Australia pledges more teachers for Aboriginal Outback The Associated Press February 14, 2008
CANBERRA, Australia: Determined to prove that a national apology to Australia's sidelined indigenous population is more than words, the government on Thursday promised more teachers to tackle widespread illiteracy in Outback Aboriginal communities.
The commitment to match symbolism with action has been applauded. But attention is rapidly swinging toward the challenge of boosting Aborigines from Third World squalor to the Developed World affluence that other Australians have enjoyed during a 17-year economic boom.
Aborigines account for about 450,000 in Australia's population of 21 million. They are the country's poorest group, with the highest rates of jailing, unemployment and illiteracy. Their life expectancy is 17 years shorter than that of other Australians.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd won international acclaim Wednesday by leading the Parliament in apologizing to generations of mostly mixed-race Aborigines who were taken by government officials from their mothers in a bid to make them grow up like white Australians.
"This is a story about Australians — human beings_ who were ripped apart over the better part of a century, and it was time the nation's Parliament said: 'That was crook (wrong), let's acknowledge it and let's move on,'" Rudd told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television Thursday.
The apology was his first parliamentary act since his center-left government was elected in November last year after 11 years in opposition.
A government inquiry found in 1997 that many of the so-called "stolen generations" were abused in institutions and most were deeply scarred by their separation from family.
The influential national broadsheet The Australian said in a front-page editorial Thursday that the spirit of Rudd's apology is "dishonored if the current generation cannot devise new and better policies to lift the conditions of indigenous peoples."
"Expectations Rudd has created for his prime ministership are huge," the newspaper said.
Rudd has refused to pay compensation to the tens of thousands of families torn apart by the racist assimilation policies that prevailed throughout most of the 20th century.
But he has set bold targets to remove the inequalities between the living standards of black and white Australians. They include improvements in indigenous education and housing.
On Thursday, his deputy Julia Gillard introduced to the Parliament legislation to pay for an extra 50 school teachers this year in the Outback of the Northern Territory.
The 64 million Australian dollar (US$58 million; €40 million) policy will provide an additional 200 teachers in this remote northern frontier over four years. No figures were immediately available on current teacher numbers.
Most Aborigines in these drug and violence-ridden communities scattered across tropical and desert wilderness survive on welfare and many struggle with the English language. Their children have the nation's poorest literacy and numeracy skills. Truancy is rampant.
"If we are to encourage these young indigenous people to come to school, we need to have enough teachers ready to teach them," Gillard told Parliament when introducing the legislation. It will be voted on within months.
Part of Rudd's promise of action is an invitation to the opposition to attack the long-standing indigenous problems by joining the government in what he describes as a type of "war cabinet." Australian governments engage opposition lawmakers in crucial decision-making in times of war to ensure bipartisanship against a national peril.
"The challenges are too great and the consequences are too great to allow it all to become a political football," Rudd said of indigenous issues.
The bipartisan approach is aimed at developing long-term strategies beyond the reach of a government's three-year term.
The first priority of this new strategy is to provide adequate accommodation for Aborigines in the Outback, where there are often as many families in a house as there are bedrooms.
Paul Torzillo, a medical director of a remote Aboriginal health service in South Australia state who has surveyed 5,000 local homes, said the condition of existing houses made it impossible for Aborigines to maintain their health.
Most houses have nowhere to cook or store food, and a lack of maintenance in these government-provided homes is the predominant problem.
"Only 11 percent of those houses had electrical safety, so that in all of the rest there were major electrical fire risks," Torzillo told ABC radio.
Wilson Tuckey, an opposition lawmaker, said he abstained from the apology vote Wednesday because it would not improve Aboriginal lives.
"I thought there was a better chance for the Aboriginal people if I said a prayer on their behalf and relied on the efforts of a higher being because I have no confidence whatsoever that Kevin Rudd is going to do anything for them," Tuckey said Thursday.
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