The outback ghettoes. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: Peter Howson's article on "The Failure of Aboriginal Segregation" (May 2003) should be compulsory reading for all pundits who write or speak on Aboriginal policy. My own experience in this area is minuscule compared to Howson's, having spent only a few weeks on outback Aboriginal settlements as a journalist. However, as that seems to amply qualify one to be a pundit on Aborigines, may I be permitted a few observations?

One of the great causes adopted by Aborigines and their advocates over the past thirty years or more has been the reunion of Aborigines with their land. The result has been that Aborigines now have some sort of rights--including full ownership--over vast tracts of outback land including, as Howson rightly observed, most of the Northern Territory.

Having reunited Aborigines with their land (leaving aside the highly debatable proposition of what exactly "their" land might be), few of the activists who have promoted this cause ever seem to have paused to consider what happens next. Perhaps they think Aborigines spend the day in mystic communion with the spirits of the land. To be fair, some do. And there are regular ceremonies and songs and so forth. But for most of the time, day in, day out, these remote communities are living in rural squalor. Their lives are a dreary daily round of poverty, ill-health, substance abuse and fighting, particularly wife-beating.

If there are 1216 communities living in remote parts of Australia, as Howson states, then the vast majority of them are probably living under the conditions I describe. That is not a racist observation. I am sure that if whites, Asians or any other race had to endure the same life they would behave in the same way. It's a vicious cycle bred by welfare dependence.

The brutal fact is that few of these communities have any economic justification for existence. There is no meaningful work there, and the CDEP scheme may mean only that someone qualifies for the dole by pushing ...