Cape York Partnership’s radical plan to save all Australians from welfare trap and make education a legal right
Noel Pearson’s Cape York Partnership has embarked on a major reboot of Indigenous politics and unveiled a post-welfare vision for the ‘bottom million’ Australians, no matter their race.
Noel Pearson’s Cape York Partnership has embarked on a radical reboot of Indigenous politics and unveiled a post-welfare vision for the “bottom million” Australians regardless of race, with a plan to make quality education a legal right and centre policy on personal responsibility.
The pioneering Aboriginal community body on Tuesday called on Labor and the Coalition to support a new bill inspired by the works of US president Franklin Roosevelt that gives the most impoverished families a fair chance and incentive to get out of the welfare trap.
The new agenda poses a challenge to Anthony Albanese to re-enter the sphere of Indigenous policy after Australians emphatically rejected the voice proposal two years ago.
Personal savings and an ‘opportunity guarantee’
Cape York Partnership chief executive Fiona Jose has said the government should consider a Singapore-style fund to help the poor accumulate personal savings and a nationwide version of the Cape York Responsibilities Commission to develop individual plans for disadvantaged kids.
A legal requirement for quality education could also enshrine that children who turn up to classrooms are actually taught, in a serious move to hold education departments accountable.
“The opportunity gap traps the bottom million across Australia – whether you live in Arnhem Land, in a suburb of Sydney, or a small town anywhere in the country,” Ms Jose said in a speech on Tuesday night in Sydney.
“That is why the next phase of reform must do more than promise opportunity. It must guarantee it. Opportunity can no longer depend on political discretion, bureaucratic goodwill, geographic location or funding cycles. It must be guaranteed by law.
“This is not about a bigger welfare state. It is about transforming the welfare state into an opportunity economy. Opportunity is about structural solutions. Responsibility is about personal agency and high expectations from families, neighbours and society.”
A major revival of Pearson’s personal responsibility call
Tuesday’s speech at the Art Gallery of NSW was attended by hundreds of Cape York people who have benefited from its leadership programs and support for students, as well as Governor-General Sam Mostyn
Mr Pearson and Ms Jose have been developing the Personal Responsibility and Opportunity bill for months, as they seek to break from the voice referendum past and get Canberra re-engaged with closing the gap.
The new push is a major revival of the Pearson personal responsibility agenda of the 2000s and a decisive shift away from the identity politics language of pre-voice Aboriginal politics, with an emphasis on how getting Indigenous people off welfare can help stop dole dependency among all other Australians as well.
It is possible long-time critics of Mr Pearson’s focus on responsibility may push back on the new proposals, amid lingering resentments in the Aboriginal national leadership over the role of conservatives in defeating the 2023 referendum.
But Ms Jose said in her speech that Cape York had showed the need to break both right-wing and left-wing orthodoxies to get results.
“Cape York’s reform agenda reclaimed responsibility from the right, not as blame, but as the source of empowerment. And we reclaimed opportunity from the left, not as sentiment, but as structured support to match responsibilities,” she said.
“It was not the easy road. Our progressive allies were allergic to our agenda. We declined the path of least resistance.
“But it was, and remains, the only road that honours our people’s right to take charge of our own lives, to be the main actors in our own development.”
The Personal Responsibility and Opportunity Act – which would apply to the “bottom million” poorest Australians – would make a quality education and a pathway to work a legal entitlement for people.
Remote primary schools and governments would be forced by law to ensure that classrooms are funded, staffed and getting the proper results.
The legislation would ensure children in locations where there is little prospect of a quality highschool education can “orbit out” and succeed at boarding schools, not necessarily private or elite but necessarily high performing.
The goal is that teens do not simply attend school until the end of Year 12 and therefore qualify as having “completed” highschool.
Rather, they achieve a result that is recognised and useful such as a QCE, the leaving certificate in Queensland.
“Cape York families who do the right thing — who send their children to school ready to learn are failed by poor schools and systems,” she said.
‘Children attend, but do not learn. Classrooms exist, but capability does not grow.’
“This is the opportunity gap. Missing chances for a good education, decent jobs, home ownership and long lives.”
Complementary legislation is possible as part of the proposal: for example, a scaled-up or rolled-out version of the Family Responsibilities Commission that acts like a tribunal for welfare control in Cape York.
It would mean an end to what the Cape York Partnership calls a “spray and pray” approach to funding programs in disadvantaged communities, making service providers accountable for results.
It would also result in a version of the provident fund that Cape York families sign up for and pay into.
Each parent who opts in gets budgeting advice and can monitor but not access their individual savings growing on an app.
There is an account for their children’s boarding school fees and accounts for goals that would have otherwise been out of reach such as a family holiday. There is another account for unplanned expenses such as health bills.
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