The Kids Need Us to Pay Attention

It is impossible not to bleed when you read the report on child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory. You can't avoid feeling as the authors do that something must be done, and urgently. If we judge ourselves as a society on the state of those on the bottom of the pile then we are in deep trouble.

It is to the consiserable credit of Pat Anderson and Rex Wild that they didn't react to the appalling information they gathered by bringing down a report that recommended a massive law and order campaign. They have a few recommendations that call for greater enforcement but there are others that recognise a better way forward.

It is not the law that will sort out this mess. The changes required can't be forced. They can only occur as people themselves change.

The other day on the radio they were talking about Carter Brown novels. Most will be too young to remember these literary masterpeices but you will get some idea what they were like when I tell you that the front cover was normally of a beautiful woman, often scantily dressed and perhaps with a suggestive look on her face. There was nothing too explicit in these novels. It was all suggestion and innuendo. It was in the 1950s after all. The more you understood the more you understood, if you follow me.

The point is that, as a very young bloke and living in a relatively isolated area without any TV in those days, I gathered a lot of my information and analysis about women from Carter Brown novels. Most of it destroyed with the first actual warm breathing woman that I was with but the fantasies were nice for a while - as I dimly recall.

If you have no real education, no job and bugger all else to do all day than sit around watching DVDs and you have easy access to hard core porn, what do you think that young people are watching? Some of the time at least porn DVDs are on the box.

Increasingly, the expectations in Indigenous communities about what is acceptable in the wider society seems to be being formed by TV and DVDs. It is a mixed bag but just think about some of the messages that might come from popular TV and then consider the effect of porn.

Porn means little to most because we know that it is rubbish and that any dose of reality that is present is accidental. We know this because we have some education. We have been to school, our parents have provided and reinforced positive messages. We have a basis on which to assess the material presented. This is not always the case for Aboriginal people in many remote communities.

I am not suggesting that porn should be regulated more heavily or that porn is, in any way, the only reason for the current problem. I am suggesting, pleading actually, that every bit of emphasis that can be given goes to education and communication.

No more crap about not going to school or it being too hard. Get them in there and make sure they have the benefit of an education. And communicate. Tell people the truth and make sure that you do it in the language they know best. And listen to what they tell you, discuss it and come to a joint decision on the way forward.

It is time to act. Has been for a long time.