James lamerton, CAAC: Equitable Access to Health for Indigenous Australians

James Lamerton

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Amoonguna (200-250)

Areyonga/Utju (200-250)

Ltyentye Apurte (600-650)

Mutitjulu (250-300)*

Ntaria &Wallace Rockhole (650-700)

*Ground zero of the „Intervention‟

*

*

*Eastern Arrente

*Pitjantjatjara

*Luritja

*Western Arrente

*Walpiri

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*Persisting health

inequalities that would

otherwise be

preventable by

reasonable means are

health inequities

*

*SDoH are the political,

economic, and social factors

that reflect “conditions in

which people are born, grow,

live, work and age” (and,

presumably, die)

*

*

*

*DETERMINISM

Or

“IT IS WRITTEN”

“Meta-causality” *(the causes of the causes)

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*Education

*Housing

*Employment

*Police

*Justice system

*The media

*Racism – institutional and social OR

„Racism in all Policy‟

*Grog

*Gambling

*THE HEALTH SYSTEM!

*

*Existential angst

*“Framing”

*Governmentality

*Responsibilisation

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*The social causality of the poor health and mortality of Aboriginal

people

*The unequal social distribution of poor health and mortality (Alice

Springs!!)

*Gross exaggeration of individual volition in improved health

outcomes for Aboriginal people (see later slides!)

*Health Policies rather than policies that improve health

*

The „Intervention‟ (The NT Emergency Response Act 2007)

Was a quintessentially SDoH initiative, involving as it did

agencies involved in welfare, employment, law & order,

education, family support, child and family health, housing,

land tenure and social coordination activities.

Just by the way, it also required the suspension of

Part II of the Racial Discrimination Act, 1975

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*The project of Neo-liberal governments is to wean „autonomous‟ individuals off reliance on state-provided services and shape unsuspecting punters to become self-responsible, entrepreneurial and independent. With Aboriginal people living in community, the current government has determined economic development and home ownership as the panacea for all social ills.

*The state legitimises these actions less and less by interdiction, supervision and punishment. Rather, it involves an un-coerced application of certain values rooted in the motivation for action. It is fundamentally premised on the construction of a moral agency that accepts the consequences of its actions in a self-reflexive manner – it is governance of the self. this, then, is ……..

*

*Pleasure control

There is currently strong condemnation of the ease of access to pornography in central Australian Aboriginal communities – a product freely available to most adult Australian citizens in most jurisdictions.

the moral censuring of access to a form of sexual pleasure available to most other Australians, particularly (and ironically) those in Canberra, is a powerful manifestation of the concept of „governmentality‟, with the various media – but not governments - portraying Aboriginal communities as „dysfunctional‟ environments where rampant, out of control and „deviant‟ sexual transgression is the norm rather than the exception: individuals are therefore, blame-able. These are the techniques and strategies by which Aboriginal communities are rendered governable

*

In Mutitjulu, ground zero of the „Intervention‟, the entire male

population had been portrayed as sexually deviant, predatory and

in need of „correction‟. In spite of the sanctimonious rhetoric

(particularly from The Australian), no charges have ever been laid

in relation to matters arising from the „Intervention‟.

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*The process (or the technology) by which subjects (us) are

shaped to see what are quintessentially social risks (poor

health status of Aboriginal people, Aboriginal poverty, poor

educational attainment etc.) not as the responsibility of the

state but as lying within the domain of the individual. In so

doing, the social risk is transformed into a problem of „the self‟

to be remedied by „the self‟. This, then, is ….........

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SELF-MANAGEMENT

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*Human reality is far too

complex to be subsumed

or conflated to simplistic

concepts of „agency‟ and

individual volition

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