https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au
If the above link helps (it won’t open) or you have access to The Australian website, you may like to read what Alice Springs school principal Gavin Morris wrote in the Op-Ed section of the 6 July 2023 edition of the newspaper (it’s next to the cartoon)?
The information struck a chord with me as the following unpublished Letter to the Editor attests:
Alice Springs school principal Gavin Morris (“Time for talk has long passed…” 6 July) is in the thick of the Indigenous ‘level of disadvantage and poverty’ of his community.
His comparison (citing further personal experience) of the Daly River community and its initial success using ‘self-determination and self-governance’ followed by its ‘slow disintegration…as government policies swept through’ was also revealing.
How can I, living in far away, privileged Cottesloe, be completely on the same page as Mr Morris without ever having been to Alice Springs or indeed any remote Indigenous community?
His assertion that ‘changing governments, bureaucracy and power plays’ are responsible are opinions I share.
Yet my children would all argue with me against these thoughts and it is their generation (they are aged 22 to 41) who are representative of the bureaucracy of which he talks.
This appears to be the problem.
To help the plight of the Indigenous people where the billions of dollars spent do not seem to get to the core of the problem, Australia needs to approach this issue from the top down and the bottom up.
Federal and state governments and their oppositions should agree to have one policy which both parties agree to despite the results of elections.
The communities themselves should be represented by its most able members to make decisions and seek the necessary help.
Sadly the huge middle ground of bureaucracy should become redundant.
This would save billions of dollars which could be redirected towards the problem: feeding the kids and keeping them safe from bad influences which often emerge from their own families.
Not in my lifetime I fear and that is very, very sad.
NOTE: If my children read this, please do not take offence. I am merely pointing out the difference in thinking between generations.
I WRIGHT 