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How the PM's 'national interest' hijacked native title

By Aden Ridgeway

4 June 2002 - Just as many people thought the 1967 referendum and the citizenship rights it conferred on Aborigines would transform our life experience and deliver equality, so too many people placed great hope in the ability of the Mabo decision 10 years ago to right the wrongs of the past and belatedly deliver social justice to the land's original owners.

But the hopes of many indigenous people were dashed when it became evident that the potential of native title to provide equal respect for their cultural heritage could not be realised.

While we did end up with a Native Title Act, its amendment after the 1996 Wik decision has rendered it nonbeneficial in its effect on Aborigines by licensing governments to racially discriminate against the interests of indigenous peoples. It has been a spectacular failure in delivering on its promise 30 determinations in 10 years and 590 claims still unresolved.

When given the option of "coexistence" with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the Australian legislature, through the Wik amendments, once again reverted to the easy option of elevating the property rights of non-indigenous Australians.

The clear message to native title holders from the Howard Government was that their legal right to have a real say in decisions affecting their country was not in the national interest.

What has failed indigenous Australians is the political leadership of this country, which has allowed opportunities, like those opened up by the Mabo decision, to be squandered.

There is indeed a leadership vacuum in indigenous affairs. The Mabo decision, and as a consequence native title, can only ever be looked at by dealing with all of the immediate surrounding issues such as "deaths in custody", "the stolen generations" and "reconciliation". Exposure of the reality surrounding these aspects of our history, and many others, was supposed to elicit a transformative effect upon the nation. But so far we have only been able to reflect on these events on the negative side of the ledger.

There is a clear relationship between poor education, high unemployment, poverty, inadequate nutrition, poor health and the failure to acknowledge indigenous rights.

When you couple these factors with two centuries of dispossession, social exclusion, and racism, it should come as no surprise that indigenous Australians remain as the most disadvantaged group in this nation.

What might be surprising to some Australians is that this is not the experience of our indigenous brothers and sisters in such countries as New Zealand, the United States and Canada, where indigenous rights have been embraced.

So where have we gone wrong in Australia?

One of the major problems we continue to face is the Federal Government's attitude to indigenous issues. Over the past 20 years, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have been studied, analysed and probed about every aspect of our lives in excruciating detail. Governments have had report after report, consistently advocating the same principle: indigenous disadvantage can be improved only when indigenous people are given greater control over the decisions that affect their daily lives.

But the current government's approach to indigenous disadvantage is founded in its conviction that better economic opportunities and individual initiative alone will help to integrate indigenous people into "mainstream Australia", and deliver real equality.

The Prime Minister made it clear in comments last month that in his mind, the measure of success in terms of the reconciliation process will be when indigenous Australians blend into the wider community and no longer stand out as an embarrassing statistical anomaly.

Underpinning the government's vision for a reconciled Australia are a number of simplistic and unsubstantiated assertions that divorce the experience of indigenous people in this country from any historical context, and which assume that all Australians have the same life opportunities it is all a question of individual motivation and choice.

Among the assertions are that:

* Focusing on indigenous health, housing, education and employment (basic citizenship rights) alone will overcome indigenous disadvantage and achieve lasting reconciliation.

* Symbolic aspects of reconciliation, like an apology to the stolen generations, or a treaty, will do nothing to tackle indigenous disadvantage and are socially and politically divisive.

* The so-called "rights agenda" that has sought to incorporate international standards of human rights into the Australian legal system has been tried and failed.

* There has been too much focus on indigenous rights at the expense of indigenous responsibility, and there is more to be gained by encouraging and supporting individuals to become self- reliant.

* By "turning off the grog", and tackling "welfare dependency", indigenous communities will be able to deal with family violence, alcohol abuse and social dysfunction.

A few prominent indigenous commentators have developed and advocated aspects of these assertions as part of a broader analysis of the way forward in indigenous affairs policy. But by using the language of neoliberalism, and consequently being seen to be of a similar mindset to the Howard Government, they have been cast in the media as legitimaters of the "practical reconciliation" agenda.

Now, rather than being acknowledged as a critical turning point in indigenous affairs in this country, the 1967 referendum and the attainment of equal citizenship rights that it once symbolised is being recast as the beginning of the era of indigenous welfare dependence and social dysfunction.

Many in the indigenous leadership now find themselves in the invidious position of being labelled "part of the problem" and disciples of the "rhetoric of victimhood" that underpins indigenous dysfunction.

But you cannot treat the symptoms of dysfunction in isolation from the historical causes. Good public policy can emerge only where there has been an honest and accurate analysis of past errors and omissions, and a genuine commitment to meeting the needs and aspirations of the people affected by any new policy.

Yet the present government's dogmatic approach to "practical reconciliation" overlooks many of the critical errors and omissions that are evident in past approaches to indigenous affairs. There are three key reasons:

1. The framework of the constitution facilitated the marginalisation of indigenous people for more than half the 20th century, and although discriminatory references to Aborigines were removed from social security legislation in 1966, full access to social security benefits did not occur for indigenous people until the late 1970s, and in some remote communities not until the early 1980s.

2. No Australian government has ever wholeheartedly embraced the right of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to selfdetermination, and the associated inherent rights that flow from it.

Recognition has only ever been partial, and then, given begrudgingly and in a compromised form. Leadership has been more forthcoming in the law than it has in parliament, because at least the law has remained "colourblind" in recognising indigenous rights.

Far too much energy has been expended trying to contain and restrict the application of any rights that are recognised, and invariably more energy is consumed in manoeuvres to limit the application of those rights once they are recognised.

3. Despite the popular myth that indigenous affairs is the land of milk and honey, where organisations have endless resources, ATSIC is not an independent body with complete authority over the expenditure of the indigenous affairs budget.

Less than half of this year's trumpeted "record" $2.5 billion indigenous affairs budget is allocated to ATSIC, and of that the government requires that two thirds is spent in just three areas:
employment programs (similar to work for the dole schemes); housing; and settlement of native title claims.

That leaves very little for some of the key planks of the government's "practical reconciliation" agenda, including programs to combat family violence; or measures to combat drug alcohol and other substance abuse in communities especially when you appreciate that ATSIC is still managing the fallout from the $470 million cut in the Coalition's first budget.

As the government determined to tackle indigenous disadvantage through "practical reconciliation" measures, the Howard Government's record to date is not measuring up to the rhetoric. In the area of health alone:

• Only about 74 cents of direct Commonwealth health funding is spent on each indigenous person for every $1 spent on a non-indigenous Australian.
• This remains the case even after a 2001 Commonwealth Grants Commission report recommended that the poorer health status of indigenous people and their greater reliance on the public health system would justify at least a doubling of the average per capita government expenditure on non-indigenous people just to achieve parity in expenditure on health care for all Australians.

This kind of budget allocation was not forthcoming last month. Instead we saw the government proposing a winding back of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which will have adverse financial and health outcomes for indigenous people, as well as many other disadvantaged Australians.

What is more surprising though is that the government made much mileage out of violence against women and sexual abuse of children and yet dedicated only a pittance to stamping out this immoral scourge in our communities. This is hard enough, but it is indecent for the Howard Government to underspend last year's allocation by some $4.5 million.

That is why I support the call by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Bill Jonas for a parliamentary inquiry into reconciliation and the government's response to date.

We have to have a mechanism that will make governments accountable. And we have to hold the current government to account to ensure it delivers on its limited promises of "practical reconciliation".

Senator Aden Ridgeway is deputy leader of the Australian Democrats and was a part of the indigenous negotiating teams for the original Native Title Act and the amended act. This is an edited extract of his Castan Lecture, delivered in Melbourne yesterday.

Source: The Age

related links:

• Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR): The Failure of Practical Reconciliation (pdf, 30Kb)
• ANTaR Supports HREOC call for Senate enquiry:
  Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) today joined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Dr Bill Jonas, in calling for the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional References Committee to conduct an inquiry into the implementation and responses to the reconciliation process.

Further information: native title issues page - includes news index and external links

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