Football star puts Aborigines' plight on political agenda
Australia’s government is ready to unite with its impoverished Aborigines to tackle the chronic health and social problems that afflict their communities, a prominent indigenous sportsman says, after a meeting with the prime minister.
Aborigines have Australia’s highest rates of incarceration, unemployment, preventable disease and infant mortality. On average, they die more than 20 years before their fellow Australians.
Blindness due to trachoma, a bacterial infection, and other diseases usually associated with Third World countries are rife among Australia’s 400,000 Aborigines.
“This isn’t just the prime minister’s problem, this is an Australian problem, an Australian disaster,” former Australian rules football star Michael Long said after he met prime minister John Howard in Canberra.
Long and prominent Aboriginal campaigner Pat Dodson said Howard was sympathetic to their calls from more action to tackle the ingrained problems.
“The prime minister is prepared to have further talks, so the journey is still beginning,” Long said.
The soft-spoken sports star succeeded in putting Aboriginal problems back on the national political agenda by starting a 410-mile walk from the southern city of Melbourne to Canberra, saying he wanted to talk to Howard about his people’s problems.
Long called off his walk this week after about 250 miles when Howard agreed to meet him. Long limped into yesterday’s meeting at Parliament House with bandaged feet.
He and Dodson warned the problems in Aboriginal communities, which are riven by crime, substance abuse and domestic violence, would take years to solve.
“There is no short term fix here,” Dodson said. “This is going to take a generation. It’s the long haul stuff. It’s not one meeting with the prime minister and it all gets fixed.”
But he said his walk was worth the effort.
“It’s about saving lives,” he said. “Indigenous lives.”
Howard did not immediately comment on the talks, but Long said he hoped the prime minister would visit indigenous communities to see the problems first hand.
Relations between Howard’s conservative government and Aborigines have long been fraught.
He scrapped an elected indigenous body that administered billions of dollars in government aid and replaced it with a non-elected advisory body. His government also wants Aborigines to work more for welfare payments they receive.
Howard has angered indigenous leaders in the past by refusing to apologise for former administrations’ mistreatment of Aborigines.
In addition to Long’s walk, a riot last week on an Aboriginal island and allegations that two indigenous youths were dragged along a river bank by nooses around their necks in an apparent vigilante attack have put Aborigines back in the spotlight.
