Debra Jopson The Sydney Morning Herald 2/10/00

The indigenous leader Mr Noel Pearson has accused bureaucracies of failing to cooperate in his efforts to shift Aborigines out of welfare dependency "because they want to perpetuate their role in our misery".

Bureaucracies did not want to achieve the structural change needed because of "the whole delivery mentality which implies passivity - bureaucrats have to be active; the communities have to be passive," said Mr Pearson, who, with local Aborigines, the Queensland Government and business leaders is devising a rescue plan for 18 communities in Cape York.

As a first step after a recent Cape York summit attended by the Queensland Premier, Mr Beattie, two communities will trial a new "negotiating table concept" in which community members and representatives of the government agencies "servicing" them try to strike a new way of working, Mr Pearson said.

The communities are being encouraged to create a log of claims. The aim would be self-sufficiency and the talk would not be "consultation" but at the higher level of "negotiation".

Aboriginal communities often had "dusty plans sitting on the shelf" that no-one had worked out how to put into effect. Meanwhile bureaucracies had found ways of "keeping people occupied" in programs that did not produce change, he said. "At the moment, the Government comes in and builds our homes. We sit back and watch them. Our people sit under the trees [while the contractors come in and do the work]. They wonder why they are written off in three or four years. They have no investment in them."

Another instance of a program that appeared effective on the surface but perpetuated dependency, he said, was the Kids' Club at Lockhart River, which was hailed for alleviating vandalism and delinquency.

"It's about a whitefella taking the kids off the hands of the Aboriginal parents and the parents being relieved of their responsibility ... the kids are going out fishing with this whitefella in a Toyota ... and the parents are even more free to go on drinking."

Mr Pearson said he had learnt from members of the Melbourne Jewish community that it is best to plunge in and to use work as a way of rising above the gigantic problems imposed by those who oppress them.

"The Jewish people didn't wait for racism to subside. They'd still be waiting."

He had learnt from them not to let people forget about racism, but also not to "let racism stop you from climbing".

At the recent summit, held with $50,000 of Queensland Government funding, business leaders, including Mr Malcolm Turnbull and the former premier Mr Mike Ahern, discussed the types of enterprises that could be feasible in Cape York, and Mr Beattie pledged to work with Mr Pearson to find solutions.

Small community development programs were like fruit trees that appeared straight and strong, but eventually failed.

"I have seen a number of such trees which have produced lush fruit and then stopped. You cannot produce the luscious growth which is going to make the tectonic change.

"We have a number of strategies [for] these structural impediments. Now we have to get organised politically. Some ... need a change in government policy and we need people at the head of government to change them."

Mr Pearson said he did not want to raise expectations that Cape York would be a model for the rest of the nation, because other Aboriginal leaders had to look to their own home regions.

"I have to take responsibility for the terrible situation we are in in Cape York. It is one of the worst", with a life expectancy "not much better than 50".