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Rural and indigenous communities

by Simon Longstaff

I wonder if the architects of the Federal budget thought much about its power to signal information about who and what is really valued in Australia? It's easy to sound as if you care when speaking on issues like; access to justice, care for the aged, sustainable development, and so on. However, the real importance of such issues is often to be measured in the way fiscal policy is used, by governments, to shape choices and behaviour.

For example, if you want more people to take out private health insurance, then you tax those who can afford it, but choose not to do so. If you want to encourage the most talented people to enter the public education system as teachers, then you ensure that there are sufficient funds available to pay attractive salaries.

There is no shortage of causes deserving the symbolic and practical support that comes with a favourable tweaking of fiscal policy. However, if asked to contribute to thinking about the budget, I would have given priority to the task of addressing the plight of rural Australia.

The quality of life enjoyed by people in the bush is in rapid decline. There are many towns where basic services, of a kind taken for granted in the cities, are no longer available. Most people know something of what is being lost. The banks are closing branches in country towns. The government is doing the same with services such as local schools. Many communities cannot attract the services of a local doctor. Even the churches are getting into the act - just ask the people of Ringarooma in Tasmania!

Taken as a whole, the effects are devastating. For all of their natural resilience and stubborn pride, our rural people cannot save their communities from the death of a thousand cuts. They might hold on for a while - but to what end? Eventually, the young people are forced to drift away in search of life-affirming opportunities. Those who stay risk losing dignity; then hope; then even their lives at their own hands.

I know that people will point to examples of marginalised communities within the cities and ask why I plead a special concern for those in the bush. It's not that urban problems should be ignored. Nor am I unmindful of the historic deprivation of Aboriginal Australians. Rather, I have come to believe that the problems of outback Australians require urgent attention - because justice requires that they be addressed in their own right, and because our failure to do so will make a fair and compassionate response to others increasingly difficult. Let me explain.

Anybody travelling beyond the cities cannot help but notice the level of anger stirred up by the Wik debate. Relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians have become dangerously strained in many regions.

Some suggest that this merely represents the uncovering of a deep well of latent racism within Australian society. I think this too simplistic an explanation - especially when you consider the level of genuine support, from the bush ,during the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal citizenship. As in most countries, there are racists in Australia. However, I believe their number to be relatively small. The illusion of size is a trick made possible by preying on the despair of rural people made bitter and angry by their apparent abandonment.

Those cast low by a loss of dignity often move, unconsciously, to recover their position at the expense of others. There is a dark kind of comfort in realising that people stand below you in the pecking order of life. Unfortunately, few notice the imprint of their boot on the heads of those blamed, rejected and subordinated as the 'other'. What's more, we often demonise those who confront us, too much, with our own broken image.

Who can have failed to notice that the love of land, exhibited by the non-Aboriginal people of rural Australia, is eerily close to that exhibited by their indigenous brethren? Who can have failed to hear the echo of Aboriginal loss and anger in the farmers' lament? All of which leads me to wonder how much better our national response to challenges, like that of Wik and the stolen generation, would have been if only the people of the bush felt truly valued.

The vast majority of Australians are settled in cities along the coastal fringe of our great continent. Yet, some of our most potent myths reside in the outback. These myths matter for they continue to help shape ideas of who we are and what we stand for.

That is why the people of the bush (black, white, brown and brindle) have such a hold on us. Although small in number, they are a key to the nation's soul. So, how much good (beyond economics and the judgement of financial markets) might a budget do, if it sent a message that we care?

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