2015 is the year for Tony Abbott to keep his promises to Aborigines

TONY Abbott promised action to reduce truancy and poverty: it’s time to make that a priority.

Children wash at Mulan in WA as part of an agreement aimed at tackling trachoma. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

ALMOST eight years ago to the day, I travelled to the remote West Australian community of Mulan to see how the government’s new “shared responsibility agreements” were working. The agreements were highly divisive and asked Aboriginal people to sign behavioural contracts in exchange for infrastructure — in this case, a petrol bowser if children washed their eyes regularly to fight trachoma.

It was mutual obligation in its infancy and while the agreements were eventually scrapped — they were crude and without a larger vision — the concept that there are two sides to the government- individual relationship has taken hold and is now entrenched in policy. Indeed, it is largely bipartisan.

On that trip I met a 14-year-old girl who never appeared in my articles. But her story had a profound impact on my thinking. At 14 she was pregnant and not attending school. I asked her why she wasn’t going to school and she looked at me vacantly. The question made no logical sense to her. School was meaningless and removed from her reality. There was no reason to turn up.

Much changed after this, including the dramatic Northern Territory intervention and La­bor’s time in office — which nationalised the school attendance policy, creating a formal link to the receipt of welfare payments — but the numbers attending school have stayed stubbornly low.

The election of the Abbott government came with a promise to change this stunningly shameful situation. When Tony Abbott pledged to be the prime minister for Aboriginal affairs before the last election it was a watershed moment for black and white relations in this country. To me it was an acknowledgement that we had failed Aboriginal kids.

Here was a conservative leader who had a connection with indigenous Australians prepared to put the full weight of his prime ministership behind a pledge to lift indigenous people out of poverty. It was symbolically and politically powerful and elevated Aboriginal affairs to its rightful place — the PM’s office.

Within months of his election, Labor and the Greens had already started using the promise against him, claiming he had failed to live up to the pledge by ripping half a billion dollars out of the Indigenous Affairs portfolio.

The attacks stung. Their impact continues to be felt. But given the government had three huge areas of reform still being developed — truancy, jobs/welfare and constitutional recognition — my view was the government had to be given the benefit of the doubt. That the real test was whether the government could deliver the bigger changes to start transforming communities from centres of poverty and despair to places of prosperity and hope.

This year is the Abbott government’s last chance to come good on that pledge. Without a bigger emphasis on Aboriginal affairs, the poverty cycle will continue, and Labor’s politically charged taunts will be all the more potent.

The first year of achievement in Indigenous Affairs has been underwhelming. The truancy plan — including the truancy army of work-for-the-dole participants trying to get kids to school — is having mixed success. It is clear that this strategy alone will not achieve the government’s ambitious target of getting 90 per cent of Aboriginal children attending school. More needs to happen.

And the response to the Andrew Forrest report has been too slow and too incremental.

Putting Aboriginal adults on full-time work for the dole in all remote communities has so far been the only response to the Forrest report delivered last year. But the Forrest blueprint is full of transformative ideas.

One of its strongest recommendations is for a womb-to-school approach to help children before it is too late. This must be the focus of the government in the lead-up to the May budget.

On constitutional recognition we have lacked the political leadership needed to translate into reality a promise first made by John Howard in 2007.

Abbott’s pledge at a dinner attended by supporters that he is willing to “sweat blood” on constitutional reform was powerful. But this year is the year for him to sweat that blood.

We need a question. The taxpayer-funded campaign needs something to campaign on. Even if the vote is in 2017, the way the change will be presented must be settled this year. This needs the Prime Minister.

After close to 13 years at The Australian, most of those spent covering Aboriginal affairs, Patricia Karvelas is moving to the ABC to present Radio National’s Drive program between 6pm and 7.30pm, Monday to Friday.