|
|
| Lost in our own Bermuda Triangle |
|
Tony Vinson
January 26, 2008
Ask Australians to nominate a central value of our society and they are likely to mention one or another variant of the "fair go". This principle has motivated some of our finest social achievements in the past and it is the hope of many that it will be the cornerstone of an era of renewed interest in social justice.
|
| |
|
|
For that to happen Australians will need to remove the blinkers that have blocked out awareness of some social arrangements totally at odds with the principle of the fair go. I do not claim entirely to have escaped habituation to what an eminent sociologist once called "the normative force of the actual". However, for more than 35 years as a researcher and administrator I have traversed the social equivalent of Australia's Bermuda Triangle. The three tips of that triangle are crime, social disadvantage and limited education. The shell of the lives afloat within the triangle more or less drift to their journey's conclusion: it is the ability to set and steer a course, to gain access to life opportunities and use them, and to avoid excessive buffeting from the institutions of social control, that are lost in the vortex.
Much of the research colleagues and I undertook in the formative years of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in the 1970s illustrated the strength of the connection between disadvantageous backgrounds and crime. Where the education of people was severely limited, where health problems at the very beginning of life were concentrated, where unemployment was at its highest, and where residents were measurably more resigned to accepting rather than shaping their fate, there one found the highest rates of official crime.
As chairman of the NSW Department of Corrective Services (1979-1981) I had daily reminders of the socially and educationally depressed backgrounds of offenders. Sixty per cent of inmates were functionally illiterate. Ingenious prisoner-tutors had some success using unconventional learning materials, like form guides, and more formally qualified instructors drew upon their expert knowledge. However, their pupils were already adrift on the Bermuda Triangle and optimum learning conditions were already well behind them.
Further insights into the prevailing conditions of the Triangle have been more recently afforded by the opportunity to map the distribution of disadvantage across local areas of Victoria and NSW. Last year the project was extended to cover all of the Australian states using 25 socio-medical indicators.
We have found that the characteristics differentiating markedly disadvantaged areas from the remainder are virtually identical with those of 30 years ago - limited education, deficient labour market credentials, poor health and disabilities, low income and engagement in crime. Moreover, the risks associated with membership of highly disadvantaged neighbourhoods are not just of a minor "statistical" nature.
The 3 per cent most disadvantaged locations - there are 69 across Australia - have been contrasted with the remaining 97 per cent of places. In Western Australia the rate of prison admissions in the 3 per cent most disadvantaged localities is 15 times that of the remainder of the state. In NSW the rate in the 3 per cent most disadvantaged areas is 3½ times higher than in the remainder, in Queensland the difference is threefold and it is sevenfold in the ACT. The general expansion in prison populations is being achieved by the intensive mining of a restricted number of localities.
In the extreme 3 per cent most disadvantaged areas of NSW child maltreatment is 4.5 times greater. It is just under four times greater in South Australia and three times greater in Queensland. Long-term unemployment is another recurring feature of the extreme 3 per cent most disadvantaged areas across Australia.
Chairing an independent inquiry into public education has taken me to the third and vital corner of our Bermuda Triangle. Here I have come face to face with four-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds whose vocabulary stretches to a few words, whose articulation of sounds is sometimes incomprehensible, whose experience of the world is confined to their suburb, and who have no idea of the nature of a book or the use of a pencil or a brush. Even their gender identity is sometimes uncertain.
These realities take one to the very springs of social deprivation, the point of origin of that cumulative disadvantage which, unless seriously combated, will lead inevitably to the downward spiral of lives reflected in the disadvantage studies.
As a former jailer I am reminded of the time that I was led down steps by the governor of Parkhurst Prison in England to the point where young convicts were sent to Australia. Unless we support our most severely disadvantaged children with preschool and other integrated services by the time they are three - or even earlier if that is warranted - we are simply setting them afloat on our Bermuda Triangle. Where is the fair go in failing to ensure that children receive the speech therapy and other precursor social and educational skills they will need to successfully negotiate early formal education? Failure at that point casts a very long shadow.
The new Federal Government's undertaking to provide all four-year-olds with the opportunity to attend preschool is a most welcome initiative. However, the acid test of our commitment to the fair go will be the earlier support given to disadvantaged three-year-olds. There is also a strong financial reason for taking the proposed action: the cost of salvage operations in the Triangle is extremely high.
Tony Vinson is honorary professor, faculty of education and social work, University of Sydney. He was awarded an AM today for his services to social welfare. |
|
|
Related links:
Story found in Sydney Morning Herald at :  www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/lost-in-our-own-bermuda-triangle/2008/01/25/1201157663385.html |
|
 Printerfriendly display
|
|
Councillor Chris Harris
At a Council meeting on the 15th of March, the Lord Mayor moved a mayoral minute (delivered to councillors 25 minutes before the meeting), which was supported Clover Moore Party “independents†and the Liberal Councillor, to abandon plans to build a skate park at the Millers Point site underneath a busy freeway (for background information on the site, [...]
I have serious concerns about the tender process that appears to have been designed to place the City’s tennis courts under the management of a single operator. Should the recommendation of council staff be adopted the operator at Ruchcutters Bay tennis courts will be tossed out after 25 years of service to the community. The [...]
Hot on the heels of their destruction of the habitat area at Orphan School Creek with the freshly laid concrete zig zag path, the Clover Moore Party are at it again across the road in Johnstons Canal with more habitat destruction. The proposal is a bike path that links the shared pathway emerging from Orphan [...]
The Barangaroo Authority conducted a presentation of the design ideas of British architect Richard Rogers at the City Recital Hall on 23rd February. The presentation visuals showed attractive buildings and public spaces that interfaced with the water at the city’s western edge with a light rail service passing down Hickson Rd.
One key component of the [...]
At a council meeting of the City of Sydney on 22nd February Clover Moore Party
members and the Liberal councilor voted in tandem to donate public ratepayer funds to two private enterprises setting up in the City’s laneways.
The first donation to set up a new bar was approved outright.  The second grant, to the Moran Arts Foundation Ltd, was recommended [...]
|
, and our Events using the file 
.
