Improving employment opportunities and outcomes for all surely has no downsides. However, a council proposal to add weight to companies employing Indigenous Australians when assessing tenders for construction and capital projects is causing division.
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It was even termed by our new deputy mayor as a “burden” and adding “a ball and chain” to small businesses.
“We're telling small businesses to do this, we're putting just another ball and chain, just another hurdle in front of them,” Cr Nadin said.
At best that’s an insensitive use of the turn of phrase, given the, at times, shameful history white Australia has with our First Peoples and its connotations of slavery.
The motion, raised by Cr Jo Dodds, was aimed to encourage tenderers to “highlight their commitment to Indigenous employment as part of their tender documentation”.
Council’s own Memorandum of Understanding with the region’s three land councils from 2014 states council must assist, encourage and promote employment opportunities in the broader community.
While the motion did pass, councillors Russell Fitzpatrick, Robin Bain and Mitchell Nadin attempted to vote it down, choosing to reflect on hypothetical negatives rather than the positivity such a move could bring.
According to the 2016 Census, the percentage of Indigenous Australians in the Bega Valley above the age of 15 not in the labour force sits above both the state and national rate. Last year, data collected by local researcher and Djiringanj and Ngarigo man David Dixon, claimed the rate of Indigenous unemployment in Tathra, Bega and Merimbula was as high as 70 per cent.
The move would be an incentive for companies to employ Indigenous Australians, and economies of all varieties and scales function off incentives.
“How long is a piece of string?” Cr Bain pondered as she included other “undervalued” residents, such as single mothers, apprentices and the disabled, into the debate. But why attempt to block something positive, when you feel people are “undervalued”?
Such contradictions appear constantly in debates around affirmative action movements in places where racism has at times driven society, including America, South Africa and Australia.
While prejudice may appear across all cultures and sub-cultures in Australia, the inter-generational trauma created by colonisation, attempted genocide, the kidnapping of black children by government, chronic racism and hyper-imprisonment, cannot be left out of any discussion.
