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Thousands of Australians make "lifestyle" choices which cost their fellow citizens billions of dollars, but few have them counted so much against their interests, or on a ledger as prejudiced, as Aborigines still living traditional lifestyles. Any number of lobbies and groups essentially hostile to most Aboriginal aspirations are forever pointing out that about a tenth of the nation's Aboriginal and Islander people live in remote homeland hamlets and Aboriginal missions and settlements, a long distance from rural towns and communities with health facilities, schools and available work. (Of course, more than half of the indigenous population lives in large cities, and are not, presumably, included in such condemnations, even if their situations and conditions may be proof that not all is perfect if one takes lifestyle advice from politicians). Aboriginal children must go to school. It is, some think, too much to expect that schools must come to them. Likewise with access to health care, other government and community services, and with effective withdrawal from the labour market. From the point of view of the comfort and convenience of providers, the argument is all one way. The past decade, under Labor as much as Liberal governments in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia, has seen the progressive and deliberate defunding of more and more small Aboriginal settlements. Resources are going instead into hub settlements, which are said to be more "efficient" to administer and service. Into these, of course, can be put significant concentrations of non-Aboriginal helpers, such as police, Centrelink workers, teachers, health workers and administrators. In general, it costs about $800,000 in upfront costs to put another public servant into an Aboriginal community, and about $300,000 a year to keep her there, but these costs are rarely factored into the equation justifying the re-concentration of Aboriginal populations. The process very much resembles the way Aborigines in NSW, Victoria and Queensland were rounded up into missions and settlements, and, ultimately, into big communities such as Palm Island in Queensland from towards the end of the 19th century. It also resembles the way Aborigines were removed from camps around NT and WA cattle stations, to be dumped in nearby towns, once equal wages and human rights activity began in the 1960s. Both forced movements of people were social disasters, from the effects of which Aborigines, and Australia itself, are still suffering, emotionally and economically. It is hard to make categorical one-size-fits-all statements about indigenous affairs, particularly in relation to the situation of remote tribal people. But one generalisation that could stand up is that the bigger the community, the more social, political, economic and bureaucratic dysfunction, and the higher the per capita cost of providing government services. There is no evidence whatever of overall economies of scale, and a good deal of evidence to the contrary. All of this has an enormous psychic cost; it also has an economic cost often missed in the ready equations proving how the lot of Aborigines will materially improve from actions taken "for their own good". The evidence of the "closing the gap" reports also shows that concentration does not resolve – and may even compound – problems of effective access to education and community services, let alone produce better and measurable outcomes. Most often, the concentrators do not factor in the costs of rehousing those whom they have effectively forced to shift. One can see examples of the problem on the fringes of cities such as Alice Springs, where people from settlements are forced to camp with relatives (aggravating their social problems) or in river beds while they seek what some have claimed to be greater opportunity. Concentrating populations, particularly in shared poverty, adds to social and psychic tensions. In many cases, any improvements to the disease profile from better access to health care is eroded by increased death and injury from accidents, fighting, and drug and alcohol abuse and "lifestyle" diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. Such problems also exist on outstations, but, rarely on that scale: generally, diet there is better, tensions lower, and drug and alcohol abuse much less of a problem, if it exists at all. Likewise, the tendency of the concentrators is to be never satisfied with the concentration one achieves. Aborigines rounded up to, say, a 1000-strong Yuendumu, are soon deplored as also deliberately living away from work opportunities. Someone will argue that they should be forced to go to Alice Springs, or Adelaide where work may be available, or taken off the dole. Actually, there is little enough work for unskilled people anywhere (though it could be remarked that the Aboriginal unemployed in most settlements have attended more training and work-ready courses than they have had hot breakfasts). Once one does the social accounts, the cost, to government, of helping people in settlements is about a fifth, per capita, of forcing them into regional centres, itself about a fifth of the cost of sustaining them in capital cities. I am always somewhat bemused by the earnestness of those who insist that government cannot be required to subsidise "lifestyle" decisions, but seem fixated on the lot of remote Aboriginal people living frugally among their families on their own land. When a small and impoverished rural township in south east Queensland is flooded out, or a bushfire ravages a small hamlet in Victoria, Australians reach generously into their pockets to help victims rebuild their lives, as often as not in local economies where there was already considerable social dysfunction and little work. No one ever suggests that we "move on" from our romantic dreams, and force such lifestyle tree changers to go to the cities. If those of economistic bent were being consistent in their claim of a right to penalise "poor" lifestyles, they might start more profitably (from the public purse's point of view) on those who smoke, who eat vast quantities of sugar or hamburger, or who play professional football, or cycle, and cost millions for orthopaedics, a good deal of which is at taxpayer expense. Like many thousands of Australians I grew up in rural Australia, far from ready access to schools. I do not complain that I suffered because of this – indeed even then, government assisted, if in a paltry way compared with now, with the costs of a boarding school education. But no one suggested that farmers and graziers had made a lifestyle choice which deprived them of the right to government assistance. Tony Abbott, who is actually seriously interested in Aboriginal affairs, if almost completely without any insights or solutions, has made more than an unfortunate choice of words in criticising people for "lifestyle" decisions. But he may also be seriously wrong in the economic argument about what best protects the fiscus.

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