Dr David Martin is a part-time Research Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, The Australian National University, and works also as an independent anthropologist.

Since its establishment 11 years ago, a considerable amount of Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research's (CAEPR) research attention has focused on such core themes as -

• the impact of the welfare on Indigenous people,

• Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) schemes,

• economic development,

• governance structures;

• self-determination; and

• alcohol issues.

These are amongst the matters addressed by Noel Pearson in his recent monograph Our Right the Take Responsibility 2000, as well as in others of his publications and speeches.

CAEPR has found Pearson’s ideas stimulating and challenging for its research agenda, particularly in the wider context of current proposals for reform of the welfare system, such as those contained in the McClure Report. There have been a number of CAEPR seminars, informal discussions, and in-house articles, which have been developed in response to Noel Pearson’s ideas.

One of CAEPR’s great strengths is that it is a multi-disciplinary institution which draws in its policy analyses on the frameworks offered by economics and economic anthropology (study of humans within past and present societies), political science, history, demography, and social anthropology.  This Discussion Paper has been written by David Martin, a social anthropologist with many years of experience living and working in Cape York Peninsula, the region on which Noel Pearson’s proposals focus.  It evaluates certain core underpinning assumptions in Pearson’s proposals, utilising the insights offered through anthropological understandings of remote Aboriginal societies.

The paper is supportive of the broad thrust of Pearson’s ideas.  However, on the basis of ethnographic (scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences) evidence, it does raise issues about whether Aboriginal ‘families’ and ‘communities’ have the capacity to both demand and implement mutual obligation (‘reciprocity’) in the manner which Pearson proposes.  The paper argues that the key to Pearson’s reform agenda lies in the new institutional and governance arrangements which must be devised. However, it argues further that given the fractured nature of the contemporary Indigenous polity (a form or process of civil government or constitution), the development and ongoing operation of these new institutional arrangements will require partnerships between Aboriginal people and government, and that such involvement by government will inevitably entail risks for Aboriginal people.

Noel Pearson has made a significant contribution to a debate of national importance. It is to be hoped that this Discussion Paper is seen as a sympathetic contribution to this debate.

Foreword .......................................................................................................... iii

Abbreviations and acronyms..............................................................................vi

Summary .........................................................................................................vii

Acknowledgments............................................................................................viii

Introduction..................................................................................................... 1

Pearson’s arguments: A brief outline............................................................ 2

The key concepts examined .......................................................................... 5

Dependency as detrimental ........................................................................... 6

Welfare payments as ‘poison’ ......................................................................... 8

‘Reciprocity’ and ‘mutual obligation’.............................................................  11

‘Community’ and ‘family’ as units of moral authority................................... 13

The impetus for social change..................................................................... 16

A new moral order .......................................................................................   16

Authorising change .....................................................................................  18

A new institutional order ............................................................................. 18

Conclusion: Is welfare dependency ‘welfare poison’? ............................... 20

Notes...............................................................................................................  20

References....................................................................................................... 22

AGPS Australian Government Publishing Service

AIAS Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (now AIATSIS)

AIATSIS Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

AIFS Australian Institute of Family Studies

ANU The Australian National University

ATSIC Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission

CAEPR Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research

CDEP Community Development Employment Projects

CUP Cambridge University Press

DEWRSB Department of Employment, Work Relations and Small Business

NARU North Australia Research Unit

Aboriginal lawyer, activist and social commentator Noel Pearson has recently argued that the current mode of delivery of welfare services to Aboriginal people is deeply antithetical (mutually incompatible) to their interests and wellbeing. Central to his scheme for policy change and improved welfare outcomes are two core propositions.

• The first is that the ‘passive welfare’ policies instituted in Aboriginal communities over the past three decades, with no demands for reciprocity (reciprocal action) and responsibility on the part of welfare recipients, have promoted detrimental relations of passivity and dependence which are now deeply embedded within Aboriginal societies.

• Pearson’s second key proposition is that addressing the dysfunctional consequences of the welfare system for Aboriginal people will require structural change.

In particular, new institutions for Aboriginal governance, both formal and informal, will need to be developed.  It is through reform of the existing institutional arrangements between government and Aboriginal communities, and through these formal and informal Aboriginal institutions, Pearson argues, that the principles of reciprocity and individual responsibility necessary to leach the ‘poison’ from welfare resources can be instituted and implemented.

Pearson’s arguments should be seen as a welcome and politically innovative contribution to a policy debate of fundamental importance. The status quo in welfare policy, at least for remote Aboriginal Australia, is not sustainable.

However, on the basis of ethnographic (scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences) evidence from Cape York and other north Queensland Aboriginal communities—the region on which Pearson’s policy proposals are centred—this Discussion Paper suggests that certain of Pearson’s underlying assumptions need careful re-examination and further development,

and that the evidence poses certain difficulties for the practical implementation of his proposals.

In particular, the ethnography (scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences) from Cape York and elsewhere suggests that certain widespread Aboriginal values and

practices may be inimical (contrary) to the kinds of social and attitudinal changes which Pearson is advocating and, further, that these values and practices have not simply arisen as the consequence of the

experience of colonialism or the introduction of welfare.  This then raises the question of the sources of the moral suasion (persuasion) and authority necessary to demand

and implement social change in Aboriginal societies.  Pearson proposes that these lie variously within ‘families’ and other local groups and ‘communities’.  This view

is challenged here, with the argument that such contemporary groupings do not have the requisite moral and political authority over individuals. If this is the case,

it creates a dilemma for Pearson’s scheme, for if social and attitudinal changes are necessary, whence can they be driven?

The answer may lie in the new forms of Indigenous governance and leadership which Pearson proposes.  However, these would involve significant changes within

the Indigenous polity (a form or process of civil government or constitution), which may be beyond the capacity of Indigenous groups themselves to institute. Facilitation and support from external sources, including

government, may be required. However, the involvement of government in social change would carry its own risks, since despite rhetorical support for Indigenous

self-determination, government is inherently incapable of moving beyond its own dominating rationale.

This Discussion Paper has been stimulated by the speeches and writings of

Aboriginal activist lawyer and social commentator Noel Pearson, most particularly

Responsibility (Pearson 2000b), in his Chifley Memorial Lecture, ‘The light on the

hill’ (Pearson 2000d), and in a chapter in a volume on reforming the Australian

welfare system (Pearson 2000c). However, this paper does not attempt to present

a definitive response to the complex set of inter-related Indigenous cultural,

political and welfare policy issues raised with such eloquence and passion by

Pearson. Rather, its aim is to examine particular concepts which, it is suggested,

lie at the heart of Pearson’s arguments, through an anthropological (study of humans within past and present societies) framework

based on ethnographic (scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences) understandings of Aboriginal societies and their

interactions with the welfare system.

Pearson argues that the current mode of delivery of welfare services to Aboriginal

people is ultimately deeply antithetical to their interests and wellbeing. Central to

his scheme for policy change and improved welfare outcomes are certain core

propositions. The first of relevance to this discussion is that the welfare policies

instituted over the past three decades have produced a ‘gammon’ (artificial)

welfare economy within Aboriginal societies which contrasts with the ‘real’

economies of both traditional Aboriginal subsistence and the market economy. It

is the absence of reciprocity between recipients of services and those providing

them which renders the welfare economy ‘gammon’, in Pearson’s view. This

‘passive welfare’ policy and system of service delivery invariably promotes

detrimental relations of passivity and dependence which are now deeply

embedded within Aboriginal society and culture (Pearson 2000b: 26–39).

Pearson’s second key proposition is that meaningful change to address the

dysfunctional consequences of the welfare system for Aboriginal people will

require structural change, in particular the development of new institutions for

Aboriginal governance, both formal and informal. It will also require the reform of

existing institutional arrangements for dealing with the resources provided

through the welfare system, including those arrangements which come under the

aegis of the State. Genuine partnerships between government and these

Aboriginal institutions must replace the current mechanisms which are controlled

by government. It is through reform of the existing institutional arrangements,

and through these formal and informal Aboriginal institutions, Pearson argues,

that the reciprocity and individual responsibility necessary to transform the

‘gammon’ welfare economy to a ‘real’ economy can be developed (Pearson 2000b: 67–82).

This paper is broadly supportive of the thrust of Pearson’s arguments, which

should be seen as a welcome and politically innovative contribution to a policy

debate of fundamental importance. Pearson is unquestionably correct in his view

that it is simply not sustainable to maintain the current status quo in welfare

policy, at least for remote Aboriginal Australia. However, it is suggested that on

the basis of ethnographic (scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences) evidence from Cape York and other north Queensland

Aboriginal communities—the region on which Pearson’s policy proposals are

centred—certain of his underlying assumptions need careful re-examination and

further explication, and pose real difficulties for the practical implementation of his proposals.

In a series of articles and speeches (e.g. Pearson 1999a, 1999b, 2000d, 2000a),

and more recently in a monograph and a book chapter (Pearson 2000b, 2000c),

Noel Pearson has argued that engagement with the welfare state over the past

three decades has corrupted traditional Aboriginal values to the extent that

Aboriginal societies have been ‘poisoned’ by the relationship.

While Pearson’s metaphor of ‘poison’ relates to the leaching of toxins from the

cycad palm nut to render it edible (Pearson 2000b: 55), it is also evocative of the

strategies of those nineteenth-century settlers who laced with poison the flour

they supplied to hungry Aboriginal people. Ironically, welfare money comes to

Aboriginal recipients both as the practical symbol of their citizenship status and

entitlements, and as the tangible means of ensuring sustenance to the needy.

Metaphorically, welfare is thus the new form of ‘tucker,’ but in Pearson’s view its

provision has entailed the unintended consequence of poisoning Aboriginal

society through a debilitating dependency. Speaking of welfare dependent

Australians more generally, Pearson states:

Today we routinely see third and fourth generations dependent upon income

assistance through the social security system. These people are trapped in the

welfare safety net. Welfare dependency for these people is not a temporary

halfway house. It has become a permanent address (1999a: 31).

This situation is exacerbated for Aboriginal people by a particular set of historical,

social, and locational factors, including racially based discrimination and

exclusion. Many aspects of Pearson’s thinking on how to change current welfare

policies and program administration flow from arguments by Mark Latham (1997)

that advantage and disparity are linked to location (Pearson 1999b). In

constructing his argument and driving home his analogy of welfare as poison,

Pearson focuses on what he portrays as the limited responsibility many Aboriginal

people in Cape York communities take for themselves and others. He argues that

traditional principles of sharing and reciprocity have become ‘corrupted’ in the

Cape York communities as a consequence of welfare policies and service delivery;

for example, in demands to share welfare incomes to purchase alcohol (2000b:

18–19). Pearson concludes that fundamentally, welfare dependency has become a

pervasive component of contemporary Aboriginal values—a mentality—and has

poisoned people’s capacity to assume responsibility for themselves and their

fellows (2000b: 30–2). This dependency has inevitably locked people out of

participating in a ‘real economy’, either the ‘real’ market economy or the ‘real’

economy of traditional society. Common to both forms of economy, Pearson

argues, is the demand for social and economic reciprocity (1999a: 32, 2000b: 26-8).

Pearson accepts that Aboriginal people in remote regions such as Cape York will

continue to be, in part at least, dependent upon government transfer payments in

some form. What is needed therefore is the transformation of the resources

provided by Government from socially corruptive ‘negative welfare’, which

encourages dependency, into ‘positive resources’, based on reciprocity (2000b: 53–4).

At one level, many of Pearson’s arguments are far from novel. Locational

disadvantage, for example, has long been recognised as a fundamental limitation

on service delivery generally, and as an identified obstacle to enterprise

development and the achievement of economic independence for people—

including Aboriginal people—in rural and remote areas (see Altman 1990; Taylor

1993, 2000). The detrimental consequences of welfare dependency have been

recognised by Indigenous people themselves (Macdonald 2000b: 107), and widely

observed and critiqued across both the Indigenous sector and the broader

Australian society, from a variety of policy and political perspectives (see

contributions in Saunders 2000). For example, studies have documented the

effects of intergenerational welfare dependence associated with long-term

unemployment (see discussions in McCoull & Pech 2000; and Saunders & Stone

2000). Researchers have similarly considered the effects of unemployment

benefits, or ‘sit down money’ on skilled Aboriginal pastoral workers in rural and

remote Australia, following changes in the pastoral industry and its labour

market (May 1994). Martin (1993b) has documented in considerable detail the

impact of the welfare-based cash economy on an Aboriginal community in Cape

York, in terms which have a strong resonance with certain of Pearson’s key themes.

Pearson refers to none of these works, nor to other relevant academic and policy

literature in his arguments. However, he should not be criticised for this

argument, which has been carefully crafted to resonate with current political and

policy concerns in the wider welfare sector. It is in this crafting that one

A further, and highly significant, innovation is that Pearson explicitly rejects

arguments that the current parlous state of Cape York’s Aboriginal population

can be solely attributed to the cumulative effects of the racism, dispossession,

and trauma to which its communities have been exposed. While these may

provide the ultimate explanation for the current situation, in Pearson’s view they

cannot explain the rapid social breakdown in these communities over the last

three decades of the twentieth century. This Pearson attributes to the artificial

economies of these remote communities and the corrupting nature of passive

welfare (Pearson 2000b: 29–39). Changing the situation will require partnerships

between Aboriginal people, who must take responsibility for change, and

government. Pearson thus directly, and courageously, confronts a pervasive

theme in contemporary Aboriginal political discourse, which places the causes of

current problems firmly within the history of colonisation, and establishes

Aboriginal people as its powerless victims.

Pearson’s arguments about Indigenous welfare policy resonate with those current

in wider welfare policy debates. Thus, the Federal government has sought to

address long-term welfare dependency by progressively instituting a range of

policies under the rubric of ‘mutual obligation’. Before receiving unemployment

benefits, all job seekers are now required to sign a Preparing for Work Agreement,

which describes the assistance to be provided by Centrelink and other agencies,

and details the activities job seekers must undertake in order to continue to

participation in programs ranging from training to ‘Work for the Dole’ as a

social costs of long-term dependency on state benefits, by seeking to prepare

people for entry to the wider labour market, by ensuring that their capacity to be

‘job ready’ is not lost, and by developing training as a specific component of jobseeking

activity. The relationship between ‘mutual obligation’ and Pearson’s

concept of ‘reciprocity’ will be examined later in this paper.

Pearson is not averse to government involvement in itself. In fact, he argues that

it is imperative for government to provide the resources on which, in the absence

of economic self-reliance through the market economy, Aboriginal people must

depend. However, he argues for a fundamental restructuring of the means

through which these resources are provided. He proposes a form of self

determination which would re-allocate responsibility for policy formulation and

service delivery from government alone to government and community

partnerships. This shift would redefine the role of the state ‘from a disabler to an

enabler’ (1999a: 33, see also 2000b: 53–4).

Pearson argues further that current service delivery has proved problematic on

the ground. Although government has considerable resources to commit to

duplication, and is not based on holistic strategies. For example, in Cape York at

least 15 different health programs, 200 education programs, and numerous

economic development schemes are simultaneously administered (Pearson 1999a:

33). Of course, research has for some time been providing arguments to support a

whole-of-government streamlined management of programs to Cape York

communities and elsewhere; see for example studies relevant to Cape York by

Dale (1992), Finlayson and Dale (1996), and Martin (1990). Yet, Pearson argues,

merely attempting to address the manifest problems in the Cape York Aboriginal

communities through better coordination of programs and other adjustments

suffers from the same basic limitations: it assumes that welfare-induced problems

can be solved through more effective program delivery under policies which are

often developed in a cocoon of bureaucratic isolation. From this perspective,

government has itself become a reproductive source of the negative welfare

mentality (Pearson 2000b: 40–3).

A core aspect of Pearson’s proposed welfare changes is new Aboriginal governance

institutions, both formal and informal. In particular, he proposes a new statutory

interface between Cape York Aboriginal peoples and government to coordinate

holistic policy development, planning, and the administration and delivery of

welfare programs at regional, sub-regional and local levels. This ‘partnership

interface’ would be crucial to the process of ‘leaching out the poison from the

resources of welfare’ (2000b: 70). He suggests that:

[t]he interface needs to become the meeting place between the State and the

Cape York community and its leaders, and all government programs and

inputs into Cape York need to be through this interface. The State would

negotiate with Aboriginal community representatives at this interface about

the design of programs and the development of cooperative agreements on

how the programs will be delivered on the ground (1999a: 33).

This interface would be the place where the resources of the wide range of

external agencies and programs would, in the first instance, be linked and

coordinated. Pearson has suggested that it could be a statutory body (2000b: 70–

Commission (ATSIC) Regional Council is unclear; ATSIC’s role in Pearson’s

scheme appears to be confined to the provision of resources. Nor is the

relationship of the proposed interface to proposals for a statutory ‘Regional

Authority’ immediately obvious, since Pearson suggests that the interface would

not itself be a bureaucracy. Rather, while it would be established under statute, it

would be the formal meeting point at which government and Cape York Aboriginal

people, through their representatives, negotiated policy development and

implementation. Government agencies might continue to deliver programs, but

through negotiated and mutually agreed mechanisms. Resources and

responsibility for instituting the principles of ‘mutual obligation’ and ‘reciprocity’

would be devolved from this interface organisation to the sub-regional,

‘community’ and ‘family’ levels, or other appropriate local group levels (Pearson 2000b: 70–2).

There are immediate issues to address within these proposed new governance

constructs: important matters such as the representativeness, effectiveness, and

the external and internal accountability of the new interface and other

institutions (see discussion in Martin & Finlayson 1996). Pearson himself

acknowledges the significance of these issues (2000b: 68), and they have been the

focus of much of the commentary on the proposed institutional arrangements

underpinning the Cape York Partnerships which are to be developed between the

However, this paper does not aim to engage directly with critiques of Pearson’s

institutional scheme for Cape York. Rather, it focuses on certain aspects of the

underlying conceptual framework advanced by Pearson.

In particular, this paper examines Pearson’s notions of ‘welfare dependency’ and

‘welfare as poison’, and the proposal that through re-introducing the principle of

‘reciprocity’, the ‘gammon’ welfare economy can be transformed back to a ‘real’

economy. While there are many perspectives from which analyses of these

concepts could be advanced, this discussion draws on insights offered by

anthropological (study of humans within past and present societies) accounts of remote and rural Aboriginal societies. The aim,

prefigured here, is to argue that at the heart of Pearson’s proposals lies, of

necessity, a requirement for significant personal and cultural change within Cape

York Aboriginal societies. Given the increasingly parlous state of these societies,

this may well be essential and, as Pearson rightly argues, the changes required

cannot be instituted by the state. A fundamental contradiction therefore arises,

since it is arguable that some at least of the values which Pearson (and others)

seek to change have arisen not solely as the result of the ‘passive welfare’ policies

of the past three decades, but in the complex conjunction between such policies

and core, pre-existing Aboriginal values and practices (Martin 1993a, 1993b; Sutton 2000).

Pearson is clear in his view as to why Aboriginal participation in the current welfare economy is problematic:

The problem with the welfare economy is that it is not a real economy. It is a

completely artificial means of living. Our traditional economy was and is a real

economy. Central to the traditional economy was the imperative for ablebodied

people to work. If you did not hunt and gather, you starved …

Common to the real economy of traditional society and the real economy of

the market is the demand for economic and social reciprocity. This reciprocity

is expressed through work, initiative, struggle, enterprise, contribution, effort.

The key problem with welfare is that it inherently does not demand

reciprocity. I call it a gammon economy (1999a: 32; see also Pearson 2000b: 26–31).

Concerns about the effectiveness or otherwise of welfare programs, about their

long term effects on recipients, and about whether they may in some instances

actually exacerbate the problems they ostensibly seek to address, have been the

subject of much debate within Australia and internationally (see Saunders 1994:

the pejorative view of dependency advanced in the welfare debate, grounded as it

is, in no small part, on an ideological construct of the moral worth of the

productive individual within the market economy, is necessarily shared by all Aboriginal people.

On the contrary, there is a significant body of anthropological (study of humans within past and present societies) writing which

suggests that ‘dependency’, in terms of a culturally established and validated

capacity to demand and receive resources and services (symbolic and tangible)

from others, is a core principle through which Aboriginal agency is realised in the

structuring of social relationships. This principle operates both within

contemporary Aboriginal groups and in the intercultural zone between them and

the wider society (see discussions in Anderson 1983, 1988a; Finlayson 1991;

Martin 1993b, 1995; Myers 1986; Peterson 1993; Sansom 1980, 1988; Schwab

1995; Trigger 1992). Objective disparities in power and wealth can be transformed

by Aboriginal agency through a process of co-opting others, often outsiders

(including non-Aboriginal people) to become patrons or ‘bosses’. Dependency,

then, produces a paradox when it becomes a principle of action in the

intercultural zone. For within the Aboriginal cultural logic, ‘dependency’ may

establish a position of strength in which the capacity to commandeer another’s

resources serves to reduce the threat of personal accumulation by others

(Finlayson 1991; Martin 1993b; Schwab 1995).

For example, Finlayson’s ethnography (scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences) of a north Queensland community

demonstrated how Aboriginal men were able to subvert the potential for women to

achieve a degree of financial independence through their relatively higher welfare

incomes. By drawing on culturally specific constructions of gender relations, such

as women’s obligation to nurture and support their menfolk, men were able to

gain access to women’s resources for purposes such as purchasing alcohol. They

achieved this through exercising a particular form of power through dependence

(Finlayson 1989, 1991). Such values and practices militate against the exercise of

the reciprocity and personal responsibility Pearson argues are necessary within a ‘real’ economy.

It is arguable that, historically, the ability of Aboriginal people to survive the

impoverishment caused by their social, economic, and political exclusion was

bolstered by such mechanisms for the distribution of scarce resources (see e.g.

Collmann 1979, 1988; see also Pearson 2000c: 142–3). It is also arguable that

Aboriginal people’s ability to negotiate at least some degree of control of certain

aspects of their lives since colonisation, despite their structurally marginal

position, has in part turned on their capacity to accommodate and incorporate

outsiders through such particular cultural constructions of social relations

(Anderson 1988a; Finlayson 1991). This incorporation reflects and reproduces a

perhaps universal feature of Aboriginal societies: social forms and relations are

created and recreated in a direct and immediate fashion through the interactions

between persons, rather than mediated through objective institutions as is the

case in larger scale and more hierarchical societies (Bourdieu 1977: 96).

A difficult analytical—and political—question is raised here, as to whether such

values and practices should be seen as primarily an adaptive response by

Aboriginal people to the objective reality of their impoverished and marginalised

circumstances, or whether they have their ultimate origins within Aboriginal

cultural traditions themselves. It is suggested here that answers to this complex

question must take account of both sets of factors. That is, particular Aboriginal

values and practices, especially those pertaining to social relations, have

historically facilitated Aboriginal people’s capacity to engage with, and maintain a

degree of autonomy within, the overwhelmingly dominant society. These

distinctive values and practices have impacted upon the nature of the historical

interaction between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal societies. But they have also

Pearson’s image of welfare incomes as the contemporary equivalent of the poisonlaced

flour of the early settlers is a compelling one. As he notes (2000b: 37–9,

2000c: 150), the period since the introduction of welfare payments over the past

three decades has corresponded with a deepening crisis within many Aboriginal

groups and communities, particularly those in remote and rural regions.

Pearson is undoubtedly correct in implicating welfare payments in the deepening

social crisis that confronts the Aboriginal people of Cape York and many other

regions. Previous work by such anthropologists as Finlayson (1991), Martin

(1993b, 1995), and Schwab (1995) suggests that cash has become deeply

implicated in the production and reproduction of the distinctive contemporary

Aboriginal values and practices that lie at the heart of the issues raised by

Pearson. In the wider market economy, money serves to objectify and

depersonalise human relations and transactions, but within the Aboriginal

economy, this capacity of money to abstract individuals from personalised

relations is typically subverted. Money has become central to a particular kind of

Aboriginal ‘performative sociality’, in which social relations (notably, those of

kinship) are constantly produced and reproduced through the flows of services

and material items between individuals (Martin 1993b, 1995).

However, just as the role and meaning of money are transformed within the

Aboriginal economy by particular Aboriginal values and practices, so too has

money impacted on these values and practices. With the advent of the welfarebased

cash economy, access to resources is no longer mediated through a system

of personalised relationships within the Aboriginal realm, but is predicated upon

a person’s rights as a citizen of the wider state, as defined by their particular

status or category. Aboriginal people are thus increasingly able to assert their

independence from others within their significant social networks—men from

responsibilities towards their domestic units, wives from their spouses and

children, younger men from older people—through the means which cash offers.

Martin’s analysis (1993b, 1998) of expenditures on alcohol in Cape York

Aboriginal townships demonstrates one particularly problematic outcome of this

increased capacity for individuals and groups (especially young men) to exercise

autonomy without reference to their connections to and obligations towards

others. Recent research on the delivery of welfare services in one north

Queensland community has referred to the difficulties in ensuring that welfare

payments are directed to the children for whom they are intended, because of

such practices as men ‘humbugging’ recipients of Family Allowance or Parenting

Payments (Finlayson & Auld 1999: 20; Smith 2000: 36–7).

Cash has certainly played a role in facilitating, or perhaps deepening, the

tendencies towards certain kinds of collective actions within Aboriginal groups

(e.g. through enabling collective saving for consumer goods such as vehicles, and

the financing of large ceremonial gatherings, as well as resourcing drinking and

individuation, abstracting people from the particular matrices of responsibilities,

rights, and other aspects of the sets of social relations which characterised

Aboriginal societies. Pearson is thus quite right to focus on the introduction of

welfare incomes as marking a significant challenge for Aboriginal people in Cape

York and elsewhere in remote and rural Australia.

However, the situation is more complex than Pearson’s discussion would suggest.

First, ‘reciprocity’ provides the linchpin in his moral and political arguments; it is

said to differentiate ‘real’ economies, including ‘traditional’ Aboriginal ones, from

the contemporary ‘gammon’ welfare economy (Pearson 2000b: 26–8). Yet, at best,

this is a gloss on the principles underpinning both ‘traditional’ and contemporary

Australian Aboriginal economies: ‘reciprocity,’ as Pearson uses it, is a polemical

rather than an analytical concept. Like the notion that ‘caring and sharing’ was

fundamental to traditional Aboriginal societies, Pearson’s notion of ‘reciprocity’

ignores basic features of all economies, ‘real’ or otherwise—in particular, power,

hierarchy, and instrumentality (see Macdonald 2000b: 92–101).

Second, in the Cape York Aboriginal townships, as elsewhere in remote and rural

Aboriginal Australia, cash flows not just through welfare payments to younger,

able-bodied individuals (the focus of both Pearson’s arguments and the Federal

government’s ‘mutual obligation’ initiative) but through Community Development

Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme incomes, old age and other pensions, and

wages. Pearson’s argument would suggest that the source of the cash provides a

moral force which will be manifested in the way in which it is used by individuals;

this is a version of ‘you value the things that you work for’ (Pearson 2000b: 23).

There appears to be little published evidence to support this view (although see

Macdonald 2000b: 104), and the anecdotal evidence in at least some Cape York

communities suggests that it is not so much the source of income for the

individual which determines, for example, how much he or she spends on alcohol,

but rather the complex interaction between individuals’ values and practices,

those of their significant social networks, and those of the community in which

they live (see Brady 1992 regarding petrol sniffing in central Australia, and Martin

1998 on alcohol consumption in Cape York). Even within Cape York, there are

marked differences in the incidences and types of social pathology to which

Pearson refers between and within communities—differences which cannot be

solely attributed to differences in their welfare economies.

The relationship between access to welfare-based cash incomes and the

manifestations of social pathology of which Pearson writes is very complex.

Pearson seems to suggest that the relationship is causal, arguing that

contemporary social problems arose directly out of the economic condition of

passive welfare dependence:

Of course racism, dispossession and trauma are the ultimate explanations for

our precarious situation as a people. But the point is: they do not explain our

recent, rapid and almost total social breakdown. And most importantly: if we

build our ideology and base our plan of action on our justified bitterness

about what has happened to us we won’t be able to claim our place in the

modern economy, because our current social dysfunction is caused by the

artificial economy of our communities and by the corrupting nature of passive welfare (2000b: 38).

Pearson argues that the contemporary social problems faced by Cape York

Aboriginal people are unprecedented in their scale, despite vastly improved

material circumstances, and contrasts the current situation with that obtaining

before the 1970s. Aboriginal people lived in great poverty prior to the introduction

of welfare, Pearson suggests, but their societies, while under sustained attack,

were ‘strong, if bruised’ (2000b: 39). Yet, the social devastation of which Pearson

writes so compellingly is not in fact unprecedented, in Cape York or elsewhere.

Historical accounts of life for Aboriginal people on the fringes of mining camps

and pastoral stations, and along the northern coasts of the Cape as the result of

depredation by trochus shell fishermen, demonstrate that in the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries Aboriginal societies in many parts of the region

were under severe pressure (Chase 1980; Evans, Saunders & Cronin 1993; Kidd

1997; Loos 1982; Rowley 1983).

It was, precisely, the concern demonstrated in the southern cities about the

appalling circumstances to which Aboriginal people had been reduced that led to

1897, the establishment of the missions in Cape York, and more generally to the

regime of authoritarian supervision and control of Aboriginal people’s lives by

State officials and their missionary delegates under successive statutes. Such

1971 (Qld) in 1984.

Furthermore, while the issue of social order in the Cape York communities is

clearly a major concern both for their Aboriginal residents and for government, it

is not a new issue (although its scale may be different). The maintenance of order

within settlement populations was a major preoccupation of State and mission

authorities long before the introduction of welfare payments (MacKenzie 1981;

Rowley 1983). Arguably, problems arose not just from hostility to the mission or

settlement authorities, but from the fact that the settlement populations

comprised, then as they do now, disparate Aboriginal groups forced into often

uneasy co-residence in close social and geographic proximity to each other, with

little capacity to resolve conflict by moving away. These settlement situations

directly confronted such widely reported Aboriginal values as the strong emphasis

on immediate kin group loyalties and a preference for direct confrontation, and

often violence, to redress perceived wrongs (see e.g. McKnight 1986; Martin

1993b). Indigenous authority structures and conflict resolution mechanisms,

including those within kin groups, were eroded or suppressed under the mission

and State settlement regimes. This process has been dramatically exacerbated in

contemporary times, when the authoritarian regimes of the missionaries and

superintendents are no longer possible nor desirable. Indigenous organisations

(such as community councils) lack the requisite legitimacy, both alcohol and the

cash to purchase it are freely available, and Aboriginal authority structures have

become further contested and attenuated.

The period up to the 1970s to which Pearson refers—of ‘strong, if bruised’

Aboriginal societies in Cape York—thus preceded not only the introduction of

welfare payments to Aboriginal people, but also the removal of many of the more

direct controls over Aboriginal people’s lives which had been exercised by

settlement superintendents and local police sergeants. It also preceded the

increasing availability of alcohol in the previously dry Aboriginal communities.

Kidd (1997: 302–3) notes that there is little doubt that the legal availability of

alcohol after 1971 led to considerable turmoil in these communities, and that this

was compounded by the illicit sale of alcohol including fortified wine and spirits—

the so-called ‘sly grog’ trade.

As Pearson recognises (2000c: 141), the late 1960s and early 1970s was the

period of the relocation of significant numbers of Aboriginal people in Cape York

and elsewhere in northern Australia from pastoral properties to the fringes of

country towns and to the missions and government reserves and settlements

(Sutton 2000). This followed the introduction of award wages for Aboriginal

employees, progressive mechanisation which led to a drop in the demand for

labour, and the virtual collapse of the pastoral industry with its increasing

exposure to the demands of international competition.

Cape York Aboriginal people have thus been exposed over the past three decades

to a plethora of social, political, and economic forces of quite profound

significance, and not just to the introduction of welfare payments. Pearson is

undoubtedly correct in his view that there is evidence of increasing social

pathology in the Cape York communities. This paper has argued, however, that

he is not correct in positing access to welfare incomes for Aboriginal people as

contributing to this social breakdown in a direct and causal sense. His primary

focus on the economic factors underlying social change (both as disintegration

and as regeneration) leads Pearson to largely ignore other areas amenable to

policy changes. For instance, while he devotes some attention in his writings to

the impact of alcohol on Cape York Aboriginal societies (e.g. 2000b: 16–20;

2000a), his focus on reforming the delivery of welfare leads him to underestimate

how deeply alcohol is implicated in the production and reproduction of the

problems he has identified. It also leads him to ignore potential avenues for

addressing a crucial structural issue in the facilitation of social change—the

supply of alcohol through the canteens controlled by the Cape York community

councils (Martin 1998).

Pearson’s scheme gives considerable weight to mechanisms for instituting what

he terms the principle of ‘reciprocity’ as a core means by which the ‘gammon’

welfare economy is to be transformed to a ‘real’ economy. It is this suggestion,

above many others in his proposals, that has been taken up approvingly by a

range of social and political commentators (e.g. Koch 1999). This is in no small

part because the concept seems to resonate strongly with the principle of ‘mutual

obligation’, which has such currency in Australia, and which also pervades policy

thinking on welfare issues in other countries such as the UK and USA. However,

there are important differences between Pearson’s concept of ‘reciprocity’ and the

political and policy principle of ‘mutual obligation’ as it is currently articulated by government.

The stated objective of mutual obligation is to encourage greater self reliance and

motivation in job seekers by encouraging them to take responsibility for, and to

be more focused on, preparing for and searching for work. Under ‘mutual

obligation’, in return for the provision of welfare (an obligation of the state to

support individuals who cannot find paid work) the individual has an obligation

towards the taxpayer, mediated through the state. For instance, a core objective

of the Federal government’s Mutual Obligation Initiative, which includes the Work

for the Dole scheme, is to ensure that younger unemployed people undertake

economic or community activity in return for their support by the taxpayer

(Newman 1999). The summary statement of ‘Mutual Obligation’ by the

Department of Employment, Work Relations and Small Business (DEWRSB) is that:

[m]utual obligation is based on a simple proposition—unemployed job seekers supported financially by the community should:

Mutual obligation is thus held to obtain essentially between the individual, as an

autonomous actor, and the state, representing an undifferentiated ‘community’.

Furthermore, while the McClure Report (McClure 2000) takes a rather broader

view of ‘mutual obligation’, current government policy is clearly focused on

moving individuals from welfare dependency to engagement with the formal

market economy. As such, the government view of ‘mutual obligation’ is

consistent with the increasing reliance upon market and quasi-market forces in

areas of social as well as of economic policy (George & Miller 1994, cited in

Macdonald 2000a). It is also consistent with a view of the individual as being

particular values and locales. Rather, people are to take their place as individuals

in an increasingly mobile workforce within a globalised economic order.

However, as Pearson articulates it, ‘reciprocity’ does not obtain between the

Indigenous individual and an undifferentiated, taxpaying Australian ‘community’

mediated by the state. Pearson argues in part that the state is too remote from its

citizens, and furthermore does not have the moral authority with Indigenous

people to appropriately undertake this role. Rather, ‘mutual obligation’ must be

demanded and implemented between the individual and his or her particular

community, family and local group (Pearson 2000b: 85–7). It will be argued in the

next section that there are likely to be considerable practical difficulties in

establishing such reciprocity and mutual responsibilities.

Furthermore, while Pearson accepts the need for engagement of Aboriginal people

with the market economy through, for example, enterprise development, he also

accepts that factors such as locational disadvantage make formal economic

independence an unrealistic goal, in the short term at least (2000b: 54–5).

Transfer payments from the state will therefore continue to be required, for

individuals and for their communities. Rather than arguing that individuals

should move into the mainstream economy, Pearson argues that welfare provides

potentially valuable resources for the development of Aboriginal communities, but

that systemic changes are required in the way in which these welfare resources

are directed to Indigenous people, if their ‘poison’ is to be leached out. This focus

on the potential of welfare resources for community development rather than on

interim individual economic support therefore marks a further substantive

A further significant difference between ‘mutual obligation’ and Pearson’s compact

which is yet to be fully explored, or perhaps even clearly identified, by government

proponents of his scheme is the notion that the demand for individual

responsibility must come from the individual’s community, family or local group.

Pearson’s address to the Brisbane Institute in July 1999 laid out his

interpretation of the community–individual relationship. He stated:

When we think of reciprocity at its most simple level, the community needs to

ensure that if there is an income support program that has been provided for

a specific purpose, say for the well-being of children, then it should be the

children that benefit from these resources. Ensuring that welfare resources

are used for the purposes for which they are provided is the least reciprocity

that needs to be implemented … Communities in Cape York need to be given

the responsibility to implement reciprocity and responsibility amongst its [sic]

members. What this all means is that the State must see itself as a partner,

and, at the most, a junior one. The State must cease to see itself as the sole

service provider, particularly when it comes to social policy. The objectives of

the State, to resolve social problems, will not be achieved without effective

community engagement. If it is to enable communities and individuals, it

must understand that good policy ideas and initiatives can be generated

within the community. Not all good policy ideas come from the State (1999a:

35; see also Pearson 2000b: 84–7).

Again, this paper supports Pearson’s general propositions, that attempts by the

state to institute social change may be counterproductive and that it is crucial to

engage those directly affected. However, the difficulties in actually implementing

the reciprocity he is seeking can not be underestimated, for Pearson is dealing

with groups in which Indigenous authority structures are often diffuse, fractured,

and highly contested, and where attempts by others—whether outsiders or

members of the individual’s own kin group or ‘community’—to change their

chosen course of action are generally strenuously resisted. This issue will be

discussed further in the next section.

Pearson wishes to sever the direct connection between the welfare state and the

Aboriginal individual, by establishing new governance structures, including an

‘interface’ institution through which broad policy development and program

delivery would be negotiated (2000b: 67–73). However, power is to be devolved to,

and program implementation is to take place at the sub-regional, ‘community’, or

‘family’ levels, as appropriate. In particular, as discussed above, reciprocity or

mutual obligation is to be implemented between the individual and his or her

‘family’, local group, and ‘community’. This reciprocity is to be instituted not

solely in terms of the individual providing some return to his or her community or

family (for example, through socially useful labour), but also through ensuring

that individuals allocate expenditure of their incomes in accordance with the

purposes for which they are received, as the quote above from Pearson’s 1999

speech makes clear. He is thus assuming that the ‘community’ and the ‘family’

are units of both moral and political authority as well as of the distribution and

consumption of resources.

Pearson devotes surprisingly little space to the conceptualisation of what

constitutes the ‘community’ or for that matter the ‘family’ in the Aboriginal

context. There is little to differentiate his use of these terms from their use within

past and current bureaucratic thinking. For example, it appears that what

Pearson means by ‘community’ corresponds, geographically at least, with the

discrete settlements in Cape York which for the most part derive from the original

missions and government settlements. The requirement that Aboriginal people

develop a sense of community, and notions of community which ignore the

realities of Aboriginal values and practices, have been a feature of bureaucratic

thinking and have underpinned self-determination policies since the 1970s

(Cowlishaw 1998: 150, 1999: 16, 22–3).

In fact, like all collectivities, but in particular ways, these Aboriginal residential

communities are highly complex and internally differentiated. They exist as

communities of interest, if at all, largely in relation to the outside world. The

sense of loyalty and commitment to such communities required by policy makers

is at odds with Indigenous traditions (Cowlishaw 1998: 160). Their populations

are internally differentiated in terms of the factors which continue to inform

Aboriginal political, social and economic relations, such as affiliations with

ancestral lands and language, personal and group histories, ethnicity, and

bearing on all of these, kin group and other local group affiliations. Few if any

Indigenous community-wide political institutions exist, apart from the quasi-local

government community councils instituted under State legislation, and regional

bodies such as the Cape York Land Council and Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation (Martin 1997).

Despite a legislative responsibility for the general peace, welfare and health of

community residents, the community councils have neither the political nor the

moral authority to institute the kinds of responsibility and reciprocity for which

Pearson is arguing. This can be seen most clearly in the inability of any of these

councils to deal with the problems directly arising from the extraordinarily high

consumption of alcohol from the canteens they control (Martin 1998). In

Aurukun, an attempt to institute mechanisms by which a statutory ‘Alcohol Law

Council’, comprised of a broadly representative group of nominally authoritative

individuals, could control the consumption of alcohol has been largely

unsuccessful. This failure has arguably resulted in part from a lack of effective

institutional support, but also through the reluctance of people to intervene in the

behaviour of others, unless their own interests are directly affected.

Aboriginal societies in Cape York, as throughout much of Aboriginal Australia,

are characterised by an intense ‘localism’, in which primacy is accorded to

relations, values and interests grounded in the particular and local, rather than

in the broader and more general (Martin 1997). Core constitutive elements of

these societies are indeed the ‘families’ of which Pearson writes. These are

structured by principles of kinship and descent, and may live across a number of

households within a community or even dispersed across communities. These

‘families of polity’ (Sutton 1998: 55ff.) are not to be understood as merely the

Aboriginal equivalents of the extended families of the non-Indigenous domain, but

as playing a central role in defining and organising social, economic and political

relations (Mantziaris & Martin 2000: 169–70; Sutton 1998).

Nonetheless, while ‘families’ may constitute basic units for the coordination of

certain forms of social and political action (for example in disputation and

fighting; see Martin 1993b), they are typically highly internally differentiated and

often deeply factionalised. Kinship may provide the idiom in which relations of

amity and mutual support are expressed, but it also provides points of fracture

and differentiation (Mantziaris & Martin 2000: 282–3; Sutton 1999: 56–7). Sibling

rivalry, for example, is one of the dynamic principles underlying traditional ritual

and land tenure in western Cape York societies, and it is also manifested in

contemporary political structures and processes.

‘Families’ and other such local groups cannot be seen as clearly bounded entities,

with unambiguously defined memberships. Within families and households, the

autonomy of individuals is typically jealously preserved, and attempts by others

to control behaviour strenuously resisted. Even children assert considerable

autonomy, for example in refusing to attend school, and in demanding cash from

other family members (Finlayson 1991; Martin 1993b). Such practices arguably

reflect continuities in child-rearing practices as much as they do social

breakdown (Sutton 2000). It is rare for even a senior individual to be able to

exercise authority across all members of a family, particularly in relation to the

matters about which Pearson is most concerned—expenditure of individual

incomes, care of children, consumption of alcohol, and so forth. On the contrary,

it is more often the young men who succeed in demanding the resources of

others, and whose drinking is often beyond the capacity of others to curtail, and

the younger women who are able to leave the care of their children in the hands

of their mothers and grandmothers (Finlayson 1991; Martin 1993b).

The difficulties which will confront attempts to draw upon existing authority

structures within groups such as ‘families’, or wider collectivities, can be clearly

seen in the native title context. Here, questions of who has authority, over what,

and in which contexts, have proved to be the subject of significant disputation

and even some litigation, for example in the matter of who may properly authorise

a native title application (Mantziaris & Martin 2000: 39–41, 315–7). Identifying

individuals who have the authority to act on behalf of others may be problematic

and attempts to do so produce a pattern of shifting allegiances and disputes. This

suggests that Pearson’s expectation, that ‘families’ will adopt an instrumental role

in establishing and demanding reciprocity from individual family members in

return for their welfare incomes, as well as enforcing responsibility in the

Thus, the practical implementation of mutual responsibility and reciprocity

between the individual and a broader collectivity, whether this is defined as the

‘community’ or even the ‘family’, is likely to be beset with difficulties, at the very

least. At the worst, it has the potential to engender considerable conflict. It may

be difficult or even impossible for disputes within ‘families’ or communities about

the implementation of responsibility and reciprocity to be resolved without

external assistance (Mantziaris & Martin 2000: 315–7). The question of how such

conflicts might be mediated or arbitrated is one to which Pearson, as yet, appears

to have given no consideration. But it is one of considerable importance to the implementation of his scheme.

Pearson is clearly arguing for both structural and attitudinal changes in Cape

York’s Aboriginal societies, and recognises that these two dimensions are linked.

Transforming the current economy to a ‘real’ economy is a necessary precursor,

in his view, to transforming corrupted values into real reciprocity and mutual obligation.

This paper has discussed a number of issues for Pearson’s scheme raised by

anthropological (study of humans within past and present societies) understandings of remote Aboriginal societies, particularly those

of Cape York. It concludes by focusing briefly on three interrelated questions

which go to the heart of his scheme. Briefly stated, these are:

widespread Aboriginal values and practices may be inimical to such change;

arrangements Pearson argues are required?

Underpinning Pearson’s scheme is the institution of a new moral order.

Structural change is required but the state, he argues, does not have the moral

authority with Aboriginal people to undertake this. Rather, moral authority,

exercised through the requirement for ‘reciprocity’, resides with units within

Aboriginal society—variously the ‘community’, local groups and the ‘family’.

Pearson’s arguments for a new moral and institutional order reflect his concern

about the often quite desperate situation in much of remote and rural Aboriginal

Australia, including Cape York. Maintaining the status quo is clearly an

inadequate response, both ethically and politically. In Pearson’s view, the

necessary changes must be demanded and implemented from within Aboriginal

societies themselves, although the state can assist by creating the necessary

structural changes (e.g. at the policy level). Pearson thus inverts the conventional

rhetoric of Indigenous self determination—which is typically focused on

maintaining the uniqueness of Indigenous social and political and economic

forms—and instead harnesses it to a dynamic for social change.

Pearson’s scheme is ultimately predicated upon a degree of compulsion, albeit

arising from within the Aboriginal polity (a form or process of civil government or constitution). His implicit reliance upon the capacity of

Indigenous mechanisms operating within various levels of social grouping—

‘family’, ‘local group’, and ‘community’—to demand reciprocity and responsibility

assumes that certain deeply sedimented values and practices in these troubled

and fractured societies can be changed from within. Herein lies a paradox.

It is certainly arguable that a new moral order is required, as part of the

necessary structural change. But the research discussed in this paper suggests

that the difficulty in locating centres of moral authority within contemporary

Aboriginal societies must not be underestimated. Attempts to institute the

‘community’, the ‘family,’ or other such social units of Aboriginal society as

sources of moral authority or suasion for the purposes of implementing welfare

policy are likely to be ineffectual, or even actively resisted. There is a parallel

difficulty in locating clear centres of political authority in these essentially acephalous societies.

Pearson himself appears to accept that certain of the values and practices which

are manifest in dysfunctional Aboriginal societies in Cape York have not simply

arisen because of the historical processes of exclusion, oppression, alienation and

consequent trauma. He acknowledges that they also resonate with deeply

embedded Indigenous principles; thus, for example, he writes of the

contemporary distortion of the Aboriginal values of reciprocity and sharing

amongst drinkers (2000b: 18–19). He raises indirectly the difficult question as to

whether certain core Aboriginal values and practices may inhibit the capacity of

the Cape York communities to institute the changes that are, in his view,

necessary. To put it another way, Aboriginal people may actively resist attempts

to change certain of their core values and practices which are incompatible with

those of the dominant society. This question is far from a novel one for

anthropologists (see e.g. Brunton 1993; Cowlishaw 1998; Elkin 1951; Macdonald

2000b; Stanner 1979; Sutton 2000), but however carefully and sensitively

discussions of this issue are conducted, there is the potential for them to feed

into contentious political debates and be portrayed as ‘blaming the victim’.

Pearson’s response is to reject the appellation of victim, to argue that change is

required both in Indigenous values and practices and in those of the state, and to

affirm the capacity of Aboriginal people to institute change.

Given the absence or attenuated nature of legitimate Indigenous authority

structures in many Aboriginal communities, including those in Cape York (see

e.g. Martin 1993a, 1993b; Wyvill 1990a, 1990b), it is far from clear how the

reciprocity and responsibilities of the kind Pearson envisages might actually be

instituted without active intervention, either by external individuals or

institutions, or by internal institutions (formal or informal) with the necessary

moral and political authority. External interventions have a long and problematic

history, in Cape York and elsewhere, for example in the attempts in missions and

government settlements to reformulate Aboriginal beliefs and practices to accord

with those of the external agents of change (e.g. Kidd 1997; for accounts relevant

to north Queensland see also Anderson 1988b; Chase 1980; Finlayson 1991;

Martin 1993b). In particular, the demand for reciprocity by an external source of

moral (and political) authority is far from new; it underpinned the operations of

many of the missions in Cape York and elsewhere, in which the mission

administrations variously demanded labour, bush tucker, cleanliness, and

religious observance in return for protection, food, and housing.

Pearson rejects such forms of external intervention, and is especially critical of

the ‘white dictator’ leadership model of which missionaries and government

superintendents were exemplars (Pearson 2000b: 49). Yet, this paper has

suggested that it will prove very difficult to locate appropriate and legitimate

sources of moral and political authority within the existing Indigenous polity (a form or process of civil government or constitution) of

Cape York. It has argued that underlying much of the social devastation and

dysfunction of which Pearson and others have written is a particular conjunction

between certain features of Cape York’s traditional Indigenous cultures and the

historical forces to which they have been exposed during and since colonisation.

These forces include, but are not limited to, the introduction of the welfare system

on which Pearson focuses. This same conjunction also underlies the marked

contemporary emphasis on individual rights over personal and collective

responsibilities, and also the fragmented Indigenous polity with its diffuse and

contested authority structures.

This brings us to the fundamental question: if (as Pearson suggests) the state

does not have the necessary moral authority to institute change, and if (as this

paper argues) groupings within the Indigenous polity such as ‘families’ and other

local groups or the residential ‘communities’ and their organisations also do not

currently have the relevant capacity or authority, then how is change to be authorised and implemented?

As an intrinsic component of his proposal for social change in Cape York’s

Aboriginal communities, Pearson has argued for new institutions at the interface

between the Indigenous polity and the state, and for power and decision-making

to be devolved to both formal and informal institutions at the regional,

community and local levels. Such arrangements should build on existing local

and regional organisations and capacities, Pearson argues, rather than

supplanting or competing with them (2000b: 65–73). It is through these

institutions that reciprocity and responsibility are to be demanded and implemented.

However, Pearson’s focus on economic factors (welfare) as the primary cause of

the contemporary malaise and dysfunction within Cape York’s Aboriginal

communities has led him to give undue emphasis to the role of these proposed

institutions in controlling and distributing government resources. In particular,

Pearson has concentrated on the projected role of these institutions in the

distribution of welfare-based resources in return for socially valuable work or

other activities, and (more problematically) in monitoring the utilisation of those

resources by individuals. Pearson has called for a new form of Indigenous

leadership, which he suggests should be a ‘pervasive’ concept throughout the

layers of governance (Pearson 2000b: 51–2), a form of what Wolfe (1989) calls

‘dispersed governance’ (see also Rowse 1992: 88–90). However, Pearson’s

discussion elides the essentially political nature of the new Indigenous

institutions that he advocates; political not just in the shift in power relations

between Indigenous groups and the state that the new partnerships would

require, but also in the necessity to establish and sustain new dispersed sources

of authority and power within the Indigenous polity itself (Rowse 1992: 90).

Fundamental questions are thus raised, not only for Pearson himself but for

those such as the author of this paper who is in agreement with his call for a

radical rethinking of the current policy climate. What institutional forms might be

drawn from, or developed within, the existing Cape York Aboriginal polity in order

to authorise change? What would be the sources of their moral and political

authority? How might decisions based on assessments of the collective good be

implemented in political cultures with a characteristically strong emphasis on

personal autonomy and individual rights? These are, it is suggested, significant

issues, for the kinds of structural and attitudinal changes which Pearson seeks

While government may not have the moral authority with Aboriginal people to

effect change, as Pearson suggests, it is arguable that it does have a moral

responsibility to ensure that principles of social justice, equity, and accountability

are adhered to in the utilisation of the resources it provides to address Indigenous

contemporary Indigenous polity, suggest that government may need to be

involved as ‘partners’ at a far more intimate and hands-on level than Pearson

envisages, including assisting with the development of new Indigenous

governance institutions and facilitating capacity-building within those

institutional arrangements (e.g. through supporting ‘social entrepreneurs’

(Pearson 2000b)). The Aurukun Alcohol Law Council, previously discussed, which

was established under State legislation following intensive community

consultations, provides an illustration of how new and innovative institutions

which have an organic basis within the Indigenous polity can founder without

proactive and intensive external support (Martin 1998). Yet such support and

intimate involvement also bring their own inherent risks, since whatever their

protestations regarding support for self determination, the state and its agents

are ultimately incapable of divesting themselves of their own political and cultural

baggage (Cowlishaw 1998: 145; Macdonald 2000a: 10–12).

Pearson has argued strongly that profound social and political and economic change are necessary in Cape York Aboriginal communities, and has been willing to confront difficult and contentious issues. This paper supports his contention that the dysfunction in these communities is of such a magnitude that maintaining the policy status quo is simply not an option. It is also supportive of his argument that structural and attitudinal changes are necessarily interlinked, and that policy should be directed at both levels.

However, Pearson’s argument for an essentially mono-causal connection between the introduction of the welfare system and increasing social dysfunction ignores the impact of a whole range of factors since colonisation began. The issues raised by Pearson go to the heart of the relationship between contemporary Indigenous groups and the modern state; they do not just concern the impact of the welfare based cash economy. The problems faced by Cape York Aboriginal people therefore cannot be seen as arising just from ‘welfare poison’. Rather, they derive from a ‘toxic cocktail’ of ingredients (Pearson 2000a), including some that may ultimately originate within the Aboriginal realm itself. Pearson is right to call for a reform of Indigenous governance as a fundamental component of the wider reforms he seeks, but his focus on welfare as the primary cause of the problems within Cape York’s Aboriginal communities has led him to underestimate the significant internal political dimensions of the necessary institutional changes.

1. A related point was made by Tim Rowse, as discussant in response to a presentation

of an earlier draft of this paper at a seminar at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic

Policy Research, The Australian National University, June 21, 2000.

2. Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, ‘Mutual

Obligation and the new Preparing for Work Agreement’, 1st February, 2001.

Fact sheet available at http://www.dewrsb.gov.au/department/budget/factsheets/

mutal_obligation.htm.

3. Currently (February 2001), those on full unemployment benefits who may be required

to participate in Work for the Dole are 18 to 19 year-old school leavers who have been

receiving Youth Allowance as a job seeker for three months, 18 to 24 year-old job

seekers who have been receiving Youth Allowance for six months or more, and 25 to

34 year-old job seekers who have been receiving Youth Allowance for 12 months or

more. As well, people who are 18 years old or more and receiving the full rate of

Newstart Allowance or Youth Allowance may volunteer to participate in Work for the

Dole (http://www.dewrsb.gov.au/wfd/mutual_obligation/MO_Q&A.asp).

C E N T R E F O R A B O R I G I N A L E C O N O M I C P O L I C Y R E S E A R C H

4. Pearson’s proposal for a statutory interface organisation to co-ordinate policy

development and program delivery for Indigenous people, shares some structural and

conceptual similarities with the recommendation of the Reeves Review of the

Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) for a Northern Territory

Aboriginal Council to act as the formal partnership interface between Regional Land

Councils and government (Reeves 1998).

5. For a Queensland government response to Pearson’s proposals, see ‘Cape York

Partnerships: Some practical ideas’ (Department of the Premier and Cabinet,

Brisbane, 2000), available at http://www.premiers.qld.gov.au/about/pcd/cape.pdf.

6. The author of Saunders (1994) is Peter Saunders, of the Social Policy Research Centre

at the University of New South Wales. The editor of Saunders (2000) is also named

Peter Saunders, but was (then) of the Australian Institute of Family Studies in

Melbourne.

7. For example, see the discussion of this mutual implication of ‘structural’ and ‘cultural’

factors in the development of Aboriginal drinking patterns in Martin (1998).

8. I am indebted to Francesca Merlan (pers. comm.) for this observation.

9. A summary of the current principles of mutual obligation as enunciated by the

government can be found at the DEWRSB website, at: http://www.dewrsb.gov.au/

wfd/mutual_obligation/MO_Q&A.asp.

10. Although the McClure Report itself (McClure 2000; see also Lyons 2000) argues for a

commitment by all levels of government, as well as by business and the non-profit

sector, to community capacity building and community economic development, this is

not as yet reflected in government policy.

11. This is not to say that ‘families’ can not form appropriate groupings through which,

for example, mechanisms for establishing more collective savings and expenditure

goals might be negotiated, as in the ‘Family Income Management’ projects which are

currently being trialed in a number of Cape York communities. However, such

necessarily voluntary schemes typically require the intensive assistance of outsiders

(such as the social entrepreneurs of which Pearson writes), and are vulnerable to

instrumental action by individuals refusing to have their own autonomy curtailed.

Structural factors, such as the availability of banking or credit facilities, are critical to

the success of these projects, not least because they can short-circuit the demands

from kin for access to cash incomes.

12. More broadly, the issue of moral suasion, or perhaps even coercion, in instituting

cultural and social change, even if arguably for the common good, also raises the

matter of basic citizenship entitlements in a modern democratic state, an issue to

which Cape York Aboriginal people are highly attuned.

13. Peter Sutton (pers. comm.) brought to my attention this argument for differentiating

the (possible lack of) moral authority of the state on the one hand, and its moral

responsibility to act for the common good on the other.

Altman, J.C. 1990. ‘The economic future of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Anderson, J.C. 1983. ‘Aborigines and tin mining in north Queensland: A case study in the

Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and Their Origins, Angus & Robertson, North

Ryde, NSW.

—— 1988b. ‘A case study in failure: Kuku-Yalanji and the Lutherans at Bloomfield River,

Missions, Australian Association for the Study of Religions, Bedford Park, SA.

Studies Press, Canberra.

Commission into Deaths in Custody, Institute of Public Affairs, West Perth.

Chase, A.K. 1980. Which Way Now? Tradition, Continuity and Change in a North

Queensland Aboriginal Community, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, Brisbane.

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Rights (Northern Territory) Act: Options for reform, J.C. Altman and

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National Park, J. Taylor.

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recommendations for action, M. Brady and D.F. Martin.

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delivery of financial and banking services in north-west New South Wales,

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Brewarrina and Walgett, K. Ross and J. Taylor.