Working To Get Away From The Welfare Mindset

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday May 24, 2000

Sharon Verghis

Aborigines in the Taree district can't afford to wait for the Government to solve their problems, writes Sharon Verghis.

WALKING the edges of a turtle-shaped clearing on a ribbon of land south of Taree, John Clarke sees a powerful black future rising out of the dry red soil.

The land he walks on is the 13-hectare Turark campsite, won back in a 1986 native title claim and named after the turtle and shark totems of the local Biripi people. It is also the site for a planned youth sanctuary, market garden and cultural centre, crucial new initiatives in a region with Aboriginal unemployment of 90 per cent, says Clarke, chief executive of the Purfleet-Taree Aboriginal Land Council.

``We need to get away from the welfare handout mentality, and create our own initiatives. We can't wait for the Government or the town to solve our problems for us," he says.

At Purfleet, three kilometres south of Taree, other visions of black autonomy are unfolding. Since the Community Development Employment Plan (CDEP) started last April, 50 residents have been working two days a week for the equivalent of the dole in areas such as garden maintenance and clerical work at local Aboriginal community groups.

Clarke is lobbying hard for funding for 50 more places. ``It's much better than work-for-the-dole, because we control it, and already two workers have got maintenance work at local schools."

Janice Cochrane, a local community worker, believes the success of the CDEP should be measured by how well it addresses the institutionalised racism stopping many young Koori workers from getting jobs in town: ``What good is endless training if people can't get jobs at the end of it?"

One way of lifting the level of Aboriginal workers in local shops is for businesses which are signatories to the Aboriginal Employment Strategy to implement its recommendations, says Leonie McGuire, manager of Manning District Emergency Accommodation.

``If we can get them onside, like ... the cotton industry in Moree, which has about 155 Koori workers now, it will be a crucial step," says McGuire, who is part of a new working group looking at the issue.

Horace Saunders, a Taree local who runs a successful fishing business, is also cynical about the extent attitudes can and will change. Local Kooris will be ``holding their breath forever" if they expect a 100-year-old culture of racism to disappear overnight, he says. ``Independence, that's what is needed. Kooris need to set up their own businesses, a milk run, a bakery anything that gets them out there working on their own."

Clarke agrees the barriers are formidable. Aboriginal employment in Taree is concentrated in the Aboriginal community services sector, with only a scattering of Koori workers working as private security guards or at the local businesses such as Big W, Woolworths and Clint's Crazy Bargains. ``Getting our kids into retail has been harder, but a lot of that has to do with lack of training. They haven't got the customer service skills, the presentation needed."

Six residents from the 350-strong community, on the former site of Sunrise Station, the Aboriginal mission set up in 1900, are completing a civil construction and heavy machinery course, and one will gain his builder's ticket at the end of the year.

Clarke says plans for a joint business venture with a local building company, Newtec Homes, which recently built 10 new homes on the settlement, are also well under way. ``We can supply the labour through our CDEP workers; they provide the materials. We've also approached the Taree Chamber of Commerce looking to set up partnerships like this elsewhere."

Mick Tuck, mayor of Taree, says the council will set aside five out of 12 permanent positions in its capital works program this year for Koori workers, and hopes this will create a flow-on effect among local businesses.

© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald

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