Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs has developed a cult following over the past thirty years, lionised by sections of the media and patronised by artists, filmmakers and even billionaires Richard Branson. Swimmer Ian Thorpe has portrayed the organisation as a not only a champion of the oppressed, but as oppressed in its own right, by successive federal and Territory governments trying to take land and rights away from Aboriginal people.
Others say Tangentyere has had money enough and years enough to make a significant different to the lives of town campers but has failed. While others have presented the story of Tangentyere as a struggle against racism , vested interests and even cultural genocide, they say the town camps have become ghettoes; black holes where it is impossible to escape from the gravity of alcoholism, violence and welfare.
Black and White Town has been created a forum to honestly explore issues vital to the future of Central Australia as it deals with issues that have perplexed and challenged residents since the arrival of the Old Telegraph Line. To begin, we are reprinting two letters recently published in The Centralian Advocate, the first in its unedited form, and written by BOB DURNAN. Your opinions are welcome.
Once again the Alice Springs “Intervention Rollback Action Group” and Sydney-based “Stop the Intervention Collective” are rolling into action, ramping up another propaganda campaign with inaccurate claims in their publicity (http://rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com/town-camp-housing-takeover/ )
At the same time, Rollback lawyer George Newhouse’s campaign to embarrass Rudd and Macklin internationally by placing the world's spotlight on the Australian government's policies over the Intervention is proceeding apace. His vendetta-like activities are likely to peak in the next week, coinciding with the ALP National Conference.
The Rollback people claim that "The NT Intervention has ... led only to increased discrimination and hardship."
In fact, the NT Intervention has led to significant improvements in safety, health services, nutrition, education and wellbeing for many thousands of people, particularly children and women living on remote communities in the NT. I work in several of these communities, and I see the evidence in front of my eyes every day.
The Intervention’s failings are predominantly in the areas of poor bureaucratic performance on strategy and program design of the NTER (particularly DEEWR’s input on employment and training reform), the political and bureaucratic clumsiness evidenced in the Intervention’s initial implementation phase, the cumbersome Alliance housing model, and excessive emphasis on the child sexual abuse and community dysfunction issues. Most importantly, it failed to develop and implement an evidence-based approach to addressing alcohol misuse.
The over-emphasis on child sexual abuse and corporate governance failures partly obscured the more general need to address the extraordinary rates of individual and family dysfunction demonstrated by a whole range of indicators - endemic violence, welfare dependency, demand sharing, substance abuse, crime, incarceration, the wholesale failure of training and employment projects, widespread child neglect and very high rates of school non-attendance.
The Rollback group's claim that years of inadequate funding and support have left many Aboriginal organisations and programs struggling to survive ignores certain important facts.
While many organisations have not received all the money they would like to have gained over the decades, some organisations such as Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs have received very large sums. Tangentyere's accountant told the Sydney Morning Herald that it received around $12 million in 2007 - this equates to about $8000 per person each year that it had to spend on the town campers (“The other side of the Alice”, SMH 21st August, 2007).
But Tangentyere for many years has neglected to publish audit reports and failed to make detailed accounts of its funding and spending available to the Aboriginal people of Alice Springs, let alone to the members of the wider public.
The real issue is whether the considerable monies which Tangentyere has received have been spent wisely, productively and effectively for the benefit of its members and the other needy persons who use the Alice Springs town camps.
It is fairly apparent that in Tangentyere’s case there have been major problems associated with setting sensible priorities and implementing effective programs to meet the needs of the members and their visitors for safe and hygienic living conditions.
As for Rollback’s claim that Tangentyere has been a “spearhead for the establishment of other organizations as the need arose, such as Central Australian Aboriginal Congress (medical services), Central Australian Aboriginal Alcohol Planning Unit (alcohol rehabilitation), Institute for Aboriginal Development (educational institution), Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, Yipirinye School (independent Aboriginal school), outstation resource centres and so on”: somebody is having a lend of the usually better informed Rollback spokesperson, Paddy Gibson.
IAD, formed by Jim Downing with a number of local Aboriginal leaders in 1969, was the spearhead of this movement. It led to the creation of CAALAS (Aboriginal Legal Aid) and the Aboriginal health service, CAAC (Congress) in 1973. Charlie and Neville Perkins were instrumental in the formation of these organisations as well. These three groups in turn helped organise the first meetings of town campers, discussing the early plans to form Tangentyere in 1973/74.
Tangentyere was clearly not the spearhead – it did not yet exist. In fact, IAD’s Cross Cultures Group made the first successful application for a town camp lease, at Little Sisters camp, in 1973.
It is true that once established in 1977/78, Tangentyere then went on to sponsor the formation of Yipirinya School in 1978 and, together with the CLC, the Ingkerreke Outstation Resource Service in 1984; and, in partnership with Congress, the alcohol rehabilitation organisation, CAAAPU, in 1991. But Rollback’s portrayal of Tangentyere as the sole heroic spearhead of all these organisations is just plain wrong.
An honest and accurate approach by Rollback would also concede that a major reason the Intervention’s new housing construction hasn’t yet commenced is because the governments have acceded to demands for training and employment of local people to be included in all construction, and this is an exceedingly complicated policy to implement via contracts. It requires large scale education and training programs to be developed and integrated with the construction program, along with apprenticeships, qualified trainers, and contracts which can be administered to require the builders to perform these tasks credibly.
If somebody has told Paddy that Tangentyere “wants to embrace the move taking place nationally towards community housing models”, they are failing to explain to him that Tangentyere has in fact run a “community housing model”, based on 17 government-funded, self-managing public benevolent housing associations, for more than three decades. It is true that community housing models generally hold much hope for the future development of low cost housing in Australia – they are generally less bureaucratic and more efficient than state welfare housing bodies. However ideology, idealistic complexity, lack of adequate management skills, personality politics, and the huge wastage of lives and assets associated with the endemic alcohol abuse and violence on the camps, have combined to undermine the viability of Tangentyere’s particular community housing model, and it has proven to be far from successful.
Further, it is also untrue that Tangentyere “has been the only service provider to the Town Camps since their inception”. Tangentyere has unfortunately tried to be “all things to all people”, because Tangentyere insisted on being funded to provide all its own services as an expression of self-determination and as a means of securing jobs for the town campers. This objective failed to appreciate that certain forms of self- determination were already being expressed in terms of other specialist organisations in certain areas.
For example, Congress has provided health services to the town camps since well before Tangentyere was formed, and IAD and Yipirinya have provided education services to town campers for over 30 years, so Tangentyere has not been the only service provider.
It is almost an impossible ask for one organisation to expect to have sufficient expertise in health, education, employment and housing but this was the vision Tangentyere tried to pursue to the point where it ended up trying to be too many things to too many people. It also tried to duplicate services provided by others, which was an inefficient strategy.
And if “for decades Tangentyere has called upon governments to address overcrowding and poverty in their communities. But their demands have been ignored”, then how does Rollback explain the granting of 16 town camp leases in perpetuity by governments, and the investment in around 200 mostly large, strong, well built, fully furnished, individually designed dwellings on the town camp leases? (By the way: the figure of 2000 people living in these camps is quite fanciful. The ABS Census and several detailed surveys by Tangentyere itself in recent years have consistently revealed less than 1500 people, including visitors, at any one time).
As well as these houses on the town camp leases, 160 houses on around 50 outstations within 75 km of Alice, serviced by the Ingkerreke Outstation Resource Service, have been built, mainly to house town campers and to assist them to move away from the dreadful conditions on the town camps and onto their traditional country.
These 360 houses and their accompanying infrastructure indicate government expenditure well in excess of $200 million in current valuation. Hardly evidence of demands having been ignored, you might think.
Unfortunately, Tangentyere is not the successful organisation that the Rollback lobby are trying to portray, and this may be why they have to resort to misinformation to try to make their case.
Bob Durnan
Hermannsburg NT
(Bob Durnan helped establish Tangentyere Council, and worked on the development of many of the Alice Springs town camp leases and services between 1977 and 1993).
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