Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

Post by Feral Abacus »

Mr Flibble wrote:There is a severe doctor shortage in Australia at the moment, it is even somewhat hard to keep doctors in Adelaide (they prefer the more glamorous eastern states cities) and Adelaide is a city of 1 million. To combat the shortage Australian medical schools have been increasing their numbers of students, which has annoyed many doctors, as they believe there won't be enough places for these students when they graduate and it will drive down doctors wages.
Ultimately its due to the exact same reasons why there are so few doctors in rural areas. Theres less support if something goes wrong, its lonely, depressing and you have to bulk-bill everyone so you make less money. And its dangerous. This is compounded by the nationwide shortage of physicians.

My mother works as a locum paediatrician in a few of aboriginal communities out in western NSW. She used to live in an aboriginal community, but she left because of the violence and direct threats to her safety by locals.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Feral Abacus wrote: My mother works as a locum paediatrician in a few of aboriginal communities out in western NSW. She used to live in an aboriginal community, but she left because of the violence and direct threats to her safety by locals.
Why did they threaten her? :wtf:
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Should I go into a local medical center and scan a few 'medical support for native Australians' pamphlets? The level of education and literacy is so bad they spell things out in essentially babytalk and have to directly point out that their cultural norms might be contributing to problems and leverage cultural mores to encourage them to do something about medical problems. And this is for use IN CITIES. Fuck knows what it's like out in regional areas.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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[R_H] wrote:
Feral Abacus wrote: My mother works as a locum paediatrician in a few of aboriginal communities out in western NSW. She used to live in an aboriginal community, but she left because of the violence and direct threats to her safety by locals.
Why did they threaten her? :wtf:
Young group of kids who were drunk threatened her in her surgery. She decided to take time out out of town, a week later one of the kids murdered his pregnant girlfriend. This was about 30 years ago, and she was a young woman (working as a gp not a specialist) and she decided that she should get out of town. She goes back now as a locum and most of those people she knew are dead. It's pretty awful stuff, I can definitely see why people are disinclined to work out there.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Feral Abacus wrote:Ultimately its due to the exact same reasons why there are so few doctors in rural areas. Theres less support if something goes wrong, its lonely, depressing and you have to bulk-bill everyone so you make less money. And its dangerous. This is compounded by the nationwide shortage of physicians.
Actually, I think my dad made more money working as an anaesthetist in the Riverland than he does working in Adelaide, as well as having a lower cost of living. I can see how it might be different for specialists than for GPs, though. He ended up leaving, of course, because like most doctors he appreciates the value of a good education, while rural people are rural people. Probably more dangerous on a reservation, though.
Stark wrote:Should I go into a local medical center and scan a few 'medical support for native Australians' pamphlets? The level of education and literacy is so bad they spell things out in essentially babytalk and have to directly point out that their cultural norms might be contributing to problems and leverage cultural mores to encourage them to do something about medical problems. And this is for use IN CITIES. Fuck knows what it's like out in regional areas.
That'd actually be really good. I never really looked at them when I was in Adelaide, and obviously can't go and look for one now.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Stark wrote:Should I go into a local medical center and scan a few 'medical support for native Australians' pamphlets? The level of education and literacy is so bad they spell things out in essentially babytalk and have to directly point out that their cultural norms might be contributing to problems and leverage cultural mores to encourage them to do something about medical problems. And this is for use IN CITIES. Fuck knows what it's like out in regional areas.
Pictures? Point to picture that shows your injury/illness/pain?

Ya, lack of literacy can have significant consequences in all sorts of areas not immediately apparent, like health. Those of us who grow up and live in areas where literacy rates are high don't appreciate how much it helps us in so many aspects of our lives.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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The American program for sending out doctors to rural areas works partly because it takes in a LOT of immigrants who don't mind working in the boonies if it means they can become a doctor and then live in the U.S. instead of wherever they were from. It's very common for the only doctors in a rural Georgia town to be from India for this reason - most of 'em in my hometown were. Dunno how that would apply to Australia because I don't know how the immigration scene there actually works or not - I've read lots of horror stories but I don't know if those are outliers sensationalized by the media or it really is getting that racist and anti-immigrant there that this program wouldn't work.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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I've lived in St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, and Gary, Indiana. There are a LOT of immigrant Indian doctors in all of those cities, too. The only thing I can conclude is that substantial numbers of people in India go into medicine, and substantial numbers of them wind up in the US. Interesting thing is that the Indian docs in the US seem equally ready to cater to both the poor and the wealthy (and thank goodness for that - most of the docs available to me with my current insurance are from India.)

But yes, crushing student debt to get through medical school is also a factor in doctors opting for the rural medicine programs. It's a way for the middle class and lower to pay for medical school.

Has Australia tried "hazard pay" for rural doctors? Isn't your health system subsidized/controlled by your government? Money is a great incentive, and decent care will almost certainly reduce the overall cost in the aboriginal areas, unless of course at present the cost is next to nothing due to the care being almost non-existent. At which point it becomes (again) a matter if anyone gives a damn about the "naked filthy savages" or whatever derogatory terms are typically used to show contempt.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Turns out you can't force people to do what you want because of crushing student debt when student debt isn't crushing? LOL.

We're talking about tiny, widely separated settlements full of communities with substance abuse so bad entire fuels and liquids are banned, suicide rates so high the statistics aren't published anymore, literacy and education so bad you need to explain to them why fucking someone when there's open weeping sores on their dick might be bad, and you think doctors should be forced somehow to go there anyway? These places are so bad people who go there for briefly for unrelated reasons never want to go there again. The problem isn't just racism; it's that regional areas are full of go-nowhere, do-nothing communities where there's nothing to do but huff paint, rape your daughter and kill yourself.

For instance, NT has about 70,000 indigenous Australians. Queensland (with a much higher population) has perhaps 160,000. This is in states far larger than American states, in NT's case having really only 2 'cities' and in Queensland's case having most of the population in one city. Far north Queensland is huge with incredibly low population density; the social problems flow from these simple facts. The education and crime statistics just for BEING IN A REGIONAL AREA are depressing (like how something like ~40% of everyone in Darwin has a drugs related charge).
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Stark wrote:Turns out you can't force people to do what you want because of crushing student debt when student debt isn't crushing? LOL.
Amazingly enough, some people volunteer to work in shitholes to make things better not because they're forced to do so. Perhaps Australia should call upon medicins san frontieres, they're used to operating in war zones and horrific conditions. If you can not get your own to care for these people perhaps you should ask for assistance.

Given how Australia has treated aborigines in the past the aborigines might be more open to receiving assistance from outsiders.
We're talking about tiny, widely separated settlements full of communities with substance abuse so bad entire fuels and liquids are banned, suicide rates so high the statistics aren't published anymore, literacy and education so bad you need to explain to them why fucking someone when there's open weeping sores on their dick might be bad, and you think doctors should be forced somehow to go there anyway?
Not forced. The programs in the US I spoke of don't force anyone to go anywhere. No one is forced to enter the program. If you change your mind you need only find an alternative means to pay back your loans. Sometimes, a doctor develops a problem of their own that would make them unsuitable for being stationed in a remote area and there are means to resolve that problem. Given that doctors can almost always find employment they have the means to do so. It will take time, but it can be done. The rural doctor programs get new doctors out of debt sooner. Considerably sooner. And, go figure, some doctors have this oddball notion of public service. Same reason people do stuff like join the Peace Corps or some other entity or charity that helps people.

I'm talking about giving people an incentive to provide a service on behalf of the government. It's no different than asking for military volunteers during a war. You have to make the compensation commensurate with the risk.
These places are so bad people who go there for briefly for unrelated reasons never want to go there again. The problem isn't just racism; it's that regional areas are full of go-nowhere, do-nothing communities where there's nothing to do but huff paint, rape your daughter and kill yourself.
And just HOW did they get that way? There is no way in hell the situation was like that prior to the arrival of outsiders on the continent, if it had been the aborigines would have gone extinct. I have no illusions that the old Australia was a paradise, it certainly wasn't, but the cultures and communities were viable.

The current state of aborigines is very much the fault of the majority Australia culture's treatment of them for the past two centuries. It is a shame upon your nation. Yes, you do collectively have some obligation towards these people. White Australia fucked them up, took away their lands, their livelihood, and even their children.

Of course, you can just wash your hands of the mess and hope they simply die out in the near future. Problem solved, rather like those pesky Tasmanian natives Tasmania no longer has to worry about (just their mixed-blood descendants). Or you can take responsibility and keep trying to rectify past mistakes. Your choice.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Just to return to the OP for a moment - I wish to clarify something.

Has literacy - at all levels (barely, minimal, benchmark, above average) improved among the aborigines in question? If so, how much has it improved. Yes, as a number/percentage it's dismal, but going from, say, 2% to 10% really is a significant improvement and to be applauded as an indication that something is going right. If it's from, say, 9% to 10%... no, not impressive, possibly only a statistical fluke.

The aborigines are starting from such a very low level it's probably going to take a generation or two to get the average up to comparable standards to other Australians in a best case scenario. Realistically, the situation will be bad for a long time to come.
Lusankya wrote:Because of the way aboriginal family structure works, you tend to either get aborigines who stay with the family/tribe and not do very much or you get ones who basically distance themselves from their entire family, because anyone who's successful is expected to look after anyone in their family who needs help. And in most aboriginal cultures, your family includes people like your cousin's aunt's husband's niece. It would be a fantastic safety net for them if there was a certain background level of affluence amongst aborigines, but given that the vast majority are poor, all it really does is punish success, because you either have to be estranged from your family or maintain a low standard of living so that you can help all of the relatives who come to you for help.
That structure is very common among hunter-gatherers and subsistence cultures. It does work well to mitigate the impact of famines and to distribute windfalls. You are also correct that under other circumstances it spreads poverty. Prior to outsiders I'm sure it worked well enough but when a sufficient percentage of the culture falls into abject destitution they pull everyone else down with them. These leaves the problem that it's not enough to save one or two, you have to try to raise the standards for an entire community.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Broomstick wrote:Has Australia tried "hazard pay" for rural doctors? Isn't your health system subsidized/controlled by your government?
The 'control by the government' part is subject to ongoing debate; healthcare organization happens at a state level, and then all the states beg for federal funding. The individual regions within states are inconsitently managed. My father now does nothing but locum work, and there are some places(such as NSW Central West) that he doesn't go because they don't bother paying the staff half the time. Friendly Happy Guy has endured this brand of bullshit over in W.A, he can probably elaborate more on it.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Well, fuck, if you don't at least pay people what they've agreed to work for of course they don't want to do the work!
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Turns out regional areas are mismanaged, underfunded, ignored shitholes? People barely give a shit what happens in Cairns, let alone bullshit islands off the Cape full of paint-huffing islanders.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Not an acceptable excuse. Sorry. Well, not - those places are fucked up because of longstanding racist attitudes that treat some human beings as trash. It's the fault of your government and your society those places are such a mess.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Broomstick wrote:Not an acceptable excuse. Sorry. Well, not - those places are fucked up because of longstanding racist attitudes that treat some human beings as trash. It's the fault of your government and your society those places are such a mess.
Sorry many of these communities are intrinsicly non viable?
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Broomstick wrote:Not an acceptable excuse. Sorry. Well, not - those places are fucked up because of longstanding racist attitudes that treat some human beings as trash. It's the fault of your government and your society those places are such a mess.
Like JSF says, some communities are just fucked. But the people can't leave, nobody and no business wants to go there, so you end up with islands where the entire population is a felon, where alcohol is banned entirely and the mayor runs a pub that is the biggest contributor to council funding. What can those people do? What can people do for them, besides forced relocation? I honestly don't think it reflects society at all that hicks in the middle of nowhere are fucked up and raise fucked up children; I just wish there was something that could be done.

This isn't limited to native Australians - regional areas are complete shitholes no matter who you are. It's just worse in native settlements for reasons Lus outlined above. Mnay settlements are primarily native now because all the white people (with slightly better education/resources) just left because they're ghost towns.

I'll remember next time I see some kid huffing paint in the gutter that it's my fault. :)
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Turns out when your 1000km from market, with no roads in between, huge psychic gap between you and your neighbours and no factors of production of any value there is no real path to being helped?

It's not like AU is a big country. We aren't America, we simply afford to build the kind of infrastructure needed to support 10000 people country dons, let alone 100 people in the middle of the desert living off centrelink.

Out of curiosity, how much are rural shitholes depressing the stats? Do statistics exist for aboriginals living in actual towns and cities?
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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I'm not sure actually; I'll ask Ian, he'll probably know where to look. I think the city population would have different problems and I -imagine- more live in cities than regionally but I don't have anything to base that on.

Didn't you grow up in Mackay or something? Crazy Derek grew up in Emerald. They're not small places, nothing like as tiny or remote as the shitholes we're talking about, and people can't leave them fast enough. What Lonestar tells me about Townsville doesn't breed confidence either.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Stark wrote:I'm not sure actually; I'll ask Ian, he'll probably know where to look. I think the city population would have different problems and I -imagine- more live in cities than regionally but I don't have anything to base that on.

Didn't you grow up in Mackay or something? Crazy Derek grew up in Emerald. They're not small places, nothing like as tiny or remote as the shitholes we're talking about, and people can't leave them fast enough. What Lonestar tells me about Townsville doesn't breed confidence either.
:( I grew up in a much classier place than Mackay TYVM! I grew up in...Townsville. It's a pretty big shit hole, but it is definitely a viable regional centre. Turns out being the primary port for half of Queensland's mineral wealth makes a good source of revenue.

It definitely had it's share of aborignees pouring metho through a loaf of bread to turn it into a "drinkable" form in the local parks though.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Mayabird wrote:The American program for sending out doctors to rural areas works partly because it takes in a LOT of immigrants who don't mind working in the boonies if it means they can become a doctor and then live in the U.S. instead of wherever they were from. It's very common for the only doctors in a rural Georgia town to be from India for this reason - most of 'em in my hometown were. Dunno how that would apply to Australia because I don't know how the immigration scene there actually works or not - I've read lots of horror stories but I don't know if those are outliers sensationalized by the media or it really is getting that racist and anti-immigrant there that this program wouldn't work.
We do get several African doctors working in rural areas. However these communities are somewhat larger than the Aboriginal communities being discussed here.

We also do get lots of Indian doctors, however we didn't do so well when we locked Mohammed Haneef up on trumped up charges of aiding a terrorist. I can understand why if they decide to try looking elsewhere for job opportunities even with a change of government.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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mr friendly guy wrote:We also do get lots of Indian doctors, however we didn't do so well when we locked Mohammed Haneef up on trumped up charges of aiding a terrorist. I can understand why if they decide to try looking elsewhere for job opportunities even with a change of government.
Indian Doctor's here don't have the most crash hot reputation after that whole DOCTOR DEATH thing.

Which Australians will never forget because 90% of us are racist cunts.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Too true...
JointStrikeFighter wrote:It's not like AU is a big country. We aren't America, we simply afford to build the kind of infrastructure needed to support 10000 people country dons, let alone 100 people in the middle of the desert living off centrelink.
I've driven through Towoomba and Warwick on seperate trips this year and it makes me laugh and feel depressed that you can see half of the late-school age population coiled ready to spring toward Brisbane. I grew up in Armidale in northern NSW and if it weren't for the university, the town would be overrun with slum.

Interestingly enough we have lots of little towns dotted around Tasmania that largely live off tourism or provide rural infrastructure. But it's relatively easy to supply these towns; I know one guy who drove an LNG tanker, and would replenish service stations across the entire state over three fourteen hour days, then take the rest of the week off.
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Tim, it's like that in New Zealand as well - tiny little 150 people towns doing fine, even if the economy killed off most of the 'dairy and servo' towns. Turns out any idiot can live in 'regional' NZ - ps you're never more than 2 hours from the coast - and the climate and tiny size means it's easy to support. It makes it a great place to go tramping around too, which you simply can't do here. Yeah, let's go hike to Bundaberg!

If I went mad and moved back to NZ, I'd want to live in one of these small towns outside Christchurch. They have steam trains! :D
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Re: Aborignial literacy in NT improved: still sucks

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Same applies in the UK, which is how they have so many ridiculous little towns with preposterous names, and how Wales exists at all. Like on many other occassions in Australian history, they tried to apply the same settlement principles here only to find it simply wasn't going to work. And that still didn't stop them.
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