Anne-Marie Ryan is at her wits’ end trying to help the young people of her remote Aboriginal community, Beswick, get out of a rut of welfare dependence and leaving to go to the nearby town of Katherine to drink.
Key points:
Remote voters are worried neither major party has detailed plans to reform jobs program
Lingiari residents have been waiting for promises for new houses to be delivered election after election
Community leaders worry they are losing another generation to welfare dependence
“I am very worried about these young people, going to away to Katherine drinking,” she said.
“I’m always talking to our young people to get jobs, jobs for their future.”
She is the women’s supervisor of the federal government’s Community Development Program work-for-the-dole scheme in Beswick, home to just over 500 people, 70 per cent of whom live on Centrelink welfare payments.
Ms Ryan said her job had become more difficult by changes made by the Coalition Government last year, which made attendance at the scheme, for four hours a day, four days a week, voluntary.
“When the law changed all the young women stopped coming,” she said.
“We have eight or nine coming every day, we used to have 30 to 35 come all the time.”
The change was the first stage in the Coalition’s promise to transform the CDP scheme, in an attempt to make it more effective at training and preparing people for jobs in their communities.
Ms Ryan is one of the workers trying to deliver the program on behalf of the Indigenous Jawoyn Association and Rise Ventures in the area around Katherine, who would like it to be changed back to its former iteration, the CDEP.
The CDEP offered full time work, at rates of pay higher than the dole.
Many of the jobs in Beswick, which are currently occupied by people from outside the community are aimed at closing the Indigenous poverty gap.
Ms Ryan would prefer more of them be delivered by her own people in the heart of the marginal electorate of Lingiari, which covers all of the Northern Territory’s remote communities.
Promises to reform the CDP scheme have been a key pitch both the Coalition and Labor have made to Australia’s indigenous communities this election.
Ms Ryan said she was dismayed neither side has laid out details of how they would improve the program.
“We would just like to see our politicians keep their word — what they say, will happen, not just promises they can’t keep,” she said.
‘Housing is our priority’
Anne-Marie Ryan is also frustrated that the major promise to remote communities by both the Coalition and Labor made again and again at every election to relieve chronic overcrowding by building more Indigenous public housing hasn’t yet been fulfilled.
In 2018, the Federal Coalition promised $500 million to match the NT Labor Government’s own $500 million five year building program, but communities across Lingiari have complained the rollout of new houses has been few and slow.
This election, Labor has pledged an extra $100 million on top of that for more houses in very remote tiny outstation communities in Lingiari.
“More housing in our community right now us a priority, we have too many houses that are overcrowded, it’s been too long waiting for houses for houses in Beswick,” Ms Ryan said.
Her nephew Wayne Runyu lives in a three bedroom house with 11 other family members.
There are mattresses everywhere, including on the living room floor, and the toll of feeding 12 people out of a tiny kitchen has left it filthy.
Mr Runyu and his family have been hanging on a promise made years ago that Beswick would get new houses.
“We’ve been listening to that for a long long time; we don’t know how many houses are going to get built here, we are still waiting on it,” he said.
On the other side of Beswick, Anne-Marie Ryan’s nephew Shannon Urban sleeps on a foam mattress on a bunk bed shell in a derelict building with no windows, power or water, which she said used to be a single men’s accommodation.
He said he has been waiting for a house for “a long time”.
In another of the derelict rooms Francis Lane lives with his partner Alicia Kennedy, their nine year old son Cody, two month old Brodie and his older daughter and her partner, because they are waiting to get a house.
He said he does odd jobs around the community when he can, but hasn’t been able to find a full time job.
In another house Anne-Marie Ryan’s cousin’s family sleep 20 to two bedrooms.
A spokeswoman for the NT Housing Minister Chansey Paech said he will shortly announce that the joint Federal-Gunner Government’s remote housing program would soon deliver some new houses for Beswick, however she could not yet say how many houses, or the deadline.
Calls for more support programs
Martha Bennett is one of the participants of Beswick’s CDP program who comes every day to paint pictures, which she hopes to sell at the upcoming festival in the nearby community of Barunga.
For her, the need for more housing is also the number one frustration.
But she said Beswick and other communities in this region are also in dire need of more support services, and activities to try to turn their troubled young people away from alcohol, and to show them an alternative to lives spent drinking and gambling that many of their parents have chosen.
“Our main problem is all about alcohol, domestic violence and drugs,” Ms Bennett said.
“You’ve got most of our young people here doing nothing; drop out of school, they’re drop-out kids.
“Families, their everyday life is gambling, gambling, gambling, then their kids grow up seeing their parents gambling, and they want to grow up and be a gambler like their mum and dad.
“We need a half way house for kids roaming the streets at night to go to be safe, and more activities for the kids.”
Training hope for a job
In a shed on the edge of Beswick, Darren Daniels is among the men taking part in a Certificate 2 Construction course being run as part of the CDP program.
A trainer has come all the way from Darwin, however only six men have turned up for the course because there are several funerals on.
Mr Daniels also supervises the men doing the CDP in Beswick.
“We need to look after the young ones growing up and give them a proper job,” he said.
“Otherwise they break in (to steal things), and young men are getting alcohol and drinking a lot, we need to get them out of these problems.”
Like many in the community he is also sceptical that the promises being made by both sides of politics that they really will provide more jobs and a better life here if they are elected in May.
“There’s been a lot of promises from the last couple of years back and we didn’t see things happen, you know?” he said.
At the moment, Ronald Blitner works part time helping to supervise the CDP program in Beswick.
He is undertaking the construction course because he hopes, if new houses are built in Beswick and other nearby communities, he might be able to get a job on the project.
“Because it’s hard to get jobs these days, you need a certificate to get jobs, you need a white card, an ochre card, to get a job,” he said.
He also desperately hopes the politicians looking for his vote will deliver on the promise of new houses.
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