BACKTRACKER: Food for thought

NATIONAL: This month, media “broke’” the story of “starvation” in the APY Lands. But the reality is different from the agenda driven campaigns, writes BRIAN JOHNSTONE*.

It’s been interesting these past few weeks to watch the Murdoch media whip itself up into a feeding frenzy over allegations of starving and malnourished children in South Australia’s APY lands.

The charge has been led, as usual, by its national flagship, The Australian, and its trusty rent-a-quote band of what the newspaper routinely describes as some of Australia’s “most respected” Aboriginal leaders.

We’re talking Noel Pearson, Sue Gordon, Wesley Aird, Warren Mundine, and Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda.

Respected by whom, and for what?

That’s the question that constantly pops into my head.

None, to my knowledge, have ever been elected to lead any Aboriginal representative organisation,

But I digress.

The media frenzy kicked off when local media reports quoted a claim from unnamed regional store operators the Red Cross was sending emergency food supplies into the remote APY lands from shipping container supplied by the state government because men, women and children were starving.

Within a matter of days The Australian ran an “exclusive” report quoting “two of the nation’s most respected Aboriginal leaders,” Mr Pearson and Mr Gooda, demanding a “dramatic federal government intervention to quarantine welfare payments and allow families to buy food in troubled remote communities in South Australia.”

Mr Gooda said someone had to intervene because children in the APY Lands were “missing out on a basic human right.”

Mr Pearson said federal humanitarian intervention was required because the SA government was “completely bereft of any kind of real solution”.

“They need a Cape York style solution, which allows for voluntary and compulsory income management,” he said.

“You can set up support mechanisms for people to get control of bread and butter issues of food and domestic life….if you want to prevent children going hungry and make sure not all the money is blown on grog, drugs and gambling you’ve got to intervene.”
White-left aligned politicians, he said, were suffering from ”an extreme form of political correctness.”

“They don’t really care about the suffering of the kids because they just don’t want to be accused of being interventionist or paternalistic.”

That article ran in the Weekend Australian on Saturday, September 10.

The following Monday the newspaper ran an editorial headed: Children Should Not Go Hungry which claimed the “revelations of social dislocation and children going hungry,” in the APY Lands are “disturbing and require urgent attention”.

It noted Pearson and Gooda were “calling for intervention style measures to ensure families’ incomes are managed so that enough money is kept aside to feed the children. A stand off between federal and state governments is not good enough. Action is needed now”.

This was followed the next day with an article headed: Former ALP president lashes government on Indigenous affairs.

The lead paragraph of the article said former ALP National President Warren Mundine had “yesterday lambasted the Rann Labor government’s approach to Indigenous affairs, saying it was time for states to swallow their pride and work with Canberra to avert disaster”.

It provided a classic illustration of presenting yesterday’s news today (myopically, in this case) to address your own editorial and political agenda.

The second paragraph reported precisely what Mundine was calling for.

The second paragraph said the Gillard and Rann government’s last night launched measures to tackle hunger in the APY lands “after ten days of intense scrutiny on inaction around food and service provision”.

The next two paragraphs, drawn from a joint press release from Federal Indigenous affairs mnister Jenny Macklin and her state counterpart, Grace Portolesi, said senior federal and South Australian officials “have been ordered immediately to begin implementing the measures.”

However, “Canberra has stopped short of a Cape York style intervention, as demanded in the Weekend Australian, by Aboriginal leaders, including Noel Pearson and Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda…”

The bulk of the 14-paragraph story was then given over to Mundine demanding that South Australia “should not be immune from some sort of federal intervention…”

Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

Later that day the Nganampa Health Council, a health organisation owned and operated by the local Anangu people, broke its silence.

It issued a considered media statement headed: Facts wrong on APY food problems.

It was an eloquent intervention in response to Pearson and Gooda’s “demands” and Mundine’s “disaster.”

It said this:
“The statements from various NGOs, some Aboriginal spokespersons and national media organisations claiming widespread severe malnutrition amongst children on the APY Lands are simply wrong”, Mr John Singer, Director of Nganampa Health Council said today. 

“Certainly poverty is a major problem on the APY Lands but it is complex and uneven in its effects.

“This does mean that some parents have problems in consistently providing healthy food for their families, but our health service data shows that despite this poverty there has been marked improvement in the growth and nutrition of children on the Lands,” he said.

“An emergency response to poverty is not what is needed.

“What is needed are sustainable ways to reduce poverty. Nganampa Health is currently planning a high level, professional review of poverty on the Lands which provides clear recommendations for poverty reduction. Nganampa Health has initiated such an approach with the Fred Hollows Foundation.”

Professor Paul Torzillo, Medical Director of the health service said, “During the 1980s and 1990s up to 30 percent of all children under five had severe malnutrition by WHO standards and at that time we were trying to prevent severe malnutrition. But by 2005 that proportion was only 6 percent, which is not much above the national average.”

“This year our data on all children under five years, (approximately 210 children) shows that only six children have a weight for age measure demonstrating severe growth failure and four of these had birth related causes contributing to their low weight.”

“Nganampa Health has a very effective policy of identifying any child who drops below their predicted growth curve, even if their weight is not markedly abnormal.  These children present extremely difficult problems to change.”

“There are multiple medical, social and nutritional factors which contribute to growth problems in these children. In general 20 to 30 of such children across the APY Lands are identified as needing special attention for growth and often the interventions required are complex because of a host of problems.”

“Some of these children have inadequate access to food or poor diet but rarely do they face severe malnutrition,’ he said.

“Again, emergency responses by either NGOs or government are not what is needed here but rather considered and sustainable initiatives.”

This was followed two days later with a media statement of support for the views expressed by Mr Singer and Professor Torzillo from the Aboriginal Health Council of South Australia Inc, the peak body representing Aboriginal community controlled health and substance misuse services and Aboriginal health advisory committees across South Australia.

The Council’s Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Mary Buckskin, said the sustained primary health care approach adopted by Nganampa had seen significant reductions in the number of children with nutrition related growth failure.

“These initiatives at the community level should be supported by government in a sustainable way,” she said.

“Rather than responding to sensationalised media reports, government would be best served working with local organisations such as Nganampa Health Council to build on successful initiatives already in place.”

Both statements disappeared into the ether.

So much so that Mr Singer convinced Professor Torzillo to take out paid advertisements, at considerable cost, in The Australian and the Murdoch-owned Adelaide Advertiser to run their media statement in full.

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