The community engagement strategy for the Cape York Welfare Reform trials was designed to represent communities and individuals under consultation strictly in terms of seven pre-determined 'community dysfunctions' only. They were: the abuse and neglect of children; alcohol abuse; drug abuse; petrol sniffing; problem gambling; poor school attendance; and dysfunctional housing tenancy arrangements. However, much of the research conducted on the ground in Aurukun suggests community members do not define themselves or their immediate families in terms of 'social-norms deficit'. Where individuals have identified community problems, they are often not the same ones suggested by Cape York Institute (CYI). Despite this, the instrumental goals and design of the Welfare Reform community engagement strategy meant that if someone in Aurukun said they were worried about violence between clans-which they often did-their comments would be rendered in CYI's evaluation as further evidence of 'Alcohol Abuse' or 'Child Neglect'. In this way the seven core community dysfunctions were continually re-discovered-thereby substantiating the need for the Families Responsibilities Commissions.

By focusing primarily on community dysfunctions and individuals' deficits identified independently from community members, and imposing welfare and behavioral obligations which tie Aboriginal people to services they already know to be oftentimes inadequate and inappropriate, Pearson's Family Responsibilities Commissions (FRCs) threaten to add yet another complicating factor to the bizarre daily spectacle of law and order in communities. Under the CYI model, various state and non-state actors will be tasked not with assessing the dynamic service needs of the individuals they are sent, but with administering ongoing punitive social intervention. This means that over the course of an FRC intervention, the quality and relevance of the support and intervention services are less important than the regularity of individuals' attendance at their appointments. The complexity of the individual's addiction, dysfunction or problem will be concealed by the straight-forwardness of the 'service-solution'. It thus seems probable that by forcing community members to perform a pantomime of reform to an audience of historically ineffectual community service providers, FRCs will further diminish individuals' abilities to self-determine positive outcomes for themselves and their families while at the same time rendering them in ways which justify the FRCs (in the first place).

Please note: Excerpts from this seminar are available in both Streaming Audio and MP3 formats.