Remote communities a lifestyle choice: Tony Abbott

TONY Abbott’s move to open debate on the cost of providing services to remote areas met a chorus of criticism today.

OPPOSITION Leader Bill Shorten has demanded that Tony Abbott apologise over his suggestion indigenous Australians were making “lifestyle choices” to live in remote communities while Noel Pearson labelled his remarks a “thought bubble’’.

Mr Abbott yesterday said it was not the taxpayers’ job to “subsidise lifestyle choices” if indigenous people lived in remote areas far away from services such as schools and hospitals.

“The prime minister should apologise,” Mr Shorten told reporters in Melbourne this afternoon.

“Tony Abbott is a prime minister stuck in the 1950s. He says he’s the prime minister for indigenous Australians but he just wants to move them off their land.

“What is it he doesn’t understand about the connection between indigenous Australians and their land?”

During the 1950s, Aboriginal Australians were forcibly absorbed into white society, leaving their culture and traditions behind. They did not enjoy equal legal rights, were excluded from the census and were not permitted to vote in Queensland or Western Australia.

Mr Shorten, asked how Labor would deal with remote communities, said there was “no doubt the state government has to get the balance right in terms of costs”.

“You don’t do it by the Prime Minister leaving Canberra, flying in, giving everyone a lecture and flying out,” he said.

“A policy which just simply says to people it’s unsustainable and they can’t maintain their connection with the land, that’s just backward-looking and it’s not the way we need to go.”

As senior government ministers came to the defence of Mr Abbott — including Malcolm Turnbull — Mr Pearson said indigenous communities deserved an “extensive” explanation and not “off-the-cuff” statements from the Prime Minister.

“I think it’s a very disappointing and hopeless statement by the Prime Minister, quite frankly,” he told the ABC’s The World Today. “I just think it’s very disrespectful to cast fear into these communities through a kind of policy thought bubble rather than a considered position from the Commonwealth Government as to the future — the anxious future — of these remote communities.

“He has got no plan for the future of these communities in the event that they close down. And I’m just bitterly disappointed to hear this deranged debate go on in the substandard manner in which it’s being conducted.”

Mr Abbott has so far resisted calls he apologise for saying taxpayers couldn’t endlessly subsidise people who chose to live far away from schools and jobs.

This morning, he said observers should judge his record on indigenous welfare “in its totality”.

“I don’t think there are too many Australian prime ministers who took the national government for almost a week to a remote Aboriginal community — I did it last year, it’s my intention to do it again this year,” Mr Abbott said in Mount Gambier.

“So I’m very comfortable with my credentials when it comes to doing the right thing by the Aboriginal people of Australia.’’

Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne dismissed the calls as a bizarre and hysterical response to an economic issue. “There comes a point where the taxpayer has to say how much money can be spent in this community where there is no economic future,” he told reporters in Brisbane this morning.

Mr Turnbull said attempts to paint Mr Abbott as insensitive to indigenous Australia was a bridge too far. It was important the issue be discussed thoughtfully and rationally, he said.

“Rather than — as is often the case with the prime minister — that whenever he opens his mouth his critics swoop on him like a pack of forwards onto a bit of loose balls,’’ Mr Turnbull said.

“The suggestion that Tony Abbott is somehow or other insensitive to the situation of indigenous communities. I don’t think there is any non-indigenous member of the Parliament that has more involvement with, or more understanding of, indigenous communities than Tony.

“The only point … we should be focused on is just the recognition that obviously in smaller more remote communities there are less opportunities. There is a fair issue there to be discussed but regrettably, people always want to turn it into a flaming match.

“It’s important to put that issue on the table, talk about it rationally without turning it into a let’s-give-Tony-Abbott-a-belting occasion, as often people like to do.”

Treasurer Joe Hockey said Mr Abbott was “absolutely right” because you could not raise an expectation that the quality of opportunity was available in every part of Australia.

“Some of them say it’s part of their tradition, that is their lifestyle, that is the way they live,” he told ABC radio.

Mr Abbott, a day after making the comments, insisted he was simply stating a general principle about the difficulties children from remote communities faced going to school and adults in finding work.

“This is where we have to be a little bit realistic,” he said. “If you or I chose to live in a very remote place, to what extent is the taxpayer obliged to subsidise our services?”

Close the Gap campaign chairman Mick Gooda described Mr Abbott’s comments as “unhelpful”, adding people in remote communities had been living on their homelands for generations.

“We actually don’t have the privilege of making lifestyle choices,” the indigenous social justice commissioner said.

Labor and the Greens have demanded Mr Abbott apologise for the comments they’ve branded as racist and highly offensive. “He really is a disgrace,” opposition indigenous spokesman Shane Neumann said.

The Prime Minister’s comments came yesterday as he backed the West Australian government’s plan to close 150 ­remote communities.

“What we can’t do is endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have,” he told ABC Radio in Kalgoorlie.

“It is not the job of the taxpayer to subsidise lifestyle choices. It is the job of the taxpayer to provide reasonable services in a reasonable way.”

Mr Abbott said the distance in remote communities from ­services such as schooling had made closing the gap between ­indigenous and non-indigenous Australians more difficult to achieve.

“If people choose to live miles away from where there’s a school, if people choose not to access the school of the air, if people choose to live where there’s no jobs, ­obviously it’s very, very difficult to close the gap,” he said.

“Fine, by all means live in a ­remote location, but there’s a limit to what you can expect the state to do for you if you want to live there.”

Warren Mundine, chair of the Prime Minister’s indigenous Advisory Council, said the situation was “a bit more complicated” than Mr Abbott presented.

“It is not a lifestyle change for them. It is actually about their culture, their very essence, of their religious beliefs,” Mr Mundine told ABC Radio.

“So it’s not as simple as if someone from Sydney decides to go and have a tree-change and live in the bush. This is about their life; it’s about their very essence; it’s about their culture.”

In areas where native title areas have not been determined, relocating residents would jeopardise their claim to continuous connection to their land, Mr Mundine said.

Mr Mundine said a solution to the schooling crisis in remote communities could involve funding boarding school places at regional high schools so “they can go to school during the week and then come home on weekends”.

Mr Abbott defended the comments during an interview with Sydney radio 2GB this morning.

“If you or I chose to live in a very remote place, to what extent is the taxpayer obliged to subsidise our services? And I think that is a very real question,” the Prime Minister said.

“We all know that what we need to see in these remote indigenous places is the kids going to school, the adults going to work and communities safe and secure. But it is incredibly difficult for the kids to go to school if there’s only a half-a-dozen of them and getting teachers there is all but impossible.

“Similarly, it’s very difficult for the adults to get a proper job if there’s no employment within hundreds of miles and this is where we have to be a little bit realistic.’’

Kimberley Land Council chairman Anthony Watson denied his people were exercising a lifestyle choice, saying “this is simply where we live”.

“It will put more intense pressure on towns so if our mob are going to moved away from communities into towns, we will be on the streets, in the parks,” he told ABC Radio.

“Tony Abbott said he was going to support Aboriginal people. We are not seeing this support and leadership.”

“This is not a lifestyle choice; this is simply where we live.”

Mr Gooda warned people should not be “frogmarched” off their communities.

He said Mr Abbott, a frequent visitor to the Cape York community of Hopevale, “knows remote Australia as much as any politician in this country”.

“I’d like to have him think about what Hopevale people would think if they had to move to Cairns, for instance,” Mr Gooda told Sky News.

Mr Neumann demanded Mr Abbott apologise for the “disturbing and offensive” characterisation of the “right” to inhabit traditional lands as a lifestyle choice.

“He’s really supporting the eviction of tens of thousands of Australians from the land in which their ancestors have lived for millennia,” Mr Neumann said.

Greens senator Rachel Siewert said the comments were an example of “gross deep-seated ­racism” from Mr Abbott.

“The cultures that exist within these communities are thousands of years old and stretch far beyond the Prime Minister’s bizarre idea of a lifestyle choice,” Senator Siewert said.

West Australian Liberal Premier Colin Barnett has said the government will close between 100 and 150 of the state’s 274 remote communities as a result of the funding cuts, saying the state cannot afford to maintain them without federal assistance.