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No place for noble savages

8 May 2009 - Tony Abbott - Article from:  The Australian

AT some point in the early 1970s, official policy towards Aboriginal people shifted from integration and assimilation to self-determination. It reflected guilt about their dispossession and embarrassment at the destruction of their culture. Decent Australians wanted Aboriginal people to feel proud of their heritage and be able to pass it on to their children. They thought that New Zealand provided a better model than Australia for the treatment of indigenous people and wanted this aspect of our national life to reflect our best selves. Government officials who had previously tended to underestimate Aboriginal people began to expect too much of them.

The former tendency to paternalism swiftly became one of "noble savage" romanticism, especially under the influence of H.C. Coombs.

In fact, Aboriginal people are not uniquely gifted to live in harmony with each other and with nature. As the record shows, they are prone to much the same human frailties as everyone else. To state this is no more than to acknowledge common humanity. The basic problem in many remote Aboriginal communities has been a reluctance to enforce ordinary Australian law lest that amount to cultural insensitivity.

As a consequence, in these places, acts that should have resulted in prosecution have resulted instead in seemingly endless consultation and inertia until consensus has been achieved. Affluent whites' anxieties about being unfairly critical of Aboriginal people have exacerbated the problem. As well, the permit system that supposedly protects Aboriginal people from media stereotyping and sensationalism has meant, almost literally in some cases, that "big men" can get away with murder.

The tendency of governments to view Aboriginal matters through rose-coloured glasses, except when media take an interest, remains palpable. In 2003, for instance, the social justice commissioner said that "the sheer number of interdepartmental and intergovernmental forums for dealing with issues such as petrol sniffing on the APY Lands (in South Australia) reads like a nightmare from a Kafka novel". In a press release last year, though, the state Government attributed an 83 per cent reduction in petrol sniffing not to the commonwealth's unilateral introduction of unsniffable Opal fuel, but as "testament to the strengths of these communities in tackling problems".

Inevitably, the culture of Aboriginal people today has more in common with contemporary Australian culture than it does with that of their forebears prior to 1788. Modern Aboriginal culture reflects how successive generations of Aboriginal people have made sense of British Australia and adapted to it. The fundamental mistake made by the authors of the great policy shifts of the '70s and '80s was the assumption that Aboriginal culture was not just somewhat different but that it was viable in some degree of isolation from that of broader Australian society.

The other big mistake was the assumption that all disagreements can be resolved through discussion. When it comes to a terrified girl and a drunken assailant, the right is all on one side. Historical injustices rarely explain crime and never fully excuse it. Respect for Aboriginal culture can't mean tolerating domestic violence. It's not culturally insensitive to expect Aboriginal children to go to school or to expect adults to participate in work, because a failure to do so condemns Aboriginal people to life as second-class Australians.

The hardest question is the long-term future of remote settlements with no conceivable economic base. In a 2004 report into the APY Lands, Lowitja O'Donohue and Tim Costello canvassed the view that there "isn't a sustainable remote indigenous community at a cost that the Australian taxpayer will bear" but concluded that remote communities should be supported as "environmental economies" like, they said, Tasmania. In fact, the cost of providing government services in Tasmania is not appreciably higher than elsewhere. People sustain themselves through participation in the real economy or through the same government benefits available elsewhere.

In remote Aboriginal communities the problem is not just that the government has to provide essential services at very high cost for people who can't otherwise afford to live there. It's that government is expected to provide every service including housing. Eventually, as perceptive Aboriginal thinkers such as Noel Pearson have recognised, Aboriginal people in remote areas will have to fund their own lifestyle, much as tree-changers and sea-changers do already.

Still, government policy should not be designed to force people out of remote communities, just to empower them to leave if that's their choice. For at least a generation to come, government will have to ensure that remote Aboriginal people have sufficient education to cope in the wider Australian community and then let brighter lights exert their pull. That way, Aboriginal people will live in remote areas if they have a reason to do so, not because they have no choice.

Tony Abbott is Opposition spokesman for indigenous affairs. This article is based on the Tonkin memorial lecture to be delivered in Adelaide tonight.

Source: The Australian

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