State Aboriginal Fund
South Australia must address the endemic poverty and subsequent chronic distress generally suffered by South Australia’s Aboriginal communities as is evidenced by their atrocious general health, welfare dependency, degraded well-being, and acute social disadvantage. This human tragedy needs an effective humanitarian response.
The long overdue delivery of properly targeted financing needs their directive input.
It is necessary for South Australia to plan for the funding of sources of investment aid to establish the capacity for these communities to engage in their construction as fully health-serviced, viable, socially directed, economically interdependent, stable, whole, self-functioning and accountable organizations which are well capitalised to this end. The new whole of government co-ordination of program assistance is equally needed.
However, the necessity for a generational change in government preparedness, speed of response, and co-ordination of whole-of-government action cannot be met by this.
There are inherent revenue and budget limitations to the scope and size of every large institutional disbursement, that inevitably mould all forms of government expenditure to a model of moderately discrete pay outs, no matter how great the immediate needs.
Bureaucratic machinery does exist to provide a range of indispensable services, but it is inappropriately instituted to deploy the funds required for community development.
Using the normal political process of the State to pledge enough money is insufficient.
It is undeniable that South Australia has a humanitarian obligation to form a dedicated fund for properly provisioning the responses now needed to eradicate these afflictions.
South Australia has allowed a catastrophic situation to enmesh the Aboriginal peoples since its inception. Because the State has compelled their communities to endure this without vesting in them any of the legal rights that are necessary to overcome such an endemically disadvantaged position, it needs to make and support an internal response that is positive in intention and proactively co-ordinated in its extent, to get the money more quickly and more proficiently targeted, to every community where it is needed.
The way forward is to empower the afflicted communities to make an immediate call on a facility that is sustained by donors as readily accessible and for a fast disbursing.
Donors need accurately to be informed of the minimum estimates necessary to meet the totality of the financing need of the communities by a client-participating process.
In stage one South Australia will need to input loan capital and a stream for subsidies. Stage two will need the input of social and economic institutions and business, unions and the other social organizations needing to be convinced of the utility of the facility.
The State ought be challenged to produce viable plans for increasing aid to alleviate the distress of Aboriginal communities by extra financing of its current contingencies.
For work to help, helping must work. A State Aboriginal Fund is a good foundation.