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          No School, No Welfare Australia's Aboriginal Parents Warned

   by Phil Mercer

   Beginning next week, school attendance will be linked to welfare
   payments for parents in Aboriginal lands in South Australia. If parents
   don't send their children to school, they could lose state benefits.
   But the Australian prime minister's chief adviser on Indigenous affairs
   is urging the government to take a less punitive approach.

   Ambitious targets have been set to bring indigenous school attendance
   up to Australia's national average of around 90 per cent.  It will be a
   tough challenge.  In some remote settlements official figures show that
   almost 90 per cent of Aboriginal children struggle to read and write.
   Barely half stay at school beyond the age of 15.

   In tribal areas in South Australia, jobless parents who don't send
   their children to school could now lose part of their welfare
   payments.  Government officials believe the measures will force
   families to take education more seriously.  It is reported that fewer
   children are attending class in South Australia's Aboriginal lands now
   than in 2013

   But Warren Mundine, the government's chief adviser on Aboriginal
   affairs, believes the punitive approach is misguided.

   "We need to work with parents and we need to work with communities
   because we are making a massive cultural change here. I'm talking about
   that the communities where we're working didn't have this thing about
   going to school and what was school about," he said.  "We need to get
   communities to get ownership of that and I think if we get clan leaders
   saying the same thing then that's where the big change is going to go.
   Now, I know that governments and that find that punitive measures need
   to happen and that but I think they're really a last resort."

   A lack of education gives indigenous teenagers few chances to escape
   the relentless cycle of high unemployment, ill health and alcohol abuse
   that ravages many indigenous communities.

   Australia has about 670,000 indigenous people, just under three per
   cent of the population.  But compared to the non-indigenous community,
   they face disadvantage at almost every turn.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/no-school-no-welfare-australia-aborig
   inal-parents-warned/2415631.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/no-school-no-welfare-australia-aboriginal-parents-warned/2415631.html