Rather than ending the plunder that is the welfare system, the Rudd government has simply rearranged the pieces, with an extension of mandatory income management across the Northern Territory. Noel Pearson, director of the Cape York Institute, has hailed this as a "historic leap" into a new era. These reforms supposedly promote responsibility and encourage people to find jobs but unfortunately is nothing more than the usual conservative-style reform: a change in the benefits formula that is supposedly better than the current system when the real solution is to phase out welfare completely. The welfare system harms the very people it is supposed to help (harm might be the wrong word here - giving someone something for nothing does him a favour from his point of view) by inducing them to avoid doing the very things that will help make them 'un-poor' such as learning how to interact with society through employment, learning skills or trades, saving some income, being responsible for themselves and others, and so on.

"In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... your interference is doing him positive injury." - Frederick Douglass (1817 - 1895)

Indeed. We have meddled in the affairs of indigenous Australians for long enough and look how that has worked out. I think it's about time we tried something different, heed Douglass's advice and give them a chance to stand on their own two feet.