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A quest for national decency

Sir William Deane

24 April 2004 - We have reached a sort of blind alley in the search for national Aboriginal reconciliation and it is no longer enough to talk about walking onwards. Rather we must now start to work together to build new pathways and bridges.

While this may surprise some, I am hopeful about where we are placed now for making real progress if we possess the necessary will and determination. And that is notwithstanding recent happenings such as the Redfern violence and the present controversy over some important aspects of indigenous affairs, including the planned abolition of ATSIC, the possible replacement of the Aboriginal Legal Services by outsourcing, and the suggested general "mainstreaming" of indigenous services and programs by the Federal Government and its agencies.

Those recent happenings do, however, serve to highlight the fact that this is a critical time for our nation in the related fight against indigenous disadvantage and search for reconciliation.

My hopefulness is largely based on the remarkable change in the attitude of most Australians in recent decades and the genuine desire for reconciliation that exists at all levels of our community.

What is missing is a general community sense that that widespread desire and some impressive current programs and efforts are part of the kind of national movement that is essential if we are to achieve true national reconciliation.

That search for true reconciliation not only remains unfulfilled, it has lost much of its impetus at the national political level. In contrast, at the grassroots level, the reconciliation movement is not only alive, it is strong and resilient.

The search for reconciliation should be seen as a stimulant, but not as a substitute, for practical programs and action. Nor should it be seen as requiring the avoidance of constructive criticism or the disregard of basic standards. It does not, for example, require inaction in the face of impropriety or neglect of duty in the indigenous or non-indigenous use of public funds.

Most important of all, even in the aftermath of all the wrongs and mistakes of the past including the unjustifiable taking of children, the search for reconciliation does not and cannot absolve governments of the responsibility to advance the education and welfare of all Australian children, be they indigenous or non-indigenous, and to protect them from exposure to alcohol and drug abuse, truancy and domestic violence.

There has in recent times been a tendency to describe policies and programs that help fight Aboriginal disadvantage, particularly at the community level, as "practical reconciliation". That description is justifiable in the sense that anything that reduces Aboriginal disadvantage is conducive to reconciliation. But it is not justifiable if it is used to suggest that effective Aboriginal representation, leadership and participation at all levels are not essential for the success of programs addressing Aboriginal disadvantage. Or to suggest either that Aboriginal reconciliation does not have a critically important spiritual or symbolic aspect or that the search for national reconciliation in both its material and spiritual aspects is unnecessary.

Where to then from here? The starting point to the answer to that question seems to me to lie in the need for all involved to pause and take stock. To acknowledge the facts of our past and the appalling general disadvantage of our Aboriginal fellow Australians. To accept the importance of again seeking the broad national consensus between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, including governments, which has previously eluded us. And to recognise that no such consensus will be reached unless our pathways to reconciliation from this time on are ones of constructive and fully informed dialogue - and of genuine consultation rather than confrontation, of compromise rather than intransigence.

If we can build and follow those pathways, we will be able to resume the journey to Aboriginal reconciliation at the national political level by together identifying the extent to which differences are a matter of words rather than substance and the extent of the common ground that we already share.

Even more importantly, we will be able constructively to work together to reach acceptable compromise on the things of substance which still divide us and, in the context of such compromise, best address the problems and disadvantage which oppress our Aboriginal fellow Australians.

I have no doubt that the outcome of that journey, that quest for national decency and harmony and real equality, will be a defining test of our worth, both as individuals and as a nation, in the years ahead.

This is an edited extract of the Jessie Street memorial lecture, delivered in Sydney yesterday by former governor-general Sir William Deane.

Source:The Age

related links :

• Decrying the memories of Mistake Creek is yet further injustice
  27 November 2002 - Dismissing indigenous oral history on the basis of 'no police record' ignores cultural context, writes Sir William Deane .
• Our history, not rewritten but put right
  25 November 2002 - At a ceremony in the Kimberley district of Western Australia, Sir William Deane, then governor-general, apologised to the Kija people for an infamous massacre by whites at Mistake Creek in the 1930s. While the brutal dislocation of Australia's indigenous population has rightly become an acknowledged chapter of national shame, the accusation of genocide is something altogether different. Deane, for one, might one day reflect on his role in defaming the Australian people on the basis of shabby evidence. Mistake Creek indeed.

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