Lessons from Lismore: What the rest of Australia needs to learn from the Northern Rivers floods

Image source: Department of Defence

“What happened here in the Northern Rivers [in 2022] with Lismore as the epicentre has to be recognised as one of the worst disasters the nation has ever seen,” says Lismore City Councillor Elly Bird. The scale of the floods was immense: Australia’s “biggest natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy in 1974, the second-costliest event in the world for insurers in 2022, and the most expensive disaster in Australian history.”

With all the devastation and disruption, what lessons do the rest of Australia need to learn from the Lismore and Northern Rivers floods? What is it we need to know so we can start planning now for what will inevitably be a future of increasing and cascading natural disasters?

The February 2022 Lismore flood was classified as a 1 in a 1000-year flood, yet it was followed in March by a “1 in 100” year flood. That’s not supposed to happen, yet it did: “Because of the damage already ‘baked in’ to our Earth’s climate, extreme weather events are already intensifying, and are projected to get worse.”

Although only five people died in the 2022 Lismore flooding (four in February and one in March), a massive 31,000 people were displaced and more than 3,000 businesses were disrupted affecting more than 18,000 jobs, including almost 1,000 agricultural jobs. In fact, heatwaves are the deadliest natural disasters in Australia, but floods are our most destructive.

The floods affected about 11,000 homes in the Northern Rivers region, of which more than 4,000 – mostly in Lismore – were deemed uninhabitable. Advance warning of the weather and scope of flooding and communications during the disaster were inadequate. The centre of the Lismore commercial district was completely inundated. Emergency services were quickly overwhelmed with requests for assistance. People were rescued from rooftops, many “by a small flotilla of volunteers in boats, kayaks and canoes.” The destruction was “so intense it looked like a war zone”. Post-disaster financial assistance was slow and often insufficient. Even supermarket shelves remained empty for months afterwards, extending the trauma. A parliamentary inquiry “found that the NSW Government failed to comprehend the scale of the floods … when it was one of the greatest natural disasters in generations.”

Image: ACE Community Colleges building in Lismore CBD after the floods

It wasn’t just Lismore. Much of southeastern Queensland and northeastern NSW was affected, including the NSW LGAs of Ballina, Byron, Clarence Valley, Kyogle, Richmond Valley and Tweed, as well as Hawkesbury in northwest Sydney.

But Lismore remains the symbol of the flooding because of the utter devastation, loss of housing and the continuing despair and trauma experienced by residents.

Here are eight lessons the rest of us in Australia should learn from the Lismore experience to help us prepare for climate-connected disasters:

1. Natural disasters – fuelled by climate change – will continue to cascade, overlapping and growing in frequency. “Disaster is no longer unprecedented,” says Lismore MP Janelle Saffin. The 2022 floods were just the continuation of a series of natural disasters that affected Lismore: bushfires, drought, the mice plague, COVID-19 and then the “mega-flood of 2022”.

2. The climate crisis worsens inequality and inequality worsens the climate crisis. Many Lismore residents in low-lying flood-prone areas were already vulnerable and living in less resilient accommodation, with fewer resources and networks available for post-flood support. “Older people, people with disabilities and those who were pregnant” faced life-threatening circumstances, and often received no assistance. “Climate change impacts people experiencing financial and social disadvantage first, worst and longest because they have fewer resources to cope, adapt and recover, and because they already experience barriers to services and support,” says ACOSS. In a future “net zero” world: “People with the least will still be worse off if the transition is not fair and inclusive…. because those on low incomes pay disproportionately more of their incomes on essentials.” Inequality and disaster vulnerability are two sides of the same coin: “Disasters disproportionately impact the poorest and most at risk people.”

3. Indigenous Australians contribute least to climate change but experience its worst impacts. As of August 2022, six months after the disaster, 1,296 people were still homeless in the northern NSW region, 500 of whom were First Nations people (39% of the total). Indigenous Australians were thus seven times more likely to have become homeless because of the floods, as they constituted only 5.6% of Lismore LGA residents (2021 census). One Indigenous community, with almost 100 people on Cabbage Tree Island in the Richmond River (in Ballina Shire), was totally destroyed by the floods. It will not be rebuilt due to “an unacceptably high risk of exposure to future flooding events and a real risk to human life”. “Mother Nature has spoken. Cabbo is no longer safe for our mob to live there,” said community leader Lenkunyar Roberts. It’s not just east coast flooding: country town and remote Indigenous communities are particularly at risk when facing hotter and drier conditions, resulting in pressures on the supply and quality of water, food and traditional food sources. There is widespread consensus that climate change policies need to “recognise that the adaptation strategy for Indigenous communities are likely to be different to those for non-Indigenous communities”, with work “undertaken to develop culturally-appropriate strategies for this type of settlement”.

4. Housing unaffordability and the climate crisis are linked. Even prior to the 2022 floods, the Lismore region had many “rough sleepers”, several with complex social and emotional needs (and many of them Indigenous). After the floods, the situation turned catastrophic; the destruction of so many homes exacerbated a housing crisis that has not yet abated. While much of the recent national housing attention is focused on capital cities like Sydney, housing costs in regional areas – far from the eyes of Sydney or Canberra policy makers – have soared. An NCOSS submission states: “People are living in unsafe environments because there’s nowhere else to go. There’s massive overcrowding and First Nations communities are really struggling. Many of the homelessness workers [themselves] are homeless. People are living in the mouldy rotting husks of their houses…. Homeless women who were at the end of the queue and who couldn’t list an address in a flood impacted area are not even in the queue anymore.” MP Jannelle Saffin uses the term “internally displaced people, which is usually in the context of refugees from a war zone or major overseas disaster, but that’s what’s happened to us.”

5. Natural disasters produce an increasing mental health burden. Research shows “mental health effects on traumatised communities can peak up to 6 months after the event and again at 12 months, marking the anniversary.” There is widespread lack of awareness about the “long tail” of a disaster. “A common theme was hearing that mental health support and other services … were removed too soon following disaster – whether this was the availability of social workers and counselling services.” Outreach is also essential, as some people – such as those in Lismore still suffering from “collective trauma” – will never reach out for support.

6. Connected communities matter in disasters. Building social capital – informal support and access to information systems; and social infrastructure – community centres, showgrounds, universities, schools and libraries; are both essential responses to climate change adaptation. Socially excluded individuals have less social capital with which to cope, so increasing social connectedness means building robust social networks that can better coordinate recovery. In February 2022 Southern Cross University’s Lismore campus functioned as post-disaster model local social infrastructure. It transformed into “the primary emergency evacuation centre” with more than 1000 people, a home for police and community services, food distribution channels, re-located schools and more than 500 ADF personnel.

7. Climate change is creating an insurability crisis with worsening extreme weather and sky-rocketing premiums. The Insurance Council of Australia says almost 230,000 homes face a 1-in-20 chance of being hit by floods in any given year. It warns of a growing number of residents in “disaster-prone areas not buying insurance because of the higher premiums”, with flooding accounting for more than 54% insurance industry losses in the past five years. The Climate Council says by 2030, 4% of Australian properties will be “high risk” and uninsurable and another 9% of properties will reach “medium risk”.

8. Regional and rural Australia will disproportionately suffer the most from climate-related disasters. They are more exposed to natural hazards and up to twice as likely to be affected by flooding and bushfires.Country towns – already at risk because of economic restructuring and demographic change – may find climate change compounds difficulties. “This has implications both for our understanding and interpretation of the impacts of climate change, and in the development of policy responses.”

Indigenous incarceration in Australia update

The extraordinary and saddening news from the USA about protests and demonstrations in at least 140 American cities in almost every state, focussed on police brutality and the economic deprivation of African-Americans, has illustrated again the unhappy history of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples incarceration.

CCA last highlighted this two years ago, when the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) released its report Pathways to Justice–Inquiry into the Incarceration Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

“Indigenous incarceration is costing nearly $8 billion annually and will grow to almost $20 billion per annum by 2040 without further intervention,” according to a PwC Australia and PwC’s Indigenous Consulting report, quoted by the ALRC.

People as diverse as Indigenous leader Pat Dodson and NSW Bar Association President Arthur Moses, SC called this situation a “national shame”. Yet, as the ALRC report notes, between 2006 and 2016, the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous incarceration rates widened further.

This week brought the unwelcome news that these figures have still not abated. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released its Corrective Services, March Quarter 2020 report, which shows, “the average daily number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners increased in the March quarter 2020 by 5% (580) to 12,902, compared with 12,322 in the December quarter 2019; and 12,144 in the March quarter 2019.”

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald points out, “While the general population was imprisoned in the March 2020 quarter at a rate of 220.7 people per 100,000, the state’s (NSW) Aboriginal population was imprisoned at a rate of 2427.4 per 100,000.”

Read that carefully: Indigenous Australians are incarcerated at a rate eleven times (that’s 1100%) that of the general population. And New South Wales, by no means the worse state, reflects the national average:  while Indigenous Australians represent only 3% of the total population, more than 29% of Australia’s prison population are Indigenous.

According to the Pew Research Centre, African-American incarceration rates have improved in recent years, but still run 5.6 times (560%) higher than that of white Americans.

What Community Colleges Australia and adult and community education providers can do

Aside from the massive personal, social and communal costs, Australia pays a significant economic cost by the heavy over-representation of Indigenous Australians in custody. Australia’s inability to deal with this systematic and systemic injustice is a continuing blot on our national reputation.

CCA is committed to ensuring its members maximise the positive impacts they can make in their local Indigenous communities. In doing this, we build on a strong base. For instance, in New South Wales, almost 13% of government-funded VET community education students are Indigenous, a percentage much higher than either TAFE (9.4%) or the for-profit VET providers (6.4%).

Last year, CCA commissioned an Engaging Indigenous Communities Guide for member organisations to support and build their capacities to engage with their Indigenous communities and learners. The Guide was developed by the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre (AILC), shaped by input from CCA members, with funding from the NSW Government. We are currently conducting training for member organisations about the use of the Guide, and will release it publicly soon, for the benefit of the whole Australian vocational education and training sector.

Australia’s not-for-profit community education sector can make immediate and profound differences through innovative programs such as the award-winning Indigenous drivers education program established by Lismore’s ACE Community Colleges. This unique program – undertaken in direct collaboration with local Aboriginal communities and expanded into other communities – breaks the cycle of no-licence- receive-fine-for-driving-illegally, often leading to incarceration. The ALRC report devotes a whole chapter to fines and drivers licenses.

(image below: Uluru, Northern Territory, Australia – photo credit & copyright, Don Perlgut)

(Originally published by Community Colleges Australia on 5 June 2020 as “US protests highlight continuation of high Indigenous Australian incarceration rates”.)

Reducing the Incarceration Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

Last week, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) released its report Pathways to Justice–Inquiry into the Incarceration Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, which was tabled in Federal Parliament on 28 March 2018.

The purpose of the Inquiry was to inquire into the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison and develop recommendations for reform of laws and legal frameworks to reduce their disproportionate incarceration. 

“Indigenous incarceration is costing nearly $8 billion annually and will grow to almost $20 billion per annum by 2040 without further intervention,” according to a PwC Australia and PwC’s Indigenous Consulting report released in May 2017, and quoted in the ALRC report.

People as diverse as Indigenous leader Pat Dodson and NSW Bar Association President Arthur Moses, SC have called this situation a “national shame”. Yet, as the ALRC report notes, between 2006 and 2016, the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous incarceration rates widened further.

Disproportionate incarceration rate

The ALRC Inquiry reported that:

Although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up around 2% of the national population, they constitute 27% of the national prison population. In 2016, around 20 in every 1,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were incarcerated. Over-representation is both a persistent and growing problem—Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration rates increased 41% between 2006 and 2016, and the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous imprisonment rates over that decade widened.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women constitute 34% of the female prison population. In 2016, the rate of imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women (464.8 per 100,000) was not only higher than that of non-Indigenous women (21.9 per 100,000), but was also higher than the rate of imprisonment of non-Indigenous men (291.1 per 100,000).

What can Australia’s community education sector do?

Aside from the massive personal, social and communal costs, Australia pays a significant economic cost by the heavy over-representation of Indigenous Australians. What can Australia’s adult and community education sector do to help address one of our most pressing national problems? As one of the world’s wealthiest countries, Australia’s inability to deal with this systematic and systemic injustice is a continuing blot on our national reputation. I believe that Australian not-for-profit adult and community education organisations have a moral imperative to assist

The ALRC report – although primarily confined to criminal laws and legal frameworks, as required by the Terms of Reference – gives a number of important guideposts as to how the community can respond. The area where Australia’s not-for-profit community education sector can make the most immediate and profound difference is in the innovative and award-winning Indigenous drivers education programs first established by Lismore’s ACE Community Colleges in 2005, which has expanded into other parts of New South Wales. This unique program – undertaken in direct collaboration with local Aboriginal communities – breaks the cycle of no-licence- receive-fine-for-driving-illegally, often leading to incarceration. The ALRC report devotes a whole chapter to fines and drivers licenses.

My employer – Community Colleges Australia – recently released a Statement on Aboriginal Economic Development which details five creative approaches to addressing Indigenous disadvantage. CCA is committed to ensuring that our members maximise the positive impacts they can make in their local Indigenous communities. In doing this, the organisation builds on a strong base. For instance, in New South Wales, 12% of government-funded VET community education students funded are Indigenous, a percentage much higher than either TAFE or the for-profit VET providers (2016 figures).

(Note: This post has been adapted from a news item that I placed on the Community Colleges Australia website on 4 April 2018. I reproduce it here in order to extend its reach.)

THE INQUIRY

The following extract’s from the Inquiry’s report are taken from the Full Report and the Summary Report (both 28 March 2018).

Local Solutions to Local Problems Led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People

A recurring observation made during consultations and in submissions to this Inquiry was that solutions should be developed and led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Good examples are the Koori courts in Victoria and community justice groups of Elders, which support and assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people throughout the criminal justice process. The ALRC was told that some of the most effective solutions to local problems (such as diversion programs and post release assistance) have been developed locally by, or in conjunction with, local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The corollary is that what works in one community (such as alcohol restrictions) may not be the best solution in another.

Taking a local approach to local problems can create difficulties for Australian governments, which necessarily plan for centrally developed and imposed national, state or territory-wide programs. Without acceptance and participation by the local communities, those programs can fail or, at least, not fully meet their objectives. The ALRC notes the importance of governments working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities to implement the range of strategies recommended to reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration. For example, the ALRC has recommended that state and territory governments work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations to: develop and implement culturally appropriate bail support programs and diversion options; develop options to reduce the imposition of fines and infringement notices; and develop prison programs that address offending behaviours and prepare people for release. One way to achieve local involvement is through Aboriginal Justice Agreements.

The Cost of Indigenous Incarceration

The implementation of the recommendations in this Report, including the provision of more diversion, support and rehabilitation programs before, during and after incarceration, will require additional resources.

However, the cost of implementing these recommendations must be considered against the cost of incarcerating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at disproportionate levels. Incarceration is expensive: it has been estimated that the total justice system costs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration in 2016 were $3.9 billion. When the costs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration are broadened beyond those directly related to the criminal justice system to include other economic costs, the estimated cost rises to $7.9 billion. As well as the cost of imprisonment to the State, incarceration can also have a broader social cost, particularly when concentrated in a particular community.

Over-representation increases with the stages of the criminal justice system. In 2016, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were seven times more likely than non-Indigenous people to be charged with a criminal offence and appear before the courts; 11 times more likely to be held in prison on remand awaiting trial or sentence, and 12.5 times more likely to receive a sentence of imprisonment. This is a cyclical problem, with 76% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners having been in prison before.

On fines

Statutory fine enforcement regimes affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people unduly and can result in incarceration. Imprisonment is a disproportionate response to fine default, and impacts especially on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. The ALRC recommends the amendment of fine enforcement regimes so that they do not, directly or indirectly, allow for imprisonment.

The imposition of fines and fine enforcement regimes affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people disproportionately. Fine enforcement regimes can aggravate criminogenic factors and operate to further entrench disadvantage, especially when the penalty for default or secondary offending includes further fines, driver licence suspension or disqualification, and imprisonment.

State and territory governments should work with relevant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and community organisations to identify areas without services relevant to driver licensing and to provide those services, particularly in regional and remote communities.

Education and employment

The links between lack of employment opportunity, lack of educational attainment, and subsequent entry into the criminal justice system are well established. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have lower educational attainment than non-Indigenous people. For example, in 2015, only 49% of Year 3 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students living in a remote area reached minimum national standards of literacy, reading and numeracy.40 In 2014, 86.4% of non-Indigenous students nationally completed Year 12 or equivalent, compared with 61.5% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. This fell to 41.7% for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students living in remote areas.41 Nationally in 2015, of the potential Year 12 population, 43.8% of non-Indigenous young people achieved an ATAR of 50.00 or above, compared with 8.5% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people also face employment disadvantage. In 2014–15 the unemployment rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15–64 was about three times the rate of the non-Indigenous population.44 Just under half (48.4%) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15–64 were employed, compared with 74.8% of non-Indigenous people.

Outcomes

Implementation of the recommendations in this Report will reduce the disproportionate rate of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and improve community safety. These recommendations will:

• promote substantive equality before the law for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
• promote fairer enforcement of the law and fairer application of legal frameworks;
• ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership and participation in the development and delivery of strategies and programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in contact with the criminal justice system;
• reduce recidivism through the provision of effective diversion, support and rehabilitation programs;
• make available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander offenders alternatives to imprisonment that are appropriate to the offence and the offender’s circumstances; and
• promote justice reinvestment through redirection of resources from incarceration to prevention, rehabilitation and support, in order to reduce reoffending and the long-term economic cost of incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Reduced incarceration and greater support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in contact with the criminal justice system will, in turn, improve health, social and economic outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 

Justice Reinvestment

Commonwealth, state and territory governments should provide support for the establishment of an independent justice reinvestment body. The purpose of the body should be to promote the reinvestment of resources from the criminal justice system to community-led, place-based initiatives that address the drivers of crime and incarceration, and to provide expertise on the implementation of justice reinvestment.

(photo credit: Don Perlgut)

Indigenous imprisonment one of top 10 blog posts in 2015

This falls into the category of “shameless self-promotion”.  My blog post entitled “Indigenous imprisonment in Australia: a crisis of mass incarceration” (Open Forum, 12 March 2015) was one of the “top 10 of 2015” for the Open Forum blogging website.

It’s more than self-promotion, though.  It is a good indication that there is an interest, perhaps a hunger even, for discussion about that topic.  More on Indigenous Australian as well as African-American criminal justice to come in 2016.

 

Indigenous imprisonment in Australia: a crisis of mass incarceration

(The following post was originally published on 12 March 2015 on Open Forum.  I am taking the liberty of re-printing it here, and adding an addendum at the end of this post.)

In mid-February of this year, the Australian Prime Minister presented the annual “Closing the Gap” report to Parliament. Although some indicators saw improvement (health), in others – especially in education and employment – there was almost no improvement at all.

Of great concern is the statement on page 28 – of which little fanfare was made at the time – that, “the rate of imprisonment is higher than at any time during the decade”. The decade? In other words, Indigenous imprisonment has been steadily rising and is worse than any time in recent memory. That’s not just “no improvement”; it is a serious step backwards.

For anyone paying attention to the statistics on Indigenous disadvantage, this comes as no surprise. In December of last year, the Productivity Commission’s report, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2014, made this point clearly (pp. 4.102-4.104):

• Nationally at 30 June 2013, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imprisonment rate was 2039.5 per 100,000 adult population, an increase of around one‑third from the rate in 2000 (1433.5 per 100,000 adult population).
• Although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up only 2.3 percent of the Australian adult population, they accounted for 27.4 per cent of all prisoners. (Note: the Indigenous population is heavily skewed to younger ages, with the national percentage of population about 3 percent.)
• After adjusting for differences in population age structures, the rate of imprisonment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults was 13 times the rate for non‑Indigenous adults.

Let’s be clear about what these figures say: more than one-quarter of people in Australian prisons are Indigenous, a rate more than ten times (1000%) their population percentage. When age is adjusted (thus comparing “like with like”), the figures are even worse: thirteen times (1300%). But it gets worse.  The report also states that:

• Between 2000 and 2013, the rate of imprisonment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults increased by 57.4 per cent while the non-Indigenous rate remained fairly constant, leading to a widening of the gap (from 8.5 to 13.0 times the rate for non-Indigenous adults).

What this means is that Indigenous imprisonment rates have GONE UP by 50% in the last 13 years, while non-Indigenous rates have REMAINED THE SAME throughout the same period. In other words, the figures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have gotten worse and not just a little – A LOT worse. You can track the inexorable year by year growth of Indigenous imprisonment through the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures. Although there are some state variations (Tasmania is the best, Western Australia is the worst), this is a systemic national problem which demands a national solution.

Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, calls these figures a “catastrophe in anyone’s language”, pointing out in December 2014 that “we do better at keeping Aboriginal people in prison than in school”. He also noted that almost half of Australians in juvenile detention are Indigenous – so the trend does not look like reversing any time soon.

The Creative Spirits website summarises a number of inter-related factors for these high rates: stolen generations, disconnection from land, police behaviour, offence criminalisation, poverty and unemployment, language difficulties, foetal alcohol syndrome and poor housing. A significant number of Indigenous Australians are incarcerated for trivial offenses that rarely impact non-Indigenous people, including unpaid fines, unlicensed driving, not receiving court mail, not attending court and “disorderly conduct”. One common theme in these offenses is poverty: the poorer you are, the less likely you are to avoid jail for small offences.

These results are terrible in themselves, but three factors arise that underline their significance:

First, this increase in Indigenous imprisonment could have been avoided through a careful analysis of why, where and how Indigenous people are put in prison or into the juvenile justice system (where they now represent up to one-half of participants), and crafting appropriate responses.

Secondly, as the Productivity Commission report drily states (page 4.102), “Imprisonment has a heavy social and economic impact. High rates of imprisonment remove adults from their important roles caring for the next generation and can lead to the ‘normalisation’ of incarceration among community members.”

Thirdly – and most insidious of all – the high rate of imprisonment affects how we non-Indigenous Australians view Indigenous people. Although the comparison is not complete, rates of imprisonment of African-Americans in the USA run six times those of whites in that country. The result there means that, as Professor Heather Thompson (Temple University) points out, there is a “disproportionate policing” of young black men and women, and that in turn “sends a signal to the broader society that there is something inherently criminalistic about black people”. She calls the American rates of imprisonment a “mass incarceration” with unknown outcomes; surely the same applies to Indigenous Australians.

We can do better and improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rates of imprisonment. For the sake of creating an equal and just Australia, we must.

*****

Addendum:  In order to change the situation of mass incarceration of racial minorities, “we must change the narrative”.  So says, lawyer and social activist Bryan Stevenson, who gives a stirring 53 minute talk about American racial justice and imprisonment, which you can listen to on ABC Radio National’s Big Ideas program podcast (originally broadcast on 19th March 2015).  Stevenson points out that great literature helps to change the narrative of issues so that we can see them in new ways.  We need to “understand how the world is being sustained by things (narratives) that make us indifferent to inequality” and mass incarceration.  He points out that in the USA, this is “the function of 40 years of the politics of fear and anger.  When people are afraid and angry, they will tolerate abuse and violations of rights.”  Deep and insightful words that have a strong resonance here in Australia.

Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (published 2014), is also available here in Australia.

Martin Luther King’s frequently quoted statement that, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” (from his “God is marching on” speech) may give us some hope.  But complacency has no place in the lack of progress on incarceration of Indigenous Australians.  For, as King also said, ““We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there ‘is’ such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”  (from his “Beyond Vietnam” speech)

Indigenous imprisonment in Australia

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imprisonment rates have been steadily rising and are worse than any time in recent memory.  This is a national problem that demands a national solution.

I have just published an opinion piece on this topic in Open Forum, entitled “Indigenous imprisonment in Australia: a crisis of mass incarceration”.

I have also re-posted the full article on this blog, along with a short addition.

I encourage you to read it.

Film appreciation in a time of war

Did you ever wonder what it’s like to attend a film festival in a time of war? Tal Kra-Oz’s recent article in Tablet  (18 July 2014) gives a good, insider’s perspective of this month’s Jerusalem Film Festival, where screenings are interrupted by sirens and the obligatory temporary removal to basement rooms filled with old film reels.

Israel’s artistic elite – of which film-makers are a solid part – are notably more left-wing and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than the majority of the population.  Thus, the pall cast on this year’s Festival is yet another tragic by-product of the Israel-Hamas conflict now taking place.

But, as Kra-Oz writes, the show does indeed go on: “even when the cannons and sirens are heard, the muses are anything but silent”.

And what a show the Israelis had to boast about. In a country of just 7.8 million people, last year the country produced and released 40 feature films.  In the May Cannes Film Festival, seven Israeli films had official screenings: five features, one documentary and one student film.  Compare that to Australia, almost three times as large (population 23,537,000) , which released 26 films in 2013 and had three films in official Cannes categories (The Rover, Charlie’s Country and These Final Hours).

Kra-Oz’s article captures the spirit of the dynamism of Israeli film-making.  How this relates to the country’s on-again, off-again conflict with the Palestinians is clearly complicated and overlaid with more than 100 years of history.

After some 22+ years of unbroken economic growth, is life too good for us here in Australia?  Do we not have enough to worry about to make good films?  It may be no coincidence that Australia’s greatest success at Cannes this year was Rolf de Heer’s Charlie’s Country, in which lead Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil – playing a role in part based on his own life – won the “best actor” award in the “Un certain regard” competition.   Indigenous Australians are among this country’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged, and those living in remote regions – such as Gulpilil’s character – even more so.

(photo above:  David Gulpilil in Charlie’s Country)

Are Australians the richest people on earth?

The Credit Swisse Global Wealth Report 2013 was released on 9 October 2013 and indicates some perhaps not-so-surprising news for Australians:

In US dollar terms, household wealth in Australia grew rapidly between 2000 and 2013, apart from a brief interlude in 2008. The average annual growth rate has been 13%, but about half of the rise is due to exchange rate appreciation. Using constant exchange rates, wealth has grown on average by just 3.3% per annum since 2007. Despite this recent slowdown, Australia’s wealth per adult in 2013 is USD 402,600, the second highest in the world after Switzerland.  Even more strikingly, its median wealth of USD 219,500 is the highest in the world.

You read that one correctly:  in terms of median wealth, we Australians top the world, beating number two Switzerland.

Remember that when it comes to wealth, the median – the halfway point in a distribution – is probably a much more accurate measure than “average”, which takes all figures and divides them.  In other words, one Gina Rinehart – the richest woman in the world, worth estimated between US$17 billion and Aus$22 billion – can make up for a whole lot of poor people when it comes to an average.  But with a “median”, if she is at the top, she is equivalent to the poorest Australian – in other words, one cancels the other out, and median is between them, but the “average” would be approximately one-half of Rinehart’s wealth.

Are these Australian wealth figures wrong?  Probably not.

Yesterday’s (October 12) Australian reports figures from Colliers International that commercial rentals on “Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall have leapfrogged Milan’s Via Monte Napoleone to become the eighth most expensive in the world.”

The only shopping districts ahead of Sydney are New York City’s Fifth Avenue (at number one) and Madison Avenue; Hong Kong’s Queens Road Central, Canton Road and Causeway Bay; and Zurich’s Via Monte Napoleone.

Meanwhile, research due to be released shortly by the Australian National University’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research and conducted by Dr Nicholas Biddle concludes that “more than a third of Indigenous Australians (36.6%) live among the most disadvantaged 10 percent” of Australians, and “only 1.7 percent live among the top 10 percent”.  The Australian has graphed this disadvantage, and I reproduce their graph below:

(Graph reproduced from The Australian.)

The smallest gap?  In Sydney’s “lower north”.  More on this in a later post.  But clearly not every Australian is sitting up with the Swiss in median income, or buying their goods on Pitt Street Mall, one of the most expensive in the world.

Indigenous Australian film-makers feature in AACTA winners

The second awards ceremony of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts – known as the AACTAs – was held here in Sydney on 30 January and broadcast on Channel Ten.

Host Russell Crowe and AACTA President, Geoffrey Rush, were joined on stage by Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman to honour the year’s best achievements in Australian film and television.

The big story of the night was the virtual awards sweep by the film The Sapphires.  Based on a true story, this film tells the tale of four lively young Aboriginal women who form a musical troupe and travel to Vietnam in 1968 to entertain American troops.  It has been described as “toe tapping”, “uplifting”, “energetic” and “feel-good”, and achieved an astonishing 93 percent positive rating by film reviewers, according to the Rotten Tomatoes aggregation website.

The Sapphires took home a total of eleven AACTA awards, including best film (producers Rosemary Blight and Kylie du Fresne), best direction (Wayne Blair), best adapted screenplay (Keith Thompson and Tony Briggs), best lead actor (Chris O’Dowd), best lead actress (Deborah Mailman) best supporting actress (Jessica Mauboy), and best cinematography (Warwick Thornton).

Of these, Blair, Briggs, Mailman, Mauboy and Thornton are all Indigenous – five major awards won by Indigenous people.  (The Sapphires also won AACTA Awards for Best Editing, Best Sound, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design.)

Indigenous screen stories almost swept the drama awards that night.  In the television drama category, the ABC Aboriginal series Redfern Now won two AACTAs – for Best Screenplay in Television – Aboriginal writer Steven McGregor – and best actress in a Television Drama – Aboriginal actress Leah Purcell.

Thus a total of seven Indigenous screen award winners this year.  Is this an Australian record?  I think so.

Australia the film revisited

It has been more than four years since the November 2008 release of Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia.  Certainly it was the biggest Australian film in many years, and probably the most expensive Australian film ever made – ever.

Set in the Northern Territory in the late 1930s and early 1940s and presented as a classic “Western” love story between its two major stars – Nicole Kidman (playing Lady Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat) and Hugh Jackman (simply known as “The Drover”), within the opening credits Australia the film rapidly identifies its major theme:  of Aboriginal reconciliation and the “stolen generations”.  This term refers to those Indigenous Australian children who were removed from their families as part of systematic policies of forced assimilation by Australian state and national governments.  This destructive policy lasted from 1909 to 1969 and resulted in the decimation of tens of thousands of Indigenous Australian families, the impact of which is still being widely felt throughout Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.  For more information about the ”stolen generations”, go to the following resources:

–  The Stolen Generations Fact Sheet, by Reconciliaction

– The Stolen Generations Alliance

– The original 1997 Bringing Them Home report resulting from the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, available from the website of the Australian Human Rights Commission and from the Indigenous Law Resources Reconciliation and Social Justice Library

The “stolen generations” have been the subject of other Australian films in the past, notably Rabbit Proof Fence (2002), directed by Phillip Noyce, and adapted from the Doris Pilkington novel Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence (1996).  (For a review by Fiona A. Villella of that film, click here.)

Australia (the film) explores this theme particularly through the character of Nullah, played by Brandon Walters, an Aboriginal boy from Broome in his feature film debut, who was 11 years old at the time of the film’s production.  Walters gives an astonishingly natural and touching performance; his interaction with Nicole Kidman’s character becomes the real emotional core of the film, eclipsing the much-promoted Kidman-Jackman romance.  According to Baz Luhrmann at the time, Walters was to be “Australia’s next leading man” (well, not yet, anyway).

When he first began planning the film some years before production, there was no way that Baz Luhrmann could have known that Australia’s (then) new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, would (on February 13, 2008) issue a long-sought apology to the Indigenous peoples of Australia for the Stolen Generations.  (Click here for the complete text of the apology and Prime Minister Rudd’s speech; note pdf document of 41kb.)

The fact that the most expensive Australian film ever made has the Stolen Generations as one of its central themes is astonishing.  Although, to be fair, Australia the film has at least seven themes operating.  In addition to the Drover-Lady Ashley romance and the Indigenous mistreatment, there is the robber cattle barons (played by Bryan Brown and David Wenham), the challenging cattle drive to Darwin, the coming of age of Nullah – including his relationship with his grandfather (played by David Gulpilil), the disapproving Darwin “society” and – notably – the World War II impact on Australia, including the bombing of Darwin in February 1942 (more on this last theme shortly).  (Spoiler alert:  this review will now reveal some plot points, so stop reading NOW if for some reason you have not seen the film and want to be surprised when you do.)

The Indigenous themes of Australia extend beyond the plight of Nullah (who is indeed forcibly removed and taken to a mission on an island off Darwin, based on the Tiwi Islands).  Hugh Jackman’s character The Drover has an Aboriginal best mate, who, we discover is his former brother-in-law:  he was indeed previously married to an Aboriginal woman, who died when she was refused treatment in a hospital.

Despite Luhrmann’s best and well-meaning efforts, he has endured some withering criticism for his film’s Aboriginal concerns.  Writing in The Guardian (UK) on December 18, 2008, Australian expatriate social commentator Germaine Greer took issue with the praise of the film by Marcia Langton (Aboriginal studies professor at University of Melbourne: click here for Langton’s Melbourne Age response to Greer) and notes that Luhrmann has “created a new myth of national origin”.  She goes on to say that “Luhrmann’s fake epic, set in 1939, shows Aboriginal people as intimately involved in the development of the Lucky Country; the sequel would probably show Nullah, the Aborigine boy who narrates the film, setting up an Aboriginal corporation and using mining royalties to build a luxury resort on the shores of Faraway Bay.”

Sarcasm aside, Greer is on firmer ground when she points out that:

The camera does not travel to where the Aboriginal workers would have lived with their extended families in a collection of humpies – shelters made of bark and branches – with no clean water, no sanitation and no electricity.  As the humpies were not intended for continued habitation they would have been verminous and filthy; the workers would have been issued with a single set of work clothes, ditto.  Despite the appalling infant mortality rate, there would have been dozens of children of various shades.  The Aboriginal workers would not have been paid, but simply given poor-quality rations, because the station owner claimed the whole community as dependents.  Aborigines did virtually all the heavy work, fencing, mustering, castrating, branding, slaughtering, digging dams, making roads, gardening, washing and cleaning.  No attempt would have been made to educate Nullah or his mates.

These problems – poor living conditions, desperate poverty, illiteracy, institutionalised racism, remoteness and few chances of economic betterment, combined with family destruction – still bedevil Indigenous Australia, with achingly slow progress.

In a discussion on ABC Radio National’s Movietime program on November 27, 2008, Daniel Browning (producer-presenter of Radio National’s Indigenous arts and culture program Awaye!) was equally as scathing, calling Luhrmann’s Australia a “post-reconciliation fantasy”.

These criticisms were, perhaps, inevitable, and one of the key fantasies of Australia – that somehow an English lady in 1930s Northern Territory would become a surrogate mother to an effectively orphaned Aboriginal boy – presents such an unlikely scenario that it threatens to re-write the history of Aboriginal-white relations.

Luhrmann also re-wrote history when he showed a Japanese army landing party on an island off Australia just after the bombing of Darwin:  the Japanese did not, repeat, DID NOT, ever land on Australian soil and shoot Australians.  For more information on the bombing of Darwin, go to the Australian Government’s Culture and Recreation Portal article or the National Archives of Australia fact sheet, which notes that “The air attacks on Darwin continued until November 1943, by which time the Japanese had bombed Darwin 64 times.  During the war other towns in northern Australia were also the target of Japanese air attack, with bombs being dropped on Townsville, Katherine, Wyndham, Derby, Broome and Port Hedland.”

And yet.  And yet.  Luhrmann does succeed in presenting a vision, fantastical as it may seem, of an Australia where whites and blacks do get along.  Racism is there in his film, and it is palpable, and the results are obvious and explicit.  It’s just not realistic, and far from complete.  It’s only a movie, and a Baz Luhrmann movie at that.  From Strictly Ballroom to Romeo + Juliet to Moulin Rouge! , Luhrmann has never been a “realist” director.  Why ever would he start being one now?

Postscripts on the reception of Australia:

On 7 January 2009, the Sydney Morning Herald and reported:

In the 5½ weeks since its premiere, Australia has taken $28.8 million….  Locally the film has been a hit in the very place it romanticises, regional and rural Australia.  Greater Union’s national film manager, Bill McDermid, said yesterday that the film had done particularly well in Canberra, Toowoomba, Cairns and Mackay. “Positive word of mouth in our regional cinemas is driving excellent attendances.”

Australia was filmed in a number of outback locations, including Darwin (NT), Kununurra and various East Kimberley locations (WA) and Bowen (QLD), as well as at Fox Studios and various historic houses in Sydney.  The film had four simultaneous premieres in Australia on 18 November 2009:  one in each of the cities above.

Michael Bodey reported in The Australian (Friday 16 January 2009, page 5) that Australia (the film) was far and away the biggest Australian film at the box office in 2008, earning $26.9 million by the end of the year.  It represented more than 75% of all Australian film box office takings last year, which made it a sad moment for Australian film-making generally when all the other 32 films only grossed $8.6 million.  Australia was ultimately the sixth biggest film of the year, behind The Dark Knight  (although it was still going strong on 31st December 2008).  While Australia did not do particularly well in North America, it was been quite popular in both Europe and Asia.

The film received one Academy Awards (Oscar) nomination – for “Best Costume Design” for Catherine Martin (although she did not win).  The film has also received four Film Critics Circle of Australia nominations:  for Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (young Aboriginal actor Brandon Walters), Best Cinematography (Mandy Walker) and Best Score (David Hirschfelder).

Ultimately Australia the film became the second highest grossing Australian film (unadjusted for inflation).  The DVD was released in Australia in early April 2009, while the film was still playing in a few Australian cinemas.  Responding to the claim of one British critic that the film left “no cliche unturned”, Luhrmann responded that this comment misunderstood the nature of melodrama, which “has been the building block of storytelling in cinema since the form was invented”.  Take that, you doubters.

Trailer for the film below:

(Next stop:  The Great Gatsby).