whom there would be no prospect of work.
We now have several generations of people for whom no meaningful employment has been available. Thus these people have no work ethic or understanding of employment in non-Indigenous culture terms. They also see no need to work as their basic living needs are met by government benefits and community. Various trainers have come out to the community however in many cases the quality of these trainers leaves much to be desired therefore Indigenous community members have had very few quality role models for employment. Most of the Indigenous people of this community are illiterate which also reduces their opportunities for meaningful employment.
1.4 Active School Participation
The community has a primary school staffed by two teachers who have been in the community for five years. The private secondary college has one teacher and a teacher aid that have been in the community approximately a year. Both offer employment to community members as teacher’s aids. Neither school has any administrative or cleaning assistance.
The primary school principle initially reported no discernable change in numbers of enrollments or attendance either before or after the NTER. However in the last few months he now reports many more transient children. Although numbers remain stable, many long term children do not return to school as they are traveling and there is an increased volume of short term enrollments, children staying for a week or so and then gone. Each new child needing to enroll in school requires a corresponding avalanche of paperwork thus one teacher is then left to cope with two classes as the other teacher tries to follow up administrative duties. As these transient children are not used to regular school they are more disruptive and have shorter attentions spans. This results in the entire class being disrupted and reduced learning opportunities for all children.
I personally feel that the primary school teachers have built up a level of trust and respect within the community so that outcomes have slowly been improving. However since the NTER I feel that the teachers have become professionally de-valued and had intense pressure placed upon them without adequate support. They have been asking for funding to employ another local Indigenous teacher’s aid rather than more teachers who, going by previous experience, need orientating and supporting to the remote setting. This places a further burden on the long term teachers and takes them further from their fundamental teaching duties. It should also be noted that the teacher finds it necessary to drive around the community more than once each morning to collect children as very few children spontaneously make their way to school, particularly in the colder weather. Children also leave the school premises during the day, requiring the teacher to locate them again. As the secondary college works on different hours to the primary school, college aged children also enter the school grounds and disrupt teaching. The teacher explained that he is unable to secure the grounds due to late arrivals to the primary school who would then be unable to access school.
I would suggest a reward scheme for parents tied to school attendance. If a child attends the same school for the full school day for a reasonable amount of the term, (possibly 90% but this number could be arrived at by the education department), then parents could receive a monetary reward through Centre link. If educational progress is demonstrated at the end of the year a greater reward could be given. This would then provide incentives to both parents and children to attend school.
Certainly the children who have been attending school consistently seem to trust the teachers and the teachers have build up a wealth of knowledge about the children and their families which needs to be acknowledged.
1.5 Community Employment Brokers
Please refer to point 1.3 and discussion about access to employment. The community employment broker assigned to this community was promoting the establishment of an art centre as one way of providing employment. However she did not seem interested in the fact that for many years, community members had produced art work including paintings, purni, beads and baskets in their own homes. This art work was sold to a reputable dealer who traveled to the community every few weeks and had been doing so for many years, building up a relationship directly with community members. Some art work was also sold to passing tourists. The community was happy with this system and from a non–Indigenous perspective it meant that people could work from their own home at a pace that suited them. They were thus able to maintain responsibility and supervision of toddlers and babies, young children were exposed to work and people had to take their own responsibility for maintaining their supplies and selling their work including learning skills of negotiation, assertiveness and commercial acceptable standards of work. The dealer who came around gave constructive feedback on art work explaining why some pieces were worth more than others and how to improve work. He also talked about values so that Indigenous people selling work to tourists had a better idea of how to negotiate and what to expect for their art. Working this way promotes self responsibility, self esteem and feelings of self worth. Having an established art centre with a “broker” to provide a venue, raw materials, disposal of works and an established place to work negetates the value of what people are already doing of their own initiative.
It must be noted that these comments apply to one community and in communities with already established art centers a different model of working and conveying the values of self respect, esteem and responsibility may be appropriate. In this case the concept of an art centre felt as if it was being pushed upon the community in order for the non-Indigenous promoter to feel they had achieved something in their stay in the community and thus was more to preserve their own sense of self esteem and worth. It should also be noted that the traveling dealer who has built up a relationship with the community has also been talking about an art centre with the community prior to the community employment broker’s efforts.
The dealer is working with the community to establish an outlet for art as the community wants. The employment broker did not appear to work with the established ongoing mechanisms but needed to create something to justify her position. It should also be noted once again that the art dealer had been coming to this community for many years and had built up trust and respect. It is difficult for any person to do this in a short time and particularly in the remote setting where Indigenous community people have seen many short term staff come and go.
The community employment broker also increased the work load of the existing council staff as she used to present to the council offices at approximately 9.00am to see what Indigenous people had clocked on for work. The CEO at the time informed me that as many of the Indigenous people did not understand the “clock on” system, they were actually working but were put down by the community employment broker as not working because they hadn’t clocked on correctly. The CEO and ESO at the time had to spend more time ensuring administrative work was done correctly for the benefit of the community employment broker.