Real Jobs. Real Wages.
Public policy from the ground up.
From The Bush Projects is a not-for-profit organisation that helps disadvantaged Australian youth move from passive welfare dependency into mainstream work.
Our organisation's song - Just Leave Them Where They Belong - is an observational commentary on the bureaucratic paternalism pervasive in Australia's Indigenous welfare industry that holds back disadvantaged young Indigenous Australians from social and economic mobility. We oppose the belief that Indigenous youth are better served by being managed on welfare payments in remote settlements, and instead believe in empowering the youth to move to regions where real jobs exist. There is another road for young Indigenous Australians: worker mobility and self-responsibility.
Book Store
Just Leave Them... Where They Belong: The Cruel Business of the Culture Cult, Service Industry and Welfare Dependency
Milton James
$79.00 (including postage within Australia)
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Work, Not Welfare: Critical Rural Social Work Practice and the History of the Work Placement Scheme
Milton James
$65.00 (including postage within Australia)
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The 1960s Aboriginal Fruit-Picking Scheme - A Critical Evaluation: An Instructive History of Social Policy, Social Work and Central Australian Aborigines
Milton James
$65.00 (including postage within Australia)
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From the Bush Projects was founded by Milton James, a social work practitioner. For more than two decades, he worked with disadvantaged Aboriginal young people from remote settlements, helping them move to where real jobs exist and supporting them to succeed in the workplace. What he learned often conflicted with the assumptions of the Aboriginal welfare and employment industries. He had seen the damage caused by generations of welfare dependency - the loss of responsibility, confidence, capability and hope. To knowingly allow generation after generation to remain trapped in these conditions is more than failed social policy; it is a state-sanctioned social tragedy. From the Bush Projects is about an alternative: real work, self-responsibility, social and economic mobility, life opportunities and the chance for young people to discover what they are capable of doing for themselves. Milton's books record what has been tried, what has worked, what has failed, and what has been learned.
