Call for end to race-based welfare

27 Aug 2012, 5:38 pm   -   Source: SBS staff

Professor Marcia Langton, chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, has called for an end to race-based entitlement, saying it's actually damaging Indigenous Australians.

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Professor Marcia Langton, chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, has called for an end to race-based entitlement, saying it's actually damaging Indigenous Australians.

In a landmark speech at the Melbourne Writers' Festival on Sunday night, she proposed a social security system based only on economic need, and not Aboriginality.

The current system "is actually doing damage to Aboriginal people because they feel they don't have to compete in a meritocracy," she said.

Ms Langton has been recently working on an expert panel set up by the Federal government to examine recognition of Aboriginal people in the Constitution.

She is now calling for the abolition of the race provision in the Constitution.

She told NITV News reporter Nancia Guivarra the race provision has created laws based on race rather than on need.

"What the abolition involves is not the abolition of positive discrimination, not at all, but rather a more rigorous implementation of policies in line with human rights law.

"So human rights thinking holds a special measure for a disadvantaged group, especially group defined by ethnicity, race or religion -- a group that is likely to be discriminated against can only be complied with human rights law if it's a temporary measure that is removed once the target, say the removal of a disadvantage is achieved", she said.

"So that's what my proposition involves. Take for instance the small growing Aboriginal middle class. Like the rest of Australia’s middle class, they receive directly or indirectly, certain benefits from let's call it the welfare state. Now, of course, most social security programs are means tested, but there are ways in which the Australian middle class, whoever they are, receive entitlements that don’t address a disadvantage, and the actual disadvantaged Australians are less well-off.

"So how do we make sure that we are addressing disadvantaged in a rigorous way so that actual disadvantage people are on the grounds of health or unemployment or disability receive targeted programs that meet their needs, without trapping them in the welfare ghetto if you like?", she said.

Critics of this position say this would work only provided that Aboriginal people have equal access to all government services.

Watch the interveiw with Marcia Langton on YouTube:

Welfare , Aboriginal Issues

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