Mental Health biggest problem in Aboriginal communities

Aboriginal leaders should be guiding the national summit on the violence in Indigenous communities, rather than being excluded from it by Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, said Aboriginal Elder and Health Liaison Officer, Diana Schreider.

Ms Schreider, spends her days dealing face to face with the mental health issues which are at the heart of the violence and substance abuse plaguing Aboriginal communities and is hugely disappointed by the exclusion of Aboriginal leaders from the proposed summit.

“We should have aboriginal leaders going in to problem communities with
non-aboriginal backup, not the other way around” said Ms Schreiber.

Ms Schreider tried to draw attention to the issue of abuse in Aboriginal communities fifteen years ago, and feels the blind eye turned by authorities is “like sitting watching some one get raped”.

“No matter who you are there is no excuse, violence is not in our culture, it is not men’s business, it is the result of depression and alcohol” she said.

The focus on policing was important Ms Schreider felt, however, education, community self esteem and prohibition of alcohol was also part of the solution to the violence.

The media turned its focus on the abuse in Aboriginal communities last week when crown prosecutor for the Northern Territory, Nanette Rogers, publicly voiced her worries about how the problems were being addressed.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin was initially reluctant to attend the summit claiming that the Federal Government did not show commitment to previous projects successfully tackling community violence.

In reaction to criticism of his decision to dismiss input directly from the Aboriginal community from the national summit Mr Brough said "Indigenous people have spoken, they have told us what they need. We now, as politicians and as people who run the judicial systems, are the ones who have to step up".

The World Cup debate

“I wana jump in the stadium full of Australians”
Lyrics form the song ‘Green and Gold’, winner of SBS competition: 'A song for the Socceroos'.

Just 19 days from the start of Australia’s second appearance in the World Cup, debate continues over whether the language of football will unite or divide Australians.

Sports and social commentators have revealed conflicting views
in the run up to the World Cup.

Journalist from The Australian, Greg Baum, ignited debate following the Socceroos World Cup Qualifier against Uraguay in November last year, by drawing the link:

“Australians mass with their flags and their anthem at Stadium Australia and
howl at those who are not like us, then at Cronulla Australians mass with their
flags and their anthems and howl at those who are not like us. The comparison is
unavoidable and disturbing”, Mr. Baum reported.

“It might be coincidence that the riots in Cronulla followed so soon after the World Cup qualifier, but it might not”, he said.

Ethnic rivalry has been a long standing problem in Australian Soccer leagues, exemplified last March when violence between Croatian and Serbian supporters of Sydney United and the Bonnyrigg White Eagles broke out at Edensor Park.

One Hundred police attended the disturbance and two were injured in a fight which involved 50 fans.

Football Federation of Australia Chief Executive, John O'Neill said at the time "we'll do whatever we need to do to remedy that problem".

In a recent interview conducted by George Negus on SBS radio Tony Pignata, chief executive of Football Federation Victoria, said “ I think we have turned a corner at a national level, now we have Italians, Greeks, Serbians and Croats sitting next to each other supporting Melbourne Victory”

“At a local level there is some more work to do, it is an education process where we must get across that our game is not to be used for political avenue”, said Mr Pignata.

Founder of the on-line resource for newly arrived immigrants http://www.newcommersnetwork.com.au/, Sue Ellson, commented on the potential of the Socceroos World Cup fame “some research conducted in 2004 showed people in Australia do connect through sport more than other countries”

Sydney's Sudanese Community should SAIL

“We wish that there was room in this country for all the children who are
hurt by war. We wish they could all live here in Australia with us” –
-
Tina, Sudanese refugee living in Melbourne, and member of the Sudanese
Australian Integrated Learning program.

NSW receives the majority of Australia's Sudanese refugees but lags behind Melbourne in active community intergration.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that since 1996 the Sudanese community has been and continues to be the fastest growing ethnic community in Australia.

This growth is sure to continue at a time when two of the three warring parties in Sudan’s conflict cursed region of Darfur have refused to sign a peace plan based on two years of negotiations.

The latest Federal government distribution by State Census published on the Department of Immigration’s website: http://www.immi.gov.au/statistics/stat_info/comm_summ/textversion/sudan.htm States that New South Wales has the largest number of Sudan-born residents.

Sudanese Australian Intergrated Learning or SAIL, a successful educational support system for Sudanese refugees has untill now been unique to Melbounre.

Co founder, Matthew Albert, visited Sydney this week to investigate the possibility of establishing SAIL in Sydney.

SAIL began with students, Anna Grace Hopkins and Matthew Albert, who offered their services as English tutors to a Sudanese family in need.

Since its foundation in 2001 the program has developed and gained strength, students, tutors and positive affirmation from all corners of the community.

SAIL currently operates out of three community centres in Melbourne’s western suburbs and although still based on language, learning feels more like a mass exercise in cross cultural companionship.

A dilapidated church in Footscray is the site of a Saturday morning SAIL meeting.

Parking is an impossibility as people pour in to greet each other in a manor which suggests friendship rather than student teacher relationships.

Confident teenagers catch up on a week apart and younger siblings play and laugh in a way that allows the onlooker to forget about the painfully recent atrocities they may never talk about.

The day’s activities are a loosely based around a schedule but are guided by individual students and tutors synchronizing only for a lunch time feast provided by the SAIL team.

There is a sense of mutual respect as students look to their tutors for guidance while tutors are visibly in ore of the young faces of the Sudanese conflict in which over 180, 000 lives have been lost.

“I sometimes believe that I get more out of the experience than the kids, but I know at the end of the day, when my two girls give me a thankyou hug that they also enjoy the time” said SAIL volunteer, Sharon.

“Volunteering at Sail may prove addictive” joked Ben, another regular member of the SAIL team.

The SAIL website http://home.vicnet.net.au/~sail/ claims “SAIL maintains a regular voluntary staff of 190 giving people, who tutor, mentor, prepare lunch, maintain the library, administer the Program and assist the Sudanese community in any other way they can”

Looking For Harmony

Cronulla’s harmony day fell short of a 'family festival'

On Sunday the 26th of March, over three months after Cronulla was the scene of racial conflict, the beach side suburb planned to celebrate Harmony Day, as part of the national campaign to promote the benefits of multiculturalism.

This opportunity to heal the scars of December’s riots and showcase the initiatives set up to promote community cohesion, unfortunately was not fully realized.

A walk along Cronulla beach and through the central shopping area, on Sunday the 26th, gave no signs of a day of celebration. Residents and business owners were unaware of the event. Chi Thai, the owner of a popular café in Cronulla Mall, said on Sunday “I didn’t know about it, I read the newspapers everyday, but usually we receive a letter from the council”.

A life guard and member of North Cronulla Life Saving Club, Luke, said prior to Sunday the 26th “I don’t think there will be many people here, it hasn’t been very well publisized’

The Leader listed events a week prior to the day, including entertainment ,dance, food , and a women's walk for harmony, emphasizing the timeliness of the event for this area.

Aboriginal elder and community member, Diane Schreiber, who made a welcome speech on Sunday said she aimed to “empower women, in their role to harmonize the community”. Regrettably, many in the community went about their day oblivious of this important message.

Extremism addressed, racism left to fester

Five months after last year's Cronulla riots ASIO continues investigations into extremist involvement in the violence.

Meanwhile everyday racism remains a problem in the Beach side suburb.

Director General of Australian Security Intelligence organization (ASIO), Paul O'Sullivan, announced last week that investigations into extremists involved in the violence which shook Sydney's beaches in December 2005 was still in progress, as ASIO considered these groups to be a "threat to Australian Security".

The display of overt racism at Cronulla beach on the 11th of December 2005 seemed a comfortable climate for members of the independent division of the Australia First Party, the Patriotic Youth League (PYL).

The youth face of the Australian extreme right, crept out from an underworld of poster campaigns, secret meetings, and cryptic websites onto the Cronulla streets and saw their agenda making the headlines.

Resembling many residents that day, the PYL were between the ages 13 to 26, wrapped in the Australian flag and identifiable only by t-shirts which sported the message:

"Your teachers are Lying to you, multiculturallism is anti-Australian"

The anti racist website http://www.fightdemback.com claims the PYL have been "heavily mentored" by Australian First representative and convicted criminal, Dr Jim Saleam(pictured left), who said the race based attacks on beach goers at Cronulla, including women "could not be condemned".

The PYL website claims December 11th was a valuable recruitment day and Dr Saleam claimed "From our point of view it was a rampaging success"

Dr Saleam said he had hoped to spread ideas at Cronulla such as "There is no such thing as a Muslim-Australian"

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock did not think extremists were to blame for the violence.

"There are groups of that character-- they're not large -- and in relation to what happened in Cronulla, clearly they were not, as I understand it, the instigators or the organizers of it," he said.

Following the riots NSW Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, emphasized the role of the community in preventing young men from being drawn into groups with radical beliefs.

A Cronulla resident on the ABC documentary Riot And Revenge on Wednesday, March 15, denied that external right wing groups, like PYL hijacked their cause but rather had a "right to be there".

Dr Kevin Dunn, a Geographer from the University of New South Wales, who recently completed a study on racism faced by Muslim-Australians http://www.bees.unsw.edu.au/school/staff/Dunn/racism.html said:

"I would stress that I think that it is ordinary intolerance that is a bigger potential problem than the extremists"

Within the Cronulla area development of "cross-cultural initiatives that generate positive contact are an important component of the anti-racism mix" said Dr Dunn.

Government funding was awarded to the Sutherland Shire Council and Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) to promote social cohesion in the area, five months on these projects are still in the planning stages.

The head of Communications at SLSA, Sean O'Connell said this week "we hope to change the face of surf life saving but these things take time, there won't be anything visible for a couple of months, we are still in the recruitment stages"

This week in Cronulla pub and backdrop to much of the violence at the end of last year, Northies, there was a show of aggression toward Islamic boxer, Anthony Mundine, explained by Cronulla resident, Paul as "cos they don't want him to win cos he is Muslim and Muslims don't fit into out culture".

2006 Budget backs anti racism

This month the 2006 Budget revealed funding for a national anti-racism program amongst criticism that the John Howard and Peter Costello leadership team is painting an increasingly exclusionary picture of national identity.

The Department of Immigration claims the support given in the recent Budget to ‘Living in Harmony Community grants’, one of three national initiatives under the Living in Harmony campaign, “demonstrates the Australian Government's serious commitment to promoting community harmony and to addressing issues of racism in Australia”

This boost for racial relations coincides with the submission of a set of proposals to the Federal Government aiming to prevent racism towards the Islamic community.

The proposal was a product of the Muslim Youth Summit which took place last December forming part of the Howard Government’s national action plan to prevent Islamic extremism following the London Bombings last July.

Former Parliamentary Secretary for children and youth affairs, Sussan Ley, said “The Muslim Youth Summit is an acknowledgement of the contributions that young Muslims are making to our communities and an opportunity for young Muslims to continue to have a voice in the community”

The proposals which include police involvement in Islamic community sports, media regulation in regard to the perceptions of Muslims, an anti-discriminatory phone line and a television campaign are currently being accessed by the government.

Since last year’s Muslim youth Summit, Howard and Costello have infuriated many sections of society with their exclusionary comments on Australian Citizenship, drawing particular attention to the Islamic community.

John Howard said in February of this year some of the Islamic community is "utterly antagonistic to our kind of society".

This sentiment was supported by Peter Costello in the same week with the comparison:
"Before entering a mosque visitors are asked to take off their shoes. This is a sign of respect. If you have a strong objection to walking in your socks don't enter the mosque. Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objection to those values don't come to Australia."

Expert in political theory and speechwriter for former premier Bob Carr, Tom Soutphommasane, said “notions of national identity under John Howard’s prime ministership have appropriated a ‘radical’ nationalistic tradition”

What Mr Soutphommasane found more worrying was the “absense of engagement with the reality of Multicultural policy among many of our politicians”

Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wollogong, Steve Reglar, said he believed there had been a steady move under the leaderwship of Howard towards a right wing view on multicultural policy.

Dr Reglar described this shift as “Howard’s system of exclusion, starting with the intelligencia” from which Howards policies receive much of their opposition.

As part of this exclusion Dr Reglar and fellow political lecturer, Athony Ashbolt, "had been struck off the interview list" for Sydney's media, for being too far left of the current political spectrum.