The 7 "lifestyle choices" the Government is happy to pay for.

Apparently, it’s outrageous to expect ‘Australia’ to subsidise remote communities. Unless you happen to be a farmer living in one, of course.

Yesterday, WA premier Colin Barnett flagged the closures of between 100 and 150 of the state’s remote Indigenous communities as a result of the imminent transition from Federal to state responsibilities.

Which, in actual English, means the Federal Government cut its funding and the state doesn’t want to pay.

In passing the buck, or lack of, Abbott managed to put his foot in it. Just for a change.

He said that living in a remote community was a “lifestyle choice“, and that the Government shouldn’t be paying for it.

And his reasoning for not supporting the funding of  these remote communities is  “the cost of providing services in a particular remote location is out of all proportion to the benefits being delivered”.

Ah, “the benefits being delivered”.

Who decided what those benefits are? Tony Abbott did, apparently.  Because he spends a week a year in remote communities he is the ‘suppository of all wisdom’. He used the example that it was hard in those regions for kids to get a good education. As if that is the only measure upon which benefits of living out there should be judged.

There are two important issues here and it’s essential not to conflate them because they are both important on their own.

Read more: Tony Abbott talks about living in indigenous areas as a ‘lifestyle choice.’

Firstly, every single day, the government funds what could certainly be deemed rural Australians’ “lifestyle choices”, through grants, tax breaks and all manner of things.

– The bush nurses the government funds for rural communities are providing for people’s ‘lifestyle choice’ of living in the bush and daring to need healthcare.

– The tax breaks for drought stricken farmers are paying for their ‘lifestyle choice’ to stay on the land.

– Electricity services to rural regions are usually run by governments at a loss and, again, are catering to people’s ‘lifestyle choice’ to live outside a metropolitan area.

– And the Child Care Rebate is paying for the “lifestyle choice” of having children in the first place.

All of these are examples of where the Government pays for people’s lifestyle choices. As they should. Because there are enormous cultural benefits.

Then there are examples that are far more debatable as to their justification:

– When private schools receive government funding, the government is paying for people’s lifestyle choice not to send their child to a public school.

– When rich superannuates receive tax breaks so they can retire in even greater comfort, the government is paying for people’s lifestyle choice not to struggle through old age.

– When the government allows people to negatively gear their second, third and fourth investment properties, the government is funding their lifestyle choice to get rich.

So there is no doubt Abbott is happy to fund lifestyle choices. As long as they are choices he values. And provides benefits he understands.

Which brings me to the second, and most important, point.

Tony Abbott does not seem to understand that living in a remote Aboriginal community IS NOT A LIFESTYLE CHOICE.

Read more: How Meryl Dorey is affecting Aboriginal health.

Warren Mundine, the chair of Abbott’s own indigenous Advisory Council, said  “It is not a lifestyle choice for them. It is actually about their culture, their very essence, of their religious beliefs.”

And  “In areas where native title areas have not been determined, relocating residents would jeopardise their claim to continuous connection to their land.”

And Brian Lee, the chair chairman of WA’s Kimberley community of Djarindjin said:

“For our people, it’s an obligation to your ancestors to look after your country and you have to be on your country to look after it.”

The absolute cultural insensitivity of Abbott is astounding, but not surprising. This, after all  the man who said Australia owed its existence to “a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, Great South Land.”

Do we need to make sure kids in these communities are getting access to education? Yes. But closing down their communities isn’t the way to do that. A proper NBN, regional boarding school options, teacher incentives- there are a whole host of other measures that don’t involve ripping people off the land on which they have lived for million of years.  God knows we have done enough of that over the past 200 years.

This not about making lifestyle choices, it’s making funding choices as a country that makes us civilised, decent people who value the traditional owners of our land.

What do you think about Abbott’s comments?