Every now and then something really gets under my skin!

I am far from being a perfect human being. I have faults ad flaws and vulnerabilities like every human on this earth.

But by and large, with some help from significant role models, and a life of deep contemplation, I have learnt not to be angry, not to take offense or allow the day to day challenges of life destroy my equanimity.

But occasionally –just occasionally – something occurs which I find hard to contend with. Such an event occurred recently when I heard of the horrific murder of a little girl in one of the Alice Springs Town Camps.

There are many injustices in the world and I have learnt as much as I might want to try there are many beyond my capacity to resolve. But there are some problems that shouldn’t be beyond our capacity as a civil society to collectively address. One such problem is the dysfunctional lives of some of our indigenous people.

As respected researcher Anthony Dillon often reminds us, by and large indigenous Australians are prospering and contributing positively to our society. But those that are prospering are those who have assimilated into the Australian way of life, accepting its laws and its norms. They work and successfully raise families and contribute positively to their communities. More and more of them are well educated, often with university degrees that ensure their employability.

But there is another cohort of indigenous people who are doing poorly. These are the remnants of an idealistic separatist movement set up by the well-meaning but misguided Nugget Coombs. Coombs envisioned that indigenous people who were left to their own devices to live off the land and practiced their traditional culture would thrive and lead fulfilling lives. No doubt he had Rousseau’s “Noble Savage” template in mind!

As Warren Mundine, Noel Pearson and many others have attested the lives of these indigenous people were curtailed by this intervention and the economic life of their communities further distorted by the provision of government welfare. The payment of so called “sit down money” reduced the incentive for these people to enter employment and take a normal productive part in society.

As a result of this we have now seen three or four generations of people in these communities who have never worked, who have abandoned the general tenets of Western civilisation,, who have succumbed to drug and alcohol addiction and consequently have led progressively more dysfunctional lives.

Inevitably this has impacted on the children.  To begin with, when these people abandonned traditional Western values the impact on the children was muted by the efforts of the grandmothers and aunties of the previous generation to help nurture the children. As he malaise continued for further generations that support has dwindled.

There is no doubt that for many domestic skills, including parenting, we learn from the role models of previous generations. As the malaise of welfareism became more pervasive the number of those role models has severely diminished. Consequently among the other deleterious effects of welfareism, parenting skills amongst these indigenous families has declined. In such circumstances children are largely left to fend for themselves.

Now it seems hardly to come as a surprise that this innocent little girl met with misadventure.. According to The Australian she was the subject of six child protection reports in recent months but no action was taken to protect her. This has since resulted in three members of the Northern Territory’s Department of Children being stood down.

Now as former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott has claimed (and he spent weeks every year in in remote indigenous communities) this dysfunctional behaviour has been difficult to eradicate because it is widely accepted by indigenous people themselves and is often excused because it is protected by the claim of being a manifestation of “indigenous culture”.

The young girl’s murder was a particularly heinous crime. Its perpetrator was a convicted violent criminal just recently released from prison. There can be no excuses made for his horrendous actions. But surely culpability must extend beyond just him.

When we look at this little girl’s domestic environment the outcome seems almost inevitable.

At the time of the murder the girl’s father was in jail for domestic violence carried out on the girl’s mother. Many of such indigenous men seem reluctant to play any part in the upbringing of these unfortunate children. Surely we have the right to expect those that bring a child into the world to accept they have responsibilities as parents for the care and development of their progeny?

At the time of the abduction the girl’s mother seems to have been participating in a house party which involved heavy drinking and was unable or uninclined to provide adequate supervision of her daughter.

And it is impossible to believe there were no other adults there that might have intervened on the girl’s behalf?

Now without further detailed information it is hard to make specific claims about the negligence that resulted in her death. But surely there were others, not just the monster that killed her, that had contributory culpability?

But how does this obvious aberrant (or perhaps better described, abhorrent) human behaviour continue to exist. Largely it is because it is hidden under a fog that is euphemistically described as indigenous culture. Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price belled this cat long ago.

We know that in the worst of these indigenous communities the so-called indigenous culture is manifested by patriarchies.  It is the “Big Men” that run these communities. Women and children and everyone else are subservient. Under these conditions violence, particularly domestic violence and paedophilia go largely unreported. Irrespective of the seriousness of the crime a reluctance to “dob in” kinfolk severely hampers investigations into such crim And this is all condoned under the auspices of preserving indigenous culture!

Senator Price rightly calls for the rights of women and children in these communities to be protected. Such behaviour would never be condoned in mainstream Australian communities.

But in the meantime such appalling behaviour in these indigenous communities is swept under the rug of indigenous culture. Those who seek to call it out are branded racists. It is time to stop this madness!

This murdered child was a poor innocent victim of these appalling circumstances. She had the right to expect she would be cared for and nurtured by a loving family. She had a right to expect she would be protected from harm. That her rights were not fulfilled is not only an indictment on dysfunctional indigenous communities, it is an indictment on all who have chosen to turn a blind eye to this travesty.