Sob story

Read one of the usual sob stories in the paper this morning (can't find a link) - a charity was moaning that poor families were coming to it for assistance with power bills of thousands of dollars, and it couldn't offer them more than $30 etc etc.

We're a family of 5 in an old house that is woeful when it comes to thermal efficiency. We have the usual slew of appliances and gadgets, yet our last power bill was $350. Our worst ever (over winter) just tipped over $1,000 - and that was a big shock (no pun intended).

I just don't get how a family that is supposedly poor in the first place can run up huge power bills. If you're poor, how do you afford all those appliances that chew up all that power? Are they complaining that they can't pay a $1,000 power bill just a few months after buying a $2,500 plasma TV? Or after installing air conditioning?

Here's the thing - if you're poor, life is probably going to be uncomfortable. That is part and parcel of being poor. You'll have to do without a few things, like having a huge TV and running an air conditioner 24x7. You'll have to put an extra jumper on in winter. If you want to be more comfortable, then you need to go out and earn more money (or get a job in the first place). That means working harder, moving to a place with better jobs or getting skilled up.

We had to make a lot of changes to get our power bill down to $350 (and they didn't involve ripping the taxpayers off by installing solar panels). They were simple things like hanging washing out to dry instead of being lazy and using the dryer, using the air conditioner only when it's really bloody hot and laying off the heater when it's cool. We've sacrificed a bit of ease and comfort for a smaller power bill. If we can do that, I don't see why we should have to cough up to cover the power bills of those that are too lazy or too stupid to do the same. They won't learn a bloody thing if we keep giving them handouts every time they stuff their life up. All they'll learn is that they can do incredibly silly things, and the state will always bail them out.

Sort of like the Queensland government.....

Different religious groups, poverty, and their dependence on the state

The Australian ran a story on Australia's Muslim population yesterday. A few paragraphs stood out for me, and they related to education (or lack thereof) and poverty. In particular, a Muslim spokesman was complaining about the awful condition of state schools in Muslim areas.

But Dandan is far from sanguine about the projected near doubling of Muslim numbers.

"That is of great concern to us because we don't have the facilities and the infrastructure, and the government is not supporting us," he says.

The Muslim community has plenty on its plate already: intergenerational poverty, undereducation and unemployment, a pressing need for more social, welfare and aged-care services, a siege mentality fostered by a suspicious public and often hostile news media, close attention from the police and security agencies and the problem of pockets of religious extremism.

Dandan claims Muslim communities have been abandoned politically, particularly in southwest Sydney, where they happen to live in electorates safely held by the Labor Party.

"We're a growing community, so where are the services? Our youth get no services, our elderly no services, employment, no service, hospitals atrocious, our schools - don't even talk about it, go and have a look at our schools. Are we not getting the services because we're Muslim or because these are safe Labor seats?"

A second set of statistics underscores his complaints, showing that despite numerous success stories such as that of Dandan, who runs a multimillion-dollar IT security firm, Muslims overall remain one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia.

The figures are in a 2009 report by the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies, Social and Economic Conditions of Australian Muslims: Implications for Social Inclusion.

On the upside, it found that education-wise Muslims are high achievers: 21 per cent of Muslim males have a university degree, compared with 15 per cent of non-Muslims. But this doesn't translate into financial rewards, apparently because of language barriers, discrimination and non-recognition of qualifications obtained abroad. Unemployment among Muslims is two to four times the rates among other Australians. Twice as many Muslims have no income. Only 15 per cent own their own homes, compared with one-third of other Australians. Twenty-six per cent of Muslim teenagers are unemployed, against 14 per cent of non-Muslims. And, shockingly, 40 per cent of Muslim children live in poverty, almost three times the national average.

The report found Australian Muslims are more vulnerable to multigenerational endemic poverty, "thus making poverty a way of life". This in turn creates alienation from mainstream society, leading to higher rates of delinquency, crime, imprisonment and potentially resort to religious extremism.

These issues require urgent attention, the report advised. But, Dandan says, "The politicians don't care, they literally don't care." He cites an elaborate new youth centre built next to the Lakemba mosque, which took the local community 13 years to build because it received zero assistance from government.

The first thing that struck me was this was an extended rant about the failure of the state to provide services and infrastructure - which is nothing new in NSW - but what really struck me was the mindset of almost total dependence on the state. In all of this, I didn't see a single spark of, "Look, we need this stuff - let's get together and raise some money and do it for ourselves". It's all, "Let's go and ask the government for a cheque".

Since one big problem appears to be education, and the state of the state education system, I thought I'd have a look into that. So I did a bit of searching for two statistics - the proportion of Muslim kids in the state system vs the proportion of Jewish kids in the state system. I decided to use the Jews as a comparison as they are generally renowned for their very hard headed approach to education, and they're a pretty successful mob in general.

In NSW, the state system educates 66-67% of all kids.

Until a few years ago, 91% of Muslim kids were in the state system. That has dropped to 79% thanks to the opening of a dozen or so Islamic schools. Here are two interesting links regarding Muslim schools.

Only 25% of Jewish kids attend a state primary school, rising to 45% in high school.

So if we accept that education is a vital part of turning into a good, productive citizen, what are we to make of the correlation between the problems in the Muslim community and their high dependence on state education, versus the success of the Jewish community and their low dependence on state education?

If the lousy condition of state education is part of the cause of the problems for the Muslim community (high unemployment, intergenerational poverty, language barriers etc), then we should be pushing hard as hell for the opening of a lot more private Islamic schools, and trying to get 30-40% of Muslim kids into them. Hell, why not be like the Jews and go for 75%?

I think the Muslims have already figured that out for themselves. The Muslim private school sector is one of the fastest growing in Australia. Like many of us, they are simply fleeing in horror from a lousy state education system, and they realise that a good education is vital for their kid's future. The current generation might be a bit of a mess, but if we can give the next generation a great education, most of these integration problems might go away. Yes, it's strange to think that educating kids in an Islamic school will lead to great integration, vs putting them into a secular sink school - but why shouldn't it? 75% of Jews start of in a Jewish school - do they have a problem with the rest of Australia?

Murder, assault and imprisonment in the NT

A slightly more depressing topic for today. I read in the paper last week that the rate at which Aboriginals are imprisoned in the NT is something like 8 times that of the rest of the population. I thought I'd do a bit more digging. As Professor Sumner Miller used to say, "Why is it so?"

To start with - the Bureau of Statistics and an article on Indigenous People's experience of crime and justice in the NT.

Indigenous people comprise about 30% of the NT's population. In 2008 Indigenous people had higher victimisation rates than non-Indigenous people for all selected personal offences excluding robbery in the NT.

There were 5,261 victims of assault in the NT; of these, 59% (3,110 victims) were Indigenous and 34% (1,795 victims) were non-Indigenous. The assault victimisation rate for Indigenous persons was more than four times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous persons at 4,942 Indigenous victims per 100,000 Indigenous persons compared with 1,143 non-Indigenous victims per 100,000 non-Indigenous persons.

Of the 372 victims of sexual assault, 50% (186 victims) were Indigenous and 38% (143 victims) were non-Indigenous. Indigenous people in the NT had a sexual assault victimisation rate that was more than three times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous people at 296 Indigenous victims per 100,000 Indigenous persons compared with 91 non-Indigenous victims per 100,000 non-Indigenous persons.

Indigenous people comprised 65% (17 victims) of the 26 victims of homicide and related offences in the NT, while 23% (6 victims) were non-Indigenous. The homicide and related offences victimisation rate for Indigenous persons was 27 Indigenous victims per 100,000 Indigenous persons, which was about seven times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous persons at four victims per 100,000 non-Indigenous persons.

In contrast, 7% (8 victims) of the 111 robbery victims in the NT were Indigenous while 81% (90 victims) were non-Indigenous. The robbery victimisation rate for Indigenous persons was about one-quarter of the rate recorded by non-Indigenous people at 13 Indigenous victims per 100,000 Indigenous persons compared with 57 non-Indigenous victims per 100,000 non-Indigenous persons.

In short, if you are indigenous and live in the NT, you are much more likely to be killed, beaten or raped than any other group. And I mean much more likely.

Doesn't sound good.

So, to the next question - who is doing all the bashing, killing and raping?

The report also has some info on the prison population:

The NT's prison population increased by 11% (from 953 to 1,056) from 30 June 2008 to 30 June 2009, compared with a 6% increase nationally. At 30 June 2009 about four in five prisoners in the NT were Indigenous (82%), the highest proportion of Indigenous prisoners of any state or territory.

At 30 June 2009 the NT continued to have the highest crude imprisonment rate in Australia at 658 prisoners per 100,000 adult population, almost four times higher than Australia's overall rate of 175 prisoners per 100,000 adult population.

The age standardised imprisonment rate for the NT's Indigenous population at 30 June 2009 was 1,700 Indigenous prisoners per 100,000 adult Indigenous people. The equivalent rate for the NT's non-Indigenous population was 153 non-Indigenous prisoners per 100,000 adult non-Indigenous population. This represented an age standardised rate of imprisonment for the NT's Indigenous population that was 11 times higher than the rate for its non-Indigenous population.

I found a much more detailed report on the NT's Justice site - the Correctional Services Annual Statistics. It makes for rather depressing reading. The table on page 24 is worth trawling through - the stats are quite shocking. It shows the sentence for each type of crime, and breaks it down into indigenous and all.

Here are the stats on prisoners in 2008-2009:

Murder

4 indigenous, 0 other

Manslaughter

10 indigenous, 2 other

Acts intended to cause injury

Indigenous 935, other 64

Sexual assault

Indigenous 21, other 14

Unlawful entry with intent (break and enter)

Indigenous 117, other 13

About the only major stat where the numbers are reversed is for drug crime:

Illicit drug offences

Indigenous 17, other 34

Interestingly, most of the assault cases carried a sentence of 6 months or less:

0-1 months - 92

1-3 months - 278

3-6 months - 321

6-12 months - 132

1-5 years - 112

If you want to read about some of these cases, you can find all the Supreme Court sentencing decisions here, as well as the sentencing remarks. It's worth having a quick read through those some to get a flavour for the sort of crimes being committed.

eg, The Queen vs Luke Corbett or the Queen vs Roland Djmiti Barrawanga. Here's some detail from the last case:

HIS HONOUR: Roland Djimiti Barrawanga, the offender, has pleaded guilty to causing serious harm to Ruby Blake contrary to s 181 of the Criminal Code. The maximum penalty for this offence is imprisonment for 14 years.

The offender is an Aboriginal man who was born on Elcho Island on

1 January 1973. He is 38 years of age. He grew up at Galiwinku on Elcho Island where he attended school for a period of time. He did not attend high school and he cannot read or write. He can speak a little bit of English.

The offender has not been able to obtain a lot of meaningful employment over the years. He has done some work under the Community Development Employment Program at Galiwinku and Nhulunbuy. He also did some work with his wife as a tour guide on the Cox Peninsula. The offender has not done very much work at all since 1994.

The offender is a good musician. He is a very good didgeridoo player. He makes his own didgeridoos.

The offender is married. His wife is the victim of his crime.

The offender has a criminal record. His criminal record extends for three pages. Of relevance, he has only been convicted of one previous crime of violence. In 2007 he assaulted the same victim by striking her twice with his hand to her face and head. The offender committed no offences between 10 September 1999 and 31 December 2007 and he committed no offences between 31 December 2007 and 4 August 2010 when he committed the crime for which he is to be sentenced today.

The facts of the offending are as follows:

The offender and Ruby Blake were in a domestic relationship from 2000 until the time the offender was incarcerated.

On Wednesday 4 August 2010, the offender was with the victim and her mother drinking alcohol at a bush camp in Karama. The offender consumed an unknown quantity of moselle and both he and the victim got drunk. Some time later the victim accidentally fell on the offender's tent. This caused the offender to pick up a didgeridoo and hit the victim while she was on the ground.

The offender hit the victim once on each arm with force. The offender then kicked the victim once in the stomach.

After the assault, the victim went to the Karama shops to get help. Police were called and attended a short time later.

The victim was taken to Royal Darwin Hospital by ambulance for treatment. She suffered bad fractures to her left arm and her right arm and she had to undergo surgery in hospital on 7 August 2010. After the operation there were problems with the injury to her left arm because the injury became infected and she had to go back to theatre on 14 August 2010 for further treatment.

If no medical treatment was received, the victim would have suffered longstanding and significant functional problems with her left upper arm.

Why am I bothering with this?

Because the Intervention in the NT copped a lot of flak when it was started. If the critics had bothered to look at the prison stats, or the victims of crime stats, or had read a few sentencing reports, they might have gained an understanding as to why the government of the day was reduced to undertaking such desperate measures. Webdiary for instance gave it the usual sneering approach.

The sad fact is that NT prisons are full of Aboriginal males who have raped, beaten or murdered mainly Aboriginal women. I am not fond of people saying, "Something must be done", and then doing nothing. Something has been done - whether it works is another matter.