With relations between black and white Australia at new lows, Australia’s conservative government defended on Thursday a plan to offer aid to a remote aboriginal community in return for a promise its children would wash daily.
The draft agreement between the government, re-elected in October with an increased majority, and the outback Mulan aboriginal community sparked accusations it had gone too far with its tough new approach to funding for disadvantaged Aborigines.
But Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone said the agreement had the support of the Mulan community, in the far north of Western Australia state, and was designed to help improve the health of aboriginal children.
Under the draft agreement, the government will pay A$176,000 ($133,000) to install petrol pumps at a local store in a bid to improve community income and boost outback tourism.
The government will also guarantee more regular health checks to combat health problems, including the preventable eye disease trachoma and child skin infections, but it wants a promise children will shower once daily and wash their faces twice a day.
Vanstone said the deal was in line with the government’s indigenous mutual obligation program, where extra benefits are conditional upon communities doing something in return. She said health standards would improve if children washed more regularly.
“We’re not going to have people out there every day checking,” Vanstone told Australian radio.
'Turn into blackmail'
“But it will be pretty clear after a year whether the community has done what they say they will do, and I’ve got no reason to believe that they won’t. If this agreement goes ahead and it works, what could anyone complain about?” she said. On Sunday, Prime Minister John Howard said that Aborigines might lose some basic rights—with alcohol bans and curfews suggested—as the government tackles major indigenous health, housing, education and employment problems.
Australia has about 450,000 Aborigines—about two percent of the population—but they die about 20 years younger than white Australians and suffer high rates of imprisonment, unemployment, domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse. Australia’s only Aborigine in the national parliament Aden Ridgeway said the plan had the potential to turn into blackmail.
“The system creates an ad-hoc approach to dealing with indigenous affairs and has the potential to turn into blackmail with the government withholding essential resources until communities fall into line,” he said.
The center-left Labor opposition criticized the Mulan deal as one-sided and being designed to force Aborigines to give up social rights.
Tense relations
The draft Mulan agreement comes with tensions between black and white Australians at a flashpoint.
Rioters burned down a police station and courthouse at the remote Palm Island aboriginal community on Nov. 26 after an autopsy showed that an aboriginal man in police custody there had died of a ruptured liver.
In February, Aborigines rioted in a Sydney ghetto after a boy fell off his bike and was impaled on a fence. Aborigines mistakenly believed he was being chased by police when he died.
Howard last week met aboriginal football star Michael Long and community leaders. Long had walked halfway from the southern city of Melbourne to the capital Canberra in protest against the number of Aborigines who die young.
