Mental health cases will rise if Aboriginal people are forced from remote communities as a result of funding cuts, a University of South Australia professor says.
Federal funding will end in the middle of the year for municipal services such as rubbish collection and some water and electricity supplies in remote communities.
The Western Australian Government flagged that up to 150 of the state’s 270 remote communities may have to close but the SA Government, when asked how communities will be affected, said it would push to have the funding retained.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that people living in remote Aboriginal communities could not be endlessly subsidised if lifestyle choices were not conducive to “full participation in Australian society”.
But UniSA Dean of Aboriginal Scholarship, Engagement and Research professor Peter Buckskin said homelands were an important part of Aboriginal identity.
“Aboriginal identity is all connected to country, connected to our land and our seas and that needs to continue,” Professor Buckskin said.
“We know there’s been reports that can actually draw parallels towards people being removed from country and the mental anguish that causes.”
He said many Aboriginal people were worried that they will be forced to move.
“If you haven’t got any infrastructure money that allows you to provide water, power and sewerage, then the capacity for Indigenous communities to be viable is threatened and you’re forced to remove yourself from the country,” Professor Buckskin said.
The chairman of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands Board, Owen Burton, said Mr Abbott should revisit the region in the state’s far north-west to see the responsibility people felt as carers for the land.
“We are standing up for Anangu people,” he said.
“Government should be respecting culture out here and we don’t want government to take money from Anangu people.
“We want to work together with Prime Minister Tony Abbott because we are taxpayers too.”
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion defended Mr Abbott’s comments about “lifestyle choice” and said they were cherry picked from a broader conversation.
He said the WA Government’s lack of consultation about the future of remote communities was causing far more angst and said it should accelerate its plans to start the process.