Death rates for Indigenous infants remain about three times higher than those of other Australian infants

About 70 per cent of Indigenous Australians die before age 65 — compared to just over 20 per cent for other Australians.

Minister Abbott described Aboriginal health as an intractable problem that needs the paternalistic touch. "I think it is very important to confront the truth … if we just keep doing what we have always done, we will keep getting what we have always got", he said.

On top of demeaning "no school, no pool" penalties, work-for-the-dole and other measures in place on Aboriginal communities, Abbott would like to impose an old-style government-appointed administrator.

Abbott has contempt for the idea that communities should have even limited autonomy. "The rhetoric of self-determination has enabled officialdom to parade its concerns while evading its responsibilities", he continued. "Because it was wrong for our forebears to treat Aboriginal people like wayward children, it isn’t necessarily right for us to expect Aboriginal people to thrive through endless management committee meetings."

The Health Minister neatly omits to mention that two of Australia’s most troubled communities in recent times, Wadeye in the Northern Territory and Palm Island off the Queensland coast, have had government administrators at the helm for some time.

Success stories from Aboriginal Australia were not mentioned as they would have spoiled the pitch for a return to the old, failed paternalistic policies. The idea of providing the inhabitants of communities with the training needed to run their affairs was similarly not discussed.

Criticism of Abbott’s spray has been widespread. A statement from Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, noted that the Health Minister had failed to make the connection between Indigenous health and the neglect of the communities’ other basic needs.

"Any campaign to improve Indigenous health will require a focus on specific diseases and conditions, an address to social determinants of health such as income, housing, education, employment and functional communities, and an address to the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian society."

Commissioner Calma also noted recent comments from Sir Michael Marmott, Chairperson of the World Health Organisation’s Commission on Social Determinants and Health about "the importance of social circumstances in improving health status in the long-term, and the importance of empowerment and participation in achieving this outcome."

Mick Dodson of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University also slammed Abbott’s back-to-the-future scheme. "Minister Abbott looks to paternalism for the answers to violence and other problems as though we have never moved beyond this horribly discredited approach …. Instead of promoting the view that Aboriginal people are hopeless and incapable, it is time we shaped solutions around Indigenous success", he told The Sydney Morning Herald last week.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough, on the other hand, approves of the thrust of Abbott’s AIHW address, if not his choice of words. He believes the Health Minister was simply advocating good governance. "If you want to call it paternalism, that is not a word I would choose, but obviously Tony has."

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello would not be drawn on the question of administrators for Aboriginal communities. He reiterated his support for previously formulated paternalism such as the withholding of government benefits from drug abusing parents and "making family benefit payments payable only if the parents’ kids are going to school."

On the eve of the Federal Government’s summit of state and territory leaders purportedly called to consider measures to deal with violence and sexual abuse on Aboriginal communities, the Treasurer is sounding pre-emptively tight-fisted. Speaking about Indigenous Australians he complained that "they get much higher per capita spending on health and education, yet they’re still suffering from great hardships. What we’ve proven is that simply shovelling money at these problems is not necessarily the answer."

The Treasurer’s claim about "special treatment" is suspect, to say the least. It came to light last year that in Wadeye, an oft-reported community in crisis, education spending runs at 25 cents for every dollar spent in the wider community of the Northern Territory. Still, his comments help set the tone for the summit at which the responsibility for the scandalous conditions on many conditions will be put onto Indigenous shoulders alone.

Some recent cases give insights into this growing trend within the Federal Government.

It was recently revealed that the Northern Territory’s Family and Community Services agency investigated a report of the sexual assault of four girls aged between seven and ten a full seven months after it had been made from the community of Papunya. The agency was like a "brick wall" when Dr Geoff Stewart made repeated complaints of the activities of a paedophile around the Mutijulu community near Uluru. A well-known ranger allegedly uses a Commonwealth car to lure young girls to perform sex acts in exchange for petrol to sniff.

"I had a stand-up argument and insisted that they played an active role in the situation and I had to remind them of their duty under the law to act", the Doctor recalled.

Mr Abbott’s response to this type of outrage is to propose the collection of health data such as sexually transmitted diseases in a roundabout way to track down paedophiles. He is pushing this plan even though, as he says, it "might reinforce a few people’s prejudices".

Nothing, it seems, will break this insistence on the part of the Federal Government of blaming the victims of its own neglect and that of the various Sate and Territory Governments.

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