Development of the economic base necessary for social empowerment requires four factors operating in unison: land, labour, capital, and knowledge. This paper sketches how European settlement in the Gascoyne pastoral region expropriated Aboriginal people from these means of production, how the dispossessed people returned to their lands and implemented development using their knowledge and a capital contribution from the State, and why this development is under threat from the imposition of bureaucratic decisions on the CDEP system. Finally it proposes that the opportunity costs of curtailing this development must be enumerated in order to support arguments in favour of continuing a workable CDEP program.
The Burringurrah Wajarri are the northernmost band of the Wajarri language speakers of the Yamatji nations. They enjoy custodianship of the lands surrounding Burringurrah, the largest rock in the world, named Mt Augustus by the Europeans and measured at over twice the size of Uluru. Springs under their care were the last source of water in the event of severe drought. Burringurrah provided refuge for stricken Yamatji throughout the region at such times. Rock engravings, cultural sites, and lore concerning Mt Augustus survive as reminders of the times before the European invasion.
Brutal land grabs in the Gascoyne from 1880 until 1910 expropriated their traditional lands. Outright killing and massacre and the rounding up and detention of other resisters and victims on the Bernier and Dorre Island VD–Leprosy concentration camps smashed all resistance. Survivors were then permitted to live on their ancestral lands under the European's terms—those of slavery.
Labour was expropriated by this slavery. If anyone doubts that a system of slavery existed they should consider the facts. Runaways, 'cheeky' recalcitrants, or those that refused to labour faced death, jail, or beating at the hands of the police, unofficially sanctioned posses, or overseers (who were often of mixed race, a feature common to many slave regimes). People were given meagre rations and families were punished through the withholding of rations if they bucked the system.
Prominent members of Western Australia's squattocracy owned stations on the Gascoyne and built their wealth on this system. In the 1950s this peaked at a pound sterling for a pound of wool. Most Gascoyne properties were shearing 15 000 to 30 000 head at the time. This expropriated wealth was available for investment in the minerals boom of the 1960s.
- 200 -The 1967 referendum and the wage determinations of the 1960s resulted in the Yamatji families being thrown off the stations. They ended up as fringe dwellers in the regional towns of Meekatharra and Carnarvon. Knowledge, in the form of caring for each other in strong kinship groups and immutable (unbreakable) relationship to country, was the only thing left to them.
In 1987 there was a return to country by the families descended from the traditional custodians of the Burringurrah Wajarri. They took over the Mt James lease near the ancestral seat of Mt Augustus to escape the social problems of the fringe camps. Everyone lived in bough shelters and used their own funds and labour to survive. ATSIC finally invested heavily in the town, providing housing, power, water sewerage, an airstrip, and sealed roads after 1994. Now we have a fairly well set up town, and maintain our community using the CDEP program. Infrastructure and services that come within the sphere of State Government—health, education, additional housing, and law and order—remain inadequate.
ATSIC's investments might be seen as a form of mutual obligation or compensation by European Australia for the expropriation of land and labour and its manifestations—the very obvious and embarrassing social and economic deprivation suffered by Aboriginal people as a result. Now these services, reliant primary on CDEP, are under threat by those attacking ATSIC programs and demanding 'job outcomes', 'mutual obligation' and accountability. This economic-rationalist zeal for 'making them work' is strongly reminiscent of the ideologically driven activities of the missionaries, and even of labour organisers of the 1960s, who 'knew what was best' and did not listen, or pay attention to the consequences.
Policy makers removed from everyday life demand enumeration of job outcomes and mutual obligations. The CDEPManager computer system counts how many days the CDEP participants work. Even if hunting or social activity is included, as foreshadowed by the McClure Report (1997), how do you measure it and put it on a form? People going shooting on the spur of the moment or sitting on the veranda solving a family problem with Aunty are hardly going to write it down. We have a 'no work, no pay' policy, but take 'notional activity' into account when doing timesheets. It is pretty obvious who is putting in and who is not. We have a good mix of families in the office and among supervisors, so there are checks and balances on kinship obligations.
CDEP is being drawn into the mutual obligation matrix and is losing its thrust as a community program. This will make the program increasingly irrelevant to participants. They will lose ownership, and the forms and bureaucracy will make CDEP participation as onerous as being on Centrelink. Our workers will vote with their feet. Our funding base will shrink as our participant numbers decline. It is doubtful if the town's administration could continue without the core CDEP funding, and our organisation groans under additional bureaucratic imposts.
The bureaucrats—and academics—do not take into account how CDEPs are saving government organs in terms of opportunity costs. An example that springs to mind is the spread of CDEPs across northern Australia. Without CDEP, the coast would be empty and- 201 - open to poachers, as well as harder for tourists to access, for example at Kakadu. The defence forces used these populations extensively during World War II. 'Populate or perish' justified post-war migration, but most arrivals settled in urban and regional areas. The continent would contain huge swathes of unoccupied land if it were not for the Aboriginal populations.
We are saving the government a lot of money on CDEP. The following is a partial list of our cost-saving activities.
250 members of fairly dysfunctional families are away from Meekatharra and Carnarvon with savings to the cost of social services, the education system, health, patrolling, justice, housing, fixing vandalism, and other such things that marginalised people impose on communities.
The community by and large polices itself. Little police time is spent in Burringurrah.
There are savings to the justice system, with less incarceration and the community's willingness to accept and supervise Community Service Orders, parolees and juveniles. Everyone by and large keeps out of trouble on the community.
The Shire, with a population of only 400, receives substantial funds because of the 250 residents of Burringarrah, through the $80 000 that is received yearly for public roads.
By using rangers and labour resident on the community, the recently expanded National Parks in the Gascoyne rangelands will make cost savings.
Our intellectual property in the promotion of the Burringurrah story around Mt Augustus, and the increasing profile of Burringarrah Artists who are becoming a tourist attraction, promotes regional development in an area that has few prospects now that pastoralism has declined.
We save Centrelink a lot of time and stress by acting as a go-between for welfare recipients, and taking 100 people off their books and onto the CDEP system. We recently audited ourselves and spent three hours a day liaising with Centrelink on issues outside the CDEP Management process.
We rescue tourists and respond to other State Emergency Services call-outs, such as tracking lost walkers and car rollovers.
The community provides a health clinic, swimming pool, and upgraded Telecom facilities to a poorly serviced region, to the benefit of surrounding pastoralists, kangaroo shooters and passing tourists, and service employees.
CDEP enables the control of feral animals, the culling of kangaroo populations and other matters to do with looking after country such as fire regimes and control.
CDEP resources the State government responsibility for water, power, sewerage, and environmental health.
CDEP provides teacher's aides and ancillary staff to the school.
- 202 -CDEP provides the postal service.
The only all-weather airstrip in the district is maintained by CDEP.
The community store is supported by CDEP and is the only fuel outlet for 300 kilometres.
The scale of these activities is only possible with CDEP. My fear is we cannot enumerate this. CAEPR should extend its research into enumerating these opportunity costs to strengthen our arguments. ATSIC should redouble its efforts to see that community organisations are paid for the services they perform. The Public Affairs Unit should direct a massive publicity campaign highlighting the CDEP scheme to 'mainstream' Australia on our behalf.
The Department of Finance cannot be allowed to get away with the clawbacks that happen every year. The threat of a nationwide withdrawal from CDEP and return to welfare for a month is a tool that would show the present government's poverty of imagination and spirit, and it would only harm the politicians and bureaucrats. The National Working Group should be supported, and we should be prepared to go all the way if we cannot bring the appropriate government investment into our people and organisations through negotiation.
We have unrecognised skills, or intellectual capital, when it comes to dealing with our societies and our land. Give us our investment; let us use our social skills to bring our labour force up to scratch and give us the necessary rights to native title. Then and only then is there any realistic chance of development.