Neoliberalism, market fundamentalism and the colonization of Aboriginal policy

"Neo-liberalism is a hungry beast and this 21st Century strain of capitalism is shaping the agenda for control of Aboriginal lands...........Australian Government policy is heavily influenced by neo-liberalism through its extraordinary emphasis on managing access for mining companies to resources on Aboriginal lands. This involves controlling what is still perceived as ‘the Aboriginal problem’ and forcing a social transition from traditional values and cultural practice to ‘mainstream’ modernism of a particular brand. It also involves displacing many Aboriginal people from their traditional lands and concentrating them in ‘growth towns.......To make any sense of the aggression behind most current Indigenous policy in Australia you need to study the impact of neo-liberalism around the globe"  

Jeff McMullen

The Australian journalist, writer and social justice campaigner Jeff McMullen has written two cogent and articulate critiques of the colonization of Aboriginal policy making in this country by the cancer of neo-liberalism (or what others call market fundamentalism). 

One of Jeff McMullen's articles The New Land Grab is available on line here (in The New Internationalist blog). The second piece is a book chapter titled Dispossession- Neoliberalism and the Struggle for Aboriginal Land and Rights in the 21st Century which appears in a new book In Black and White: Australians at the Cross Roads (edited by Rhonda Craven, Anthony Dillon & Nigel Parbury). This article is available here on Jeff McMullen's own website

In drawing on the work of David Harvey and others, and incorporating the voices of Aboriginal people, McMullen makes the case that neoliberalism is a key driver of the agenda for the control of Aboriginal lands and assimilation of Aboriginal people in Australia.  

Neoliberalism, McMullen argues is the ideological underpinning of a uniquely Australian strain of state-corporate capitalism that aims to control Aboriginal communities to enable exploitation of the land and mineral wealth on Aboriginal lands. McMullan argues that the real goal here is the upward redistribution of land and mineral wealth.

McMullen demonstrates the way that successive Federal and State Governments have used the coercive powers of the state to impose an agenda of modernization, control of Aboriginal lands and assimilation and assault on Aboriginal rights and culture.

Drawing on David Harvey's book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, McMullen identifies 4 essential features of the neoliberal agenda and analyses the extent to which they are manifest in Aboriginal policy making in this country:

1. Privatization and commodification of public and community goods. This has occurred through the privatization of Aboriginal lands, via policies that open up Aboriginal land to resource exploitation and attempts to override community land ownership and impose private property ownership rights.
2. Financialization to treat good or bad events as opportunities for economic speculation.
3. Management and manipulation of crises to establish a neoliberal agenda. This includes using the  Northern Territory Intervention as justification for  exerting greater control over Aboriginal communities to enable market and corporate exploitation of the minerals and resources on Aboriginal lands and the use  of 'military style campaigns to exert control and challenge Aboriginal sovereignty
4. State redistribution of wealth, not to the poor but to the rich and powerful.

Analyzing Aboriginal policy through the lens of neoliberalism as McMullen does, helps us to understand what drives social policies such as the Northern Territory Intervention and the social engineering to control Aboriginal people still living on traditional lands, as well as the aggressive land grab by mining and resource companies, aided and abetted by Federal and State Governments, which divides Aboriginal communities, and even Aboriginal families.  He writes:

'Neoliberalism connects the agendas of modernising Aboriginal culture and allowing mining companies to vigorously exploit and minimal cost the mineral treasures on Aboriginal lands'.

McMullen points to the divide and conquer tactics of mining companies and governments in the Kimberley and Pilbara in Western Australia, across the Northern Territory, on Cape York and in parts of NSW and South Australia, as manifestation of these neoliberal agendas.

McMullen is scathing about the role played by influential Aboriginal leaders, such as Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton and Warren Mundine who have become influential advocates and brokers for neoliberal policies and have gathered adherents and supporters in both political parties and corporate Australia.

The paradox of the Paralympics

Excellent piece here by Amelia Gentleman on the paradox of the Paralympics- the disconnect between the positive attitudes to disability on display inside the Olympic stadiums and the experience of people with disabilities in the wider British society where intensive Government cuts are creating immense suffering for disabled people and increasing hostility towards people with disabilities is resulting in a soaring of hate crimes.

Many radical and activist groups such as Disabled People against Cuts have campaigned and protested against aspects of the Paralympics such as corporate sponsorship by large corporations such as Atos and cuts to services for people with disabilities. Atos who was a major sponsor of the Paralympics is contracted by the UK Government as administrators of assessments that rob disabled people of their benefits.

In this piece on the website of Disabled People against Cuts disability activist Dave King argues that the Paralympics are the precise opposite of the values of disability liberation. King writes

But with the Paralympics we have seen the addition into this cocktail of a supremely powerful and toxic ingredient, the opportunity for liberals to feel good about themselves for supporting the underdog and ‘progress in the fight against prejudice’. It is this thick coating of syrup which has confused even radical disability rights advocates, and is making it almost impossible for critics to speak out, except about the blatantly obvious outrage of Atos as sponsors. But the truth is that, despite all the hopeful talk about how the Paralympics are going to revolutionise people’s ideas about disability, the ideas and values at the core of the Paralympics are the precise opposite of the values of disability liberation. (I write this as a disabled person, one who has undergone one of Atos’ medical assessments and been found wanting, and who is suffering financially as a consequence.

In the Guardian Amelia Gentleman writes:

There has been a clear reluctance among officials this week to sour the happy atmosphere by talking about the Paralympics paradox – the difficulty of reconciling the amazing excitement around the Games, which has portrayed Britain globally as a place where positive attitudes to disability reign, and a bleaker reality that kicks in beyond Stratford.

The guide for journalists covering the event is explicit in its instructions that disability and any issues around it should not be the focus of reporting. It stipulates that reporters should concentrate on "performance, sporting ambition, training, competition and the emotions associated with winning and losing". Most athletes contacted to discuss the broader issues of disability for this piece declined to be interviewed. But many disabled visitors were quick to comment on the disconnection between their experiences within the park and their everyday lives at a time when in addition to cuts to services and benefits payments, charities such as Scope have been documenting worsening attitudes and official figures show that incidents of disability hate crime have soared to their highest ever levels.

Kalya Franklin, a disability campaigner whose Benefit Scrounging Scum blog has charted the rising problems faced by disabled people at a time of cuts to services and benefits, was amazed at the ease of her journey to Stratford from Birmingham, describing it as "the smoothest journey I've ever done on public transport". "People were there waiting to offer help – that's very unusual. There were much higher levels of staffing. That's not typical, nor is seeing lots of portable ramps around," she said.

She was delighted to be at the event, but like many, she was struggling with the Paralympics paradox.

"It's a utopian fantasy of where we need to move towards as a society," she said, pausing for a moment at Stratford station (interrupted on two occasions in the space of five minutes by transport staff asking if she needed assistance). "It's brilliant, because this has shown that with the right attitude, will and financing, it can be done."

The sporting event was for her, like any sporting occasion, a bit of escapism from daily problems, but she was anxious that attention to the pressing issues facing people with disabilities should not be deflected while the country basks in the international congratulations for having mounted a sellout Paralympic event. She pointed to a planned 20% cut in the disability living allowance (DLA), announced in the 2010 budget, in particular, arguing the that extra money, for employed and unemployed claimants to help with the extra cost of disability, had helped finance the extra cost of care and transport for many disabled visitors to the Games.

"What the public haven't realised about the Paralympians is how many of them are completely reliant on DLA. Although they are superfit athletes it doesn't mean they aren't also disabled and have mobility needs and care needs in their day-to-day lives," she said.

Reclaiming the history of social justice activism

This story of social justice advocacy is a reminder of the ways that the contribution of radical and progressive social justice activists and campaigners is censored by so called "official narratives" and traditional bodies of knowledge.

Ken Giles* is an elementary school music teacher in Washington DC who uses music to teach his students the link between songs and social justice movements. He uses civil rights songs, peace songs and union songs to make the connection between music and movements for social justice and peace.

Giles is spearheading a campaign to have the acclaimed singer, actor, political activist Paul Robeson inluded in the music textbooks used in schools. Decades ago Robeson was censored from most school books because of his political activism and fierce critcism of US treatment of African Americans and US foreign policies.

As Ken Giles points out even though Robeson is experiencing something of a renaissance in the US, it is still difficult to find his recordings and films, and his work and contribution is not included in many school textbooks.

Giles argues that Robeson's exclusion is an example of the censorship that occurs in the educational textbook industry. In his own campaigning Giles is encouraging his students and other professionals to challenge such censorship.

For those of us who believe in and campaign for social and economic justice Ken Giles's actions show that it is important that we reclaim the history and contributions of social movements and individuals who fought for social and economic justice.

*Ken Giles is the music teacher at Shepherd Elementary School in Washington, DC. He teaches violin at the DC Youth Orchestra and sings with the DC Labor Chorus. He is a longtime member of Jewish Peace Fellowship and was a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam War. You can read about his "150 years of Songs of Freedom and Justice” music history program at the Labor Heritage Foundation.

Honoring those who work for a better world

French film Director Bertrand Tavernier's  film It All Starts Today  is a beautiful testament to the commitment and humanity of teachers (and other front line workers) who work with families and children suffering the consequences of neo-liberal market  and economic "reform". 

Like Pierre Bourdieu's  book The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society  Tavernier's film documents the new forms of social suffering that characterize not just French society, but the economies and societies of the western world.

Tavernier's deeply moving film tells the story of a kindergarten teacher in an impoverished region of France struggling to educate children of families devastated by unemployment, grinding poverty, deprivation, depression and economic hardship. These are children whose families are the casualties of neo-liberal market reform and economic and corporate restructuring.

The film shows the heroics and dedication of teachers, education aides, volunteers, health workers and social welfare workers who give themselves fully and devote their lives to improving the well being of the children and families in their care. They do this despite poor pay and appalling conditions, budget cutbacks and hostility, indifference and neglect from elected officials, politicians, some government agencies and workers, business groups and those who hold power.

 In Australia we accord little respect and honor to those front line workers and volunteers who work for a better world. We forget and ignore the teachers, child care workers, teachers aides, carers, aged care and disability workers, social welfare workers, aboriginal health workers, volunteers, family support workers, refuge workers, domestic violence counselors and millions of  other front line welfare and community workers who dedicate themselves to the care and well being of others, and who through their efforts make our society and communities better places.


Instead they are poorly paid and usually berated and stigmatized, labeled as do-gooders and bleeding hearts, or dismissed as rent seeking, vested interests who breed dependency and a welfare mentality in people.

No, in Australia we honor soldiers who fight in imperial wars, celebrities caught in the glare of their own importance, sportsmen who are paid exorbitantly and businessmen and corporations who pursue and accumulate wealth and power at the expense of the common good.

Jim Johnson has taken up a similar theme in a recent post on his excellent blog Notes on Politics, Theory and Biography and I thank him for his insights:

"I find it obsequious and cloying to hear the radio show hosts and politicians offering a "Thank you for your service" whenever they encounter a veteran or military personnel. What about the social workers and parole officers and teachers and, yes, scientists and artists, who work in underpaid professions for years and decades in order to contribute to a better world? After all, they could be out there peddling sub-prime mortgages (or some other form of snake oil) and making real money. When was the last time you heard someone - anyone - publicly thank those folks for their service? No, instead we are taking aim at them (the teachers and parole officers are, after all members of those dastardly public sector unions) in the misguided quest for fiscal responsibility"

Making protest visible: Public protest as a vehicle for ethical and moral action

Public protest is one outlet for citizens to express deeply held moral and ethical commitments. Protest actions provide people with a way to address critical moral and social questions and confront the injustices, small and big, that they see around them. Protest actions are are a vehicle for ethical visions and creative ideas for a better future.

All over Western Australia this week ordinary citizens participated in public protest actions.

The photo on the left is from one of these protest actions, a rally organized by the Human Rights Alliance in the Perth CBD to protest against Government law and order policies and the misuse of tasers and force against Aboriginal people in custody

On Tuesday this week environmental groups, Aboriginal groups, unions and civil society groups protested outside BHP's Perth Annual General Meeting  against BHP and the Barnett Government's plans to make WA a major nuclear mining

In the Kimberley a small group of protesters blockaded access roads to prevent Woodside rig contractors from drilling drill on the site of the proposed James Price Point gas plant. A large protest rally against the industrialization of the Kimberley will take place in Cottesloe on the 28th November.

As a reminder of the importance of public protests, big and small, the UK Guardian has run a series of photographs of important protest events in world history. I was particularly taken with this photo taken during the 1968 Prague Spring.

Civil society rising in the UK and Europe

In London this week 50,000 students protested against education cuts by the Conservative- Liberal coalition Government.

Media reports in Australia have focused only on the occupation of the Conservative Party headquarters and, unsurprisingly for the corporate media, have largely ignored the larger story. All over Europe there is rising militancy by civil society groups against government  imposed austerity measures.

As Nina Powers points out in this piece in The Guardian the 52,000 students who protested in London display the real meaning of "The Big Society" that David Cameron claims he wants to promote. But Cameron's vision is an illusion. The Tories and Liberal Democrats want to destroy that part of civil society that resists and protests, and  holds governments and the corporate and business elite to account.

In her Guardian piece Nina Powers writes:

The protest as a whole was extremely important, not just because of the large numbers it attracted, and shouldn't be understood simply in economic terms as a complaint against fees. It also represented the serious anger many feel about cuts to universities as they currently stand, and the ideological devastation of the education system if the coalition gets its way. It was a protest against the narrowing of horizons; a protest against Lib Dem hypocrisy; a protest against the increasingly utilitarian approach to human life that sees degrees as nothing but "investments" by individuals, and denies any link between education and the broader social good.

The protesters - students and others - who occupied Tory HQ will no doubt continue to be condemned in the days to come. But their anger is justified: the coalition government is ruining Britain for reasons of ideological perversity. The protests in France and Greece and the student occupations here, such as the recent takeover of Deptford Town Hall by Goldsmiths students on the day cuts were announced, are indicators of a new militancy

Remembering John Pat

photo courtesy of Deaths in Custody Watch Committee

This Friday October 8 the WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee is holding John Pat Memorial Day 2010, to remember John Pat and all the other Aboriginal people who have died in custody in Western Australia. The ceremony will be held at Fremantle Prison, this Friday between 11am-12.30pm.

John Pat was just 16 years old when he died in a Roebourne Police cell in 1983. He  died of head injuries alleged to have been caused in a disturbance between Aboriginal people and Police, and subsequent beatings by Police. Four police were charged with manslaughter but acquitted. The death was the catalyst for the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.  

The terrible death of Mr Ward in the back of a prison van and recent Aboriginal deaths in custody remind us that thirty years later little has changed in Western Australia.

WA poet Jack Davis wrote what I believe is one of the finest Australian poems of all time about the death of John Pat.  Jack Davis's poem has been put into song by Archie Roach and Mark Bin Bakar.

John Pat
by Jack Davis (from the book John Pat and Other poems, published 1988)

" Write of life
the pious said
forget the past
the past is dead.
But all I see
in front of me
is a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

Agh! tear out the page
forget his age
thin skull they cried
that's why he died!
But I can't forget
the silhouette
of a concrete floor
a cell door and John Pat

The end product
of Guddia* law
is a viaduct
for fang and claw,
and a place to dwell
like Roebourne's hell
of a concrete floor
a cell door
and John Pat

He's there- where?
there in their minds now
deep within,
there to prance
a sidelong glance
a silly grin
to remind them all
of a Guddia wall
a cell door
and John Pat

* Guddia is a Kimberley term for the white man

How useful is "Clicktivism" or online activism?

image courtsey of Stone/Getty, The Guardian UK

Just been reading this important and provocative article from the UK Guardian which critiques the growing trend towards online citizen activism, what it calls clicktivism. 

I have considerable sympathy with the thrust of the article, particularly its critique of the ideology of "market"models of activism and of the need to challenge corporate power (which is purpose of the Nemesis Project which I coordinate).

"A battle is raging for the soul of activism. It is a struggle between digital activists, who have adopted the logic of the marketplace, and those organisers who vehemently oppose the marketisation of social change. At stake is the possibility of an emancipatory revolution in our lifetimes................................

The trouble is that this model of activism uncritically embraces the ideology of marketing. It accepts that the tactics of advertising and market research used to sell toilet paper can also build social movements. This manifests itself in an inordinate faith in the power of metrics to quantify success. Thus, everything digital activists do is meticulously monitored and analysed. The obsession with tracking clicks turns digital activism into clicktivism...........................

Against the progressive technocracy of clicktivism, a new breed of activists will arise. In place of measurements and focus groups will be a return to the very thing that marketers most fear: the passionate, ideological and total critique of consumer society. Resuscitating the emancipatory project the left was once known for, these activists will attack the deadening commercialisation of life. And, uniting a global population against the megacorporations who unduly influence our democracies, they will jettison the consumerist ideology of marketing that has for too long constrained the possibility of social revolution. "

Challenging market approaches in social policy: WA perspectives

Over on one of the other blogs I edit- Challenging the Market- there are two new pieces by West Australians who write on contemporary social and political issues.

Susie Byers piece shows that a publicly run woman's prison can deliver successful outcomes in terms of rehabilitation and integration of prisoners into the community. Sarah Burnside critiques the market logic and contradictions involved in Opposition Leader Tony Abbot's plans to reform the Disability support pension.

Challenging the Market is an initiative of the WA Social Justice Network (of which I am the co-convenor) to publicize the writings of Western Australian citizens and activists who support economic, environmental, racial and social justice.

The blog provides a space for people concerned about the extension of market, corporate and business values into so many spheres of daily life with the resulting debasement of democracy, public policy, civic life and political debate. The extension of market, corporate and business values into so many spheres of daily life is detrimental to the wellbeing and social fabric of WA.

We aim to challenge the dominant market and corporate worldview. Relying on the market to solve social and environmental problems it has created is shortsighted and dangerous.

John Falzon and radical social justice agendas

"The history of social justice and social change has been written by social movements. Change does not come from above"

John Falzon

Among the large non-government organizations in this country that claim to work for social justice, there is little enthusiasm for radical social justice agendas. It is rare to hear any of them talk about the need to address the structural causes of poverty and social and economic injustice, to criticize the actions of corporate Australia, or to support radical solutions, such as massive redistribution of wealth.

One exception is the National Council of St Vincent De Paul Society. John Falzon, the CEO of the National Council of the St Vincent De Paul, continues to be an outspoken critic of contemporary social and economic policy in this country, and is often a lone voice for radical social justice agendas. Recently, Falzon has railed against the Rudd Government's policy of extending compulsory income management as a cynical effort to get around the Racial Discrimination Act and increase the "supervision" of people doing it tough. Falzon has also been highly critical of plans to embed private health insurance as a private tier for the wealthy, thereby undermining any sense of solidarity and equity in public provision of health care.

Falzon has also been one of the few NGO leaders willing to speak out on the increasing concentration of wealth among the rich and already wealthy and affluent, and has consistently called for policies of wealth re-distribution in Australia. Falzon also writes and speaks of the direct connection between social policy issues in this country and the great social and political movements for change.

As well as arguing that the NGO community services sector needs to reclaim social justice campaigning and advocacy as a legitimate strategy, Falzon has also publicly cautioned mainstream NGO's about their willingness to be "co-opted" by government and the corporate sector to work to preserve an unjust social and economic order.

Falzon and his agency suffered for their social and political advocacy during the Howard years. Three years ago he and his organization were labeled as Marxist and Communist by right wing think tanks and commentators unhappy with Falzon's stance and advocacy on poverty issues.