Why DON’T Policymakers LISTEN To Aboriginal Advice?
“Take an Aboriginal-designed program and allow Aboriginal people to deliver it to their people. They know what is needed. Work alongside Government but let us drive it!”
We have heard this advice time and time again….but it NEVER happens!
Yes, this decades-long, unheeded advice was passed on AGAIN (!!!) this morning on Radio National by Mervyn Eades, the founder of the SUCCESSFUL Perth-based Ngalla Maya, a Non-Profit that is reintegrating Aboriginal offenders into society, helping with targeted training for jobs, and stopping re-entry into the detention system.
WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY are our well-educated, well-paid pollies and bureaucrats INCAPABLE of LISTENING, allowing our First Australians to go on suffering poverty, ill-health and incarceration while at the same time allowing expenditure of huge amounts of money destined to continue being wasted??
THIS taxpayer is totally exasperated!
Are our policymakers just plain DUMB?
1 Comment
The shadow of the past looms long – what if they give them autonomy and they take over and take revenge? I think these subconscious thoughts would be enough to make every one of them turn away from such an “impossibility” when you combine it with the discomfort of facing systemic evil. Easier to let someone else deal with it. And so the evil continues. Sigh ?