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This where food vouchers/card for food only might stop this sought if usage.
This where food vouchers/card for food only might stop this sought if usage.An interesting article, that highlights the issues remote towns have, it's a complex problem and there are no easy answers.
Now there is an alcohol ban, it becomes expensive as booze runners bring it in, now meths becomes the drug of choice.
Cheaper than alcohol and marijuana, meth is taking a toll on this small town
Methylamphetamine is taking a toll on the central Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing. It is a story playing out across Australia's top end.www.abc.net.au
The welfare card was stopped, which limited how much cash could be used on anything, other than food and essentials.This where food vouchers/card for food only might stop this sought if usage.
Pity, as it would be the only way to control drug usage I would think.The welfare card was stopped, which limited how much cash could be used on anything, other than food and essentials.
I do know the welfare card did work, with someone close to me, it enabled them to get off drugs and save for a car and get a job, unfortunately the wagon has lost a wheel and they are in the ditch again.Pity, as it would be the only way to control drug usage I would think.
But where there is a means, there is a way, I guess.
@sptrawler Sadly it would appear that mostly those that enjoy the drug life tend to stay that way. Once hooked...........I do know the welfare card did work, with someone close to me, it enabled them to get off drugs and save for a car and get a job, unfortunately the wagon has lost a wheel and they are in the ditch again.
Such is life as some would say.
Perhaps the Govt of the day should look at the American way Welfare Stamps, food and necessities only.The welfare card was stopped, which limited how much cash could be used on anything, other than food and essentials.
I personally don't think America is anything to aspire to, from what I've seen of it, the poverty levels are shocking.Perhaps the Govt of the day should look at the American way Welfare Stamps, food and necessities only.
Roll out direct instruction to all classrooms, says Indigenous leader Noel Pearson
Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has demanded that all schools adopt direct instruction in classrooms and blasted education leaders for ignoring the reform for 20 years.
Mr Pearson said it was “bittersweet‘’ to see Catholic schools improve reading and mathematics results through the direct instruction method – also known as explicit teaching – after he lobbied for two decades to have it mandated in public schools.
Drawing the link between school failure and rising rates of youth crime, the prominent Aboriginal lawyer and activist said direct instruction would help First Nations students catch up with kids living in cities.
“What do you think is driving the youth justice problem with Indigenous kids? Failure to read,” he told The Australian.
Mr Pearson said it was “bittersweet” for him to see Catholic schools improve literacy results after they embraced direct instruction just four years ago.
“You just add water and the kids come good – the plant grows,” he said of the old-school, teacher-led, step-by-step teaching method.
“Of course, in remote schools you’ve got to fix all the other problems like teacher retention, teacher accommodation, training of teachers.
“But if you don’t get the instruction right, you’re going to fail anyway.”
The Cape York Institute leader’s call came as both the federal government and the opposition called for explicit teaching in every classroom.
But Mr Pearson said the political support for explicit instruction has “come 20 years too late’’.
“It still has not dawned on the commonwealth how to solve the problem of distributing billions of dollars to the states and territories without them ever heeding the evidence (of how children learn),’’ he said.
“That explains why Australian schools have fallen further and further behind notwithstanding the increase in funding. You know, we are just completely clueless.’’
One in three Australian children failed to meet baseline standards in this year’s NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy) – including 400,000 students who have fallen so far behind they require catch-up tutoring.
Figures show Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are four times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be failing in basic reading, writing and mathematics.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has included explicit instruction methods in his 10-year Better and Fairer Schooling Agreement.
But NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are refusing to sign up unless he doubles the commonwealth’s offer of $16bn in extra funding.
Mr Clare said that “we know evidence-based teaching practices like this work’’.
“That’s why I’ve got $16bn on the table that’s tied to practical reforms like this – to fix the funding of our public schools and turn around the drop in the number of young people finishing high school,’’ he said. Federal opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said Mr Clare had promised to drive evidence-based teaching “but continues to be caught up in a school funding war’’.
“Labor’s failure to conclude agreements with four states puts at risk increased funding and critical reforms for more than 80 per cent of government schools,’’ she said.
Senator Henderson also called for a simpler national curriculum, which the former Coalition government had endorsed in 2022.
“Labor is failing to listen to many educators who say the national curriculum is ‘impossible to teach’,’’ she said.
“Labor’s proposed school reforms do not address classroom behaviour and teacher safety or the need to adopt a concise, knowledge-rich national curriculum.’’
The Australian Education Union blamed poor NAPLAN results on the failure of governments to give public schools all the needs-based “Gonski funding” that was recommended 13 years ago in a review led by business leader David Gonski.
AEU president Correna Haythorpe said underfunding was “leading to entrenched disadvantaged and educational segregation in Australia’’.
“We cannot close achievement gaps without closing resources gaps,’’ she said. But a rival union, the Teachers Professional Association of Australia, said the results highlighted the difference between schools using modern teaching techniques, such as student-directed learning, and those using the “tried-and-true direct instruction approach’’.
TPAA national secretary Edward Schuller said that fresh NAPLAN data proving the success of direct instruction in 56 Catholic schools in Canberra and Goulburn is the “death knell of student-led learning’’.
“We hear too much about 21st-century skills in this country and have completely neglected the foundational basics that all learning is dependent on – reading, writing and arithmetic,’’ he said.
Mr Schuller said too many schools were still expecting students to “lead their own learning and build on key skills that simply aren’t there to begin with’’.
He said the achievement gap between private and government-run schools was growing wider.
“It’s critically important to have the autonomy and authority to implement direct instruction and cut through the clutter of the curriculum,’’ Mr Schuller said.
Mr Pearson praised Ross Fox, the director of Catholic Education for the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, for mandating explicit instruction in 56 schools through the Catalyst reform program in 2020.
“He is the one system leader who has carried this instructional reform and that’s what’s missing across the country,’’ Mr Pearson said.
“Where are the system leaders who are carrying the banner of effective instruction?’’
First Aboriginal treasurer Ben Wyatt says it’s time to move on from voice, treaty and truth
The nation’s first Aboriginal treasurer and federal cabinet minister have each proposed a path to end the post-referendum standstill in Indigenous policymaking, saying that it is time to move on from the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Yamatji man Ben Wyatt, who made history when he was appointed Western Australian treasurer in the McGowan Labor government, writes in The Weekend Australian that the failure of the voice referendum has put Indigenous policy at risk of being “owned by the far left”. He says that this sees Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as permanent victims.
Mr Wyatt’s uncle, Ken Wyatt – whose appointment as Indigenous Australians minister in the Morrison government was also a first – warns the Indigenous organisations that signed up as partners in the Closing the Gap agreement four years ago are responsible for results, just as bureaucracies and governments are.
Ben Wyatt, a director of resource giants Rio Tinto and Woodside Energy, favours a renewed focus on economic empowerment of Indigenous Australians, in part because it is a policy direction on which left and right can agree.
“Right now, it is almost impossible to predict how our nation might arrive at some form of consensus when it comes to Aboriginal Affairs,” Ben Wyatt said.
“The direction of policy travel was highly dependent on the successful outcome of the referendum on constitutional recognition. Many eggs were placed in the pot of an Aboriginal voice. The comprehensive rejection of the referendum and, by implication, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, has left the commonwealth government bureaucracy frozen and uncertain, and the national Aboriginal leadership disappointed, angry, bitter and confused.”
But in a pre-election warning to Anthony Albanese, Uluru architect Megan Davis says “nothing is settled in this country” and no prime minister should be released from addressing the original grievance of dispossession. Professor Davis, who continues to lead a grassroots movement towards a form of constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, says it is dangerous to dismiss the 6.2 million voters who said yes to an Indigenous voice at the referendum in October 2023.
While Mr Albanese pledged in his 2022 victory speech that he was committed to implementing all three elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Ben Wyatt believes Aboriginal Australia must now free him from any obligation to do this. This is because the emphatic rejection of a voice – the first plank of Uluru – has clear political implications for the treaty and truth-telling that were to follow.
“Much of the national Aboriginal leadership still clings to statements made by the Prime Minister on election night, when that leadership should understand the raw politics of what the referendum did to those statements,” he said.
“Australia has voted on a different direction and the PM should be released to develop a new agenda, and he needs to be confident to be bold in what that might look like. This is difficult for Aboriginal Australia as much was tied to the three elements of Uluru – voice, treaty, truth.
“I need to be blunt, but certainly not disrespectful; those three words will not be part of the national Aboriginal affairs policy development in the coming decade. This is the politics of a failed referendum.
“The great danger is that, without leadership from the mainstream political parties, Aboriginal policy gets owned and marginalised by the far left – attached to the strange, fringe politics of the unachievable.
“I have spent three decades of my life fighting this marginalisation and its drift back into the world of the far left, that seek to define Aboriginality into permanent victims and, therefore, poverty, is extremely dangerous.
“Similarly, the far right have no interest in claiming the space, there is no intellectual energy in even thinking about the Aboriginal question because Aboriginality itself is rejected – for the far right history ended the moment the British flag arrived.
“The danger of the current drift is that it leaves victories, hard won over previous decades, vulnerable to attack and wind-back – witness the increasing push against even those areas of previously settled common ground such as the welcome to country or validity of the Aboriginal flag as a flag of national identity.”
Ken Wyatt, whose support for the voice put him at odds with several senior Liberal partyroom colleagues, told The Weekend Australian “the future of Aboriginal affairs in Australia post the voice referendum outcome should ideally balance economic development and wealth creation with ongoing efforts to achieve Closing the Gap targets”.
“Both approaches are interconnected and essential for sustainable progress, and neither should be pursued in isolation,” he said.
As the Albanese government consults on a framework for Indigenous economic development, Ken Wyatt says developing and implementing an economic strategy is not about governments funding Aboriginal businesses indefinitely. He favours a seeding grant approach over permanent government funding.
He also says that as Australia seeks to reduce the disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, Aboriginal organisations must be as answerable as government. “All levels of government, including their agencies, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, must be held accountable for their endeavours to close the gaps in the lives of First Nations people,” Ken Wyatt said.
Pat Turner, who oversees the Closing the Gap agreement with government in her role as Coalition of Peaks lead convener, says there is a consensus and way forward set out in the Closing the Gap agreement and its 17 targets for reduced disparity.
Just five of the targets are on track to be met by the agreement’s end in 2030.
“We will be working hard to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations across the country share in decisions with government on what is needed to support communities’ economic aspirations,” Ms Turner said.
The lack of progress under the recast Closing the Gap agreement has led the Productivity Commission to strongly criticise the states and the NT for failing to share decisions with Indigenous communities, as they signed up to do in 2020. These shared decisions were intended to be a new way of governing that draws on local knowledge about what works and what has failed in the past. However, the PC has found it is business as usual in bureaucracies.
Some Indigenous leaders say governments and their bureaucracies will never fully comply with promises to consult or share decisions with Indigenous communities unless they have to. Voice proponents say this was the point of a constitutionally enshrined voice; to compel the state to consult.
It's a real pity that Ben Wyatt didn't transition into Federal Politics.Ben Wyatt is someone the Government of the day should be listening to, a very smart and savvy guy.
The problem is , he is setting himself up to be attacked by the left and the media, as happens with anyone else who speaks sense on the subject.
He wasn't stupid and there is no upside to trying to be a voice of reason in this debate, what he said in today's article makes perfect sense, help them become self reliant rather than welfare dependant.It's a real pity that Ben Wyatt didn't transition into Federal Politics.
He had so much to offer.
His Uncle who was on the other side of the political fence was our Federal Member for some time here in WA.
A complete gentleman .
He wasn't stupid and there is no upside to trying to be a voice of reason in this debate, what he said in today's article makes perfect sense, help them become self reliant rather than welfare dependant.
Jacinta Price has found out that isn't what the drivers want, it sounds to me that they want autonomous control of the funds and that wont work IMO.
The improvement has to come from putting the funding in the bottom to build the base, not pour it into the top and hope it filters down.
Just my opinion and I will cop some abuse for it.
Too many on the gravy train, causing the wheels to fall off, before it leaves Canberra City limits.
= ?The money is not the issue anymore, it’s the land and resources and power of parliament that matters.
@sptrawler My God that Indigenous gravy train is longer and heavier than an ore train coming out of the Pilbara.He wasn't stupid and there is no upside to trying to be a voice of reason in this debate, what he said in today's article makes perfect sense, help them become self reliant rather than welfare dependant.
Jacinta Price has found out that isn't what the drivers want, it sounds to me that they want autonomous control of the funds and that wont work IMO.
The improvement has to come from putting the funding in the bottom to build the base, not pour it into the top and hope it filters down.
Just my opinion and I will cop some abuse for it.
Too many on the gravy train, causing the wheels to fall off, before it leaves Canberra City limits.
I thought that was what I said, the money can't come from the top down, it needs to be focused on a bottom up ideology, where the money and outcomes can be measured.@sptrawler My God that Indigenous gravy train is longer and heavier than an ore train coming out of the Pilbara.
I can't see how letting the Indigenous groups have total control of the billions of dollars that is "gifted" to them every year. Top, middle or bottom, waste is guaranteed.
It needs and should have checks and balances in place one a certain amount has been spent so it can be proven that the fat cats driving the loco are bereft of receiving the bulk of the spend.
There was an article on the computer news earler, but seems to have disappeared into the ether.
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