Tony Abbott’s Aboriginal ‘lifestyle choice’ backlash overshadows valid question on remote communities

A ‘LIFESTYLE choice’ is deciding to dress like a hipster - not to be Aboriginal in a remote community. But Tony Abbott is right to question whether taxpayers should still be picking up the tab.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott

COMMENT

Tony Abbott is right to question the justifications for small indigenous communities where resources don’t match the needs of 21st century survival.

Although he might have phrased things better.

The Prime Minister yesterday endorsed the West Australian Government’s moves to close down 150 remote and small communities which don’t have the services of larger centres.

That means they don’t have the schools, hospitals and police presence other Australians expect and value. Nor do they have the jobs.

The betrayal of two crucial needs — education and employment — means young people in these small communities have to leave, at least temporarily, or be totally unqualified for contemporary life.

Taxpayers cannot be expected to provide town-quality services in tiny settlements, and while arguments of spiritual association with the land must be respected, they can’t be allowed to justify depriving young people of opportunities taken for granted elsewhere.

This is the point where total surrender to tradition risks becoming a harmful indulgence and Tony Abbott was correct in pointing this out.

So Prime Minister Abbott is right up to there, but is in trouble for characterising the attachment of indigenous groups to traditional lands as a “lifestyle choice”.

A lifestyle choice is deciding to dress like a hipster, or to buy a Harley even though there are better motorbikes available.

Tony Abbott meets with students from the National indigenous Culinary Institute in Sydney.

“What we can’t do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices,” the Prime Minister said yesterday, rousing accusations he was being insensitive towards cherished associations with indigenous homelands.

Today Mr Abbott stuck to his terminology and his argument on Sydney’s 2GB.

“The general principle is that you and I as Australians are free to go and do what we reasonably want to do in our country,” he said.

“But if you and I choose to live in a very remote place to what extent is the taxpayer obliged to subsidise our services? Now I think this is a very real question.”

Mr Abbott said it was “incredibly difficult” for children to get schooling “when there’s only half a dozen of them and getting teachers there is all but impossible”.

“We have to be a little bit realistic,” he said.

There is a danger the furore over “lifestyle choice” will overshadow the central point the Prime Minister has raised, that the debate over language will take precedence over consideration of what is best for youngsters born into these remote settlements.

However, the furore has done him a favour by drawing attention to his concerns.

Mr Abbott has done more than any Prime Minister to highlight that small traditional communities can’t expect ready access to the resources only towns and cities can afford.

He is challenging the value to young Aborigines of this trade-off, and in the process encouraging indigenous leaders to make their own, public and honest examinations of the issue.

Originally published as Tony Abbott’s Aboriginal ‘lifestyle choice’ backlash overshadows valid question on remote communities