Some choice pars from Janet Albrechtsen’s column in today’s Australian
“..A week on, there is still a huge hole in the miserable story about young boys in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Four Corners challenged our emotions, asked searching questions and created a furore about who is to blame for the mistreatment of young boys who deserve better. A job well done by the public broadcaster. But not that well done.
Predictably, there was concentrated pomposity from Australian Human Rights Commission boss Gillian Triggs, who declared breaches of human rights even after her own warning seconds earlier that it would be “foolish” to prejudge these matters as they will be decided by the royal commission. Equally predictable, there has been daily media outrage at the ABC, from Michael Brissenden on AM to Emma Alberici on Lateline, hunting for “gotcha” moments against politicians. And the rent-a-crowd protesters chanting about racism don’t even try to get close to the real issues.
Speaking to The Australian, Marcia Langton distils simple truths others shy away from. She points to absolute failure of indigenous leadership to speak about personal responsibility.
“Instead of talking about personal agency, these people talk about self-determination. It drowns out any message about personal agency,” she says.
Self-determination means nothing if it is uncoupled from personal responsibility. “The parasitic NGO sector lives off a large population of victims who really need to be told: stop sitting around waiting for handouts,” she says.
Instead, behind closed doors, newly minted “diversity” leaders direct bitter words at scholarship programs that have been fantastically successful in educating indigenous children. Is it the private school education or boarding school or both that offends the chip-on-the-shoulder denigrators? Whatever it is, get over it.
When 97 per cent of children in detention in the Territory are Aboriginal, we should ask about more than just getting rid of that restraint chair and those spit hoods or punishing the guards who struck the young boys, hosed them down with water and subjected them to teargas.
Surely we have to ask about the families of these boys to understand why so many young boys end up in a youth detention centre. We have to ask how they became violent, why so many take drugs, don’t go to school and end up unemployed, why they witness so much violence and dysfunction and end up being victims of the same tragic cycle of despair.
How is it that Dylan Voller, the boy at the centre of the Four Corners episode, had been found guilty of 50 criminal offences before he was sentenced to three years and eight months jail in August 2014 at the age of 16? How is it that he was high on ice and drunk? Why did he try to run over a policeman and bash a young man in a hospital carpark during a 24-hour crime spree?
As Langton tells me, “It’s a very complicated issue but taking personal responsibility for raising your kids is a basic norm that has been lost sight of amid the faux outrage..” Deadbeat Parents Failed Boy’s
FULL COLUMN BELOW
A week on, there is still a huge hole in the miserable story about young boys in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Four Corners challenged our emotions, asked searching questions and created a furore about who is to blame for the mistreatment of young boys who deserve better. A job well done by the public broadcaster. But not that well done.
The ABC’s documentary Australia’s Shame only scratched the scab from a national wound with far graver, more enduring and complex causes. The shame runs deeper than a detention centre or even a culture within the Territory’s wider detention system and so the Prime Minister’s rushed royal commission promises to be a Band-Aid, at best.
More than a week later, the politics and the hyperbole continue. Many in the media, the law, the medical profession, those at human rights commissions, in politics and indigenous affairs are rushing to name and shame. Witness the confected calls for the Northern Territory government to be sacked. When the PM announced the royal commission, the first question from the media was a pot shot about racism. Witness, too, the politically charged indignation from Labor and various NGOs that more indigenous leaders were not consulted.
And, predictably, there was concentrated pomposity from Australian Human Rights Commission boss Gillian Triggs, who declared breaches of human rights even after her own warning seconds earlier that it would be “foolish” to prejudge these matters as they will be decided by the royal commission. Equally predictable, there has been daily media outrage at the ABC, from Michael Brissenden on AM to Emma Alberici on Lateline, hunting for “gotcha” moments against politicians. And the rent-a-crowd protesters chanting about racism don’t even try to get close to the real issues.
Decades of misguided policy have entrenched welfare dependency and promoted symbolism over substance. Apologies and talk of treaties and indigenous recognition suck up more oxygen than the grassroots things like the toxic cycle of welfare dependency; getting indigenous kids to stay in school, not just for one-third of a year but for the entire school year; getting young people into real jobs, not make-believe ones. And then there’s the violence and the drug and alcohol abuse.
Speaking to The Australian, Marcia Langton distils simple truths others shy away from. She points to absolute failure of indigenous leadership to speak about personal responsibility.
“Instead of talking about personal agency, these people talk about self-determination. It drowns out any message about personal agency,” she says.
Self-determination means nothing if it is uncoupled from personal responsibility. “The parasitic NGO sector lives off a large population of victims who really need to be told: stop sitting around waiting for handouts,” she says.
Instead, behind closed doors, newly minted “diversity” leaders direct bitter words at scholarship programs that have been fantastically successful in educating indigenous children. Is it the private school education or boarding school or both that offends the chip-on-the-shoulder denigrators? Whatever it is, get over it. These brilliant, engaged and friendly students, some the first in their family to finish high school, many the first to go to university, are setting an example for the younger kids in their families and communities. If indigenous progress is your aim, shouldn’t this path be celebrated rather than denigrated? Will the royal commission explore these cultural and systemic failures by elites that explain why too many indigenous kids are in detention instead of school?
Yes, we have seen a long line of well-meaning, hardworking child advocates, nurses, psychologists, indigenous leaders and, yes, politicians talk about the boys in Don Dale, explain what has gone wrong in detention, how the system needs to change and how they are working on that. But where were, where are the parents of these broken boys? Where are the fathers and mothers? This is the gaping hole in this horribly sad story. That we haven’t heard from the mothers and fathers of the boys in Don Dale tells its own story. It’s a story of generational dysfunction that a royal commission into Don Dale won’t fix.
When 97 per cent of children in detention in the Territory are Aboriginal, we should ask about more than just getting rid of that restraint chair and those spit hoods or punishing the guards who struck the young boys, hosed them down with water and subjected them to teargas.
Surely we have to ask about the families of these boys to understand why so many young boys end up in a youth detention centre. We have to ask how they became violent, why so many take drugs, don’t go to school and end up unemployed, why they witness so much violence and dysfunction and end up being victims of the same tragic cycle of despair.
How is it that Dylan Voller, the boy at the centre of the Four Corners episode, had been found guilty of 50 criminal offences before he was sentenced to three years and eight months jail in August 2014 at the age of 16? How is it that he was high on ice and drunk? Why did he try to run over a policeman and bash a young man in a hospital carpark during a 24-hour crime spree?
As Langton tells me, “It’s a very complicated issue but taking personal responsibility for raising your kids is a basic norm that has been lost sight of amid the faux outrage.
“What is the first thing you would be saying if you were a real leader? Making a call out to the parents to lift their game,” says Langton, one of our most courageous voices in this complex area.
In the absence of those calls, it’s hardly surprising the wrong kind of behaviour has become normal in many indigenous communities. The most basic norms, caring for your children, taking responsibility for them, have been destroyed. Instead, the wrong kind of behaviour has become normative.
Who is protesting about the breakdown of parenting norms and parental responsibility? And at what point do parents say: “I am going to take responsibility for my kids”, rather than try to lay the blame on others?
It’s true that parenting is one of the hardest things we can do. There’s no rule book and most of us blunder through guided by our own common sense, plenty of advice from others and the love, the unconditional love we feel for our children. The love for a child is different to other kinds of love. It’s a responsible love, exhausting, rewarding, nurturing, a privilege.
The reality is that not every parent is up to the job. We have become so hopeless, so scared of making judgments about other parents, we would rather turn our eyes away from children whose life chances are dashed by dysfunction than ask parents to do the best they can by their child. We seem more at ease making judgments about the owners of mistreated greyhounds than parents who mistreat their kids.Four Corners didn’t explore these questions. Neither will the royal commission. So who will start asking the right questions, the hard questions?