news | action | information | events | contact | search | news | action | information | events | contact | search |
key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lHoward silences Aboriginal advocatesBy Debra Jopson and Cynthia Banham 16 April 2004- The Federal Government has ended the policy of self-determination which for three decades has taken the voices of elected Aboriginal representatives to Canberra, with the Prime Minister, John Howard, announcing he will abolish the nation's peak indigenous body. The Government will introduce legislation to abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) next month, moving all its programs into government departments and replacing the 13-member elected board with an appointed body of "distinguished indigenous people" with an advisory role only. "We believe very strongly that the experiment in separate representation, elected representation, for indigenous people has been a failure," Mr Howard said. The move follows a series of scandals among ATSIC's elected leadership and a scathing report on its performance by a government-appointed review team which said it had reached a "crisis point" over its credibility among indigenous people. However, Jackie Huggins, a member of the review team, said the "essential element" of its report was that there had to be legitimate national representative leadership for indigenous people.
"A representative panel of individuals, no matter how distinguished, can never be the voice for indigenous Australia over the long term," said Ms Huggins, who is also co-chairwoman of Reconciliation Australia. ATSIC's first chairwoman, Lowitja O'Donoghue, said she was unhappy with the way Mr Howard had ended self-determination. "Governments can't blame Aboriginal people for all these failures. They have to take some responsibility for themselves over the question of self-determination." Labor is likely to support the Government's proposals, with the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, having pre-empted Mr Howard's decision to abolish ATSIC two weeks ago. Mr Latham said yesterday that Labor had "once again shown the way on policy". The Opposition and Government differ, however, on what type of organisation should replace ATSIC, with Labor saying it would set up a directly elected body to provide advice. Labor also wants responsibility for the provision of services to indigenous communities devolved to ATSIC's regional councils. Mr Howard plans to abolish these in mid-2005. The Australian Democrats leader, Senator Andrew Bartlett, said that the proposed new advisory body would be a "hand- picked board of Mr Howard's chosen advisers for him to ignore whenever he feels like it". The Greens accused the Government and Labor of playing "pre-election games" and said ATSIC's abolition would "do nothing to assist indigenous Australians to escape poverty and poor health". The acting ATSIC chairman, Lionel Quartermaine, said the Government was "kidding" itself if it thought indigenous issues would go away with the organisation's demise. The board would still meet next month to decide if any protest or other action should be taken against the Government. The suspended ATSIC chairman, Geoff Clark, said he would fight using "whichever means necessary" to retain the indigenous organisation. Source: Sydney Morning Herald Biggest scandal of all ignored By Debra Jopson April 16, 2004 - Symbolism, scandals and ideology have brought Australia's great experiment in Aboriginal self-determination to an end. The Prime Minister's interpretation yesterday was that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) had "become too preoccupied with what might loosely be called 'symbolic issues' and too little concerned with delivering real outcomes for indigenous people". John Howard did not have to talk about the scandals - the ongoing court battles of the suspended chairman, Geoff Clark, and "Sugar" Ray Robinson, who gave up the deputy's job before he was pushed. Even though the biggest scandal of all is continuing indigenous disadvantage, the tainted leadership has been a gift to Howard, who found Clark's advocacy of self-government - derived in part from his membership of the radical Aboriginal Provisional Government - highly distasteful. By re-electing Clark and continuing to support him, the ATSIC board failed to save itself and its organisation. Howard had already managed to neutralise a push for the highly symbolic treaty. Self-determination still rankled: he saw it as a symbol of separatism. This Government has preferred to say Aborigines were engaged in "self-management". And under the new indigenous affairs regime to be introduced as legislation next month, even "self-management" will be gone. Aboriginal affairs is to be "mainstreamed" with all the programs that now fall under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS) agency and its governing board, ATSIC, channelled into existing Federal Government departments. Once ATSIC regional councils are finally abolished, in June next year, the way the black dollar is spent will no longer be directed by elected indigenous representatives. For the first time in the 14 years since the Hawke Labor government set up ATSIC, there will be no elected Aboriginal voice to advise the Government. It is a legacy of an organisation which, from the start, never handed Aborigines real power anyway. ATSIC could only ever "top up" mainstream services - and advise governments from a position of weakness. As its first chairwoman, Lowitja O'Donoghue, commented, the Federal Government failed to prepare Aboriginal people by handing ATSIC to people with no experience of self-governance. It shares responsibility for the failures. Source: Sydney Morning Herald Anger at ATSIC abolition April 16, 2004 - Indigenous leaders have reacted with dismay and anger at government plans to abolish ATSIC and end direct political representation for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. ATSIC acting chairman Lionel Quartermaine said the government was deluding itself if it believed the conditions facing indigenous people would be improved by abolishing the 14-year-old organisation. Prime Minister John Howard has announced the government will wind-up ATSIC during the May parliamentary sittings. The government also plans to mainstream various indigenous programs, arguing they can be delivered more effectively than under ATSIC's auspices. But Mr Quartermaine said mainstreaming services had been a disaster for indigenous Australians in the past, with no prospect they would be improved. He said ATSIC was being unfairly targeted because white governments had failed indigenous people. "I'm black, I wake up in the morning and I'm black, the sun will shine, the black issues that we see and face ... will always be here today and tomorrow," he said. Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson said the government had taken a step backward in abolishing ATSIC, and gone even further backwards with its mainstreaming proposals. He said education and health, the two areas of most complaint for indigenous Australians, had been mainstreamed for at least the past decade, for no benefit. "This is complete folly," he said. Lowitja O'Donoghue, ATSIC's inaugural chair, said abolishing the organisation would do nothing to help indigenous people while denying them a say in their future. Source: AAP PM jumps, ATSIC falls by Michelle Grattan April 18, 2004 - By instinct a monoculturalist, John Howard has reluctantly got used to a multicultural Australia. But he has not come to understand or accept the importance of cultural identity to the country's indigenous people, which leads to their attachment to ideas of self-determination or self-management. "I've never been very comfortable with ATSIC," the PM said after the Government's sweeping rearrangement of the way it handles indigenous affairs. When the opportunity arose to scrap the troublesome Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Howard wasn't going to miss it. He personally drove the big changes announced on Thursday. Two developments gave him the opening to implement what he always wanted but couldn't do without special circumstances - to get rid of a separate elected indigenous body and to "mainstream" the delivery of all services to Aboriginal people. First, ATSIC behaved badly, totally discrediting itself in a series of actions beginning with the re-election of Geoff Clark, despite his legal problems, as chairman after last year's election and of "Sugar" Ray Robinson as deputy chair. And second, Opposition Leader Mark Latham announced a Labor government would scrap ATSIC (but promised an elected replacement). Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone was the secondary player in last week's demolition of ATSIC. Since late last year, Vanstone had had a report from the review group the Government set up to examine the dysfunctional body, which had already lost its powers over funding. The report recommended an extensive overhaul, but not abolition. When Latham made his surprise announcement, Vanstone had not yet put a submission to cabinet. Latham's stance galvanised Howard. Labor had shifted the goalposts; it was prepared to do the unthinkable, making it easier for the Government to go all the way. The other driving forces in the Government's timing were the budget - if functions were to be transferred, that was the time to do it - and the ticking clock of election year. When cabinet considered ATSIC on Thursday, it still did not have a Vanstone submission. Instead, it had a memorandum from officials, canvassing options and issues. Vanstone supported scrapping the ATSIC board. But she wanted a more modest revolution than what came out. She did not advocate abolition of the regional councils and she opposed moving the $1 billion-plus funding now administered separately to "mainstream" departments. In cabinet, she argued for this funding to be under the control of her department. But Howard and other ministers were unsympathetic to the slightest shred of compromise. In light of this, it was ironic that Vanstone went over the top when defending the changes. On ABC radio, she likened the current separate system to the repugnant, old South African apartheid: "There was once a country we wouldn't play cricket with because they had separate systems." This was both carelessly inflammatory and an inadvertent indictment of the Government itself, which, whatever its feeling about it, has operated the separate system since 1996. The Government's drastic action has solved its difficulties with trying to sack Clark, although it is untidy in the short term. Clark's future is academic when ATSIC is gone, but if he wins this month his Federal Court action to stop the Government dismissing him, he could be back for a brief last fling before the legislation is passed. Labor indicated after the Government announcement that it would support the legislation, although Opposition spokesman Kerry O'Brien said yesterday it would want to look at aspects of it other than the scrapping of the national commission. It is in Labor's interests not to quibble: an incoming ALP government would have a clean slate. Labor's policy is to abolish ATSIC at both the national and regional level but to replace it with new elected and administrative structures. There would be no extension of "mainstreaming". O'Brien, speaking from Thursday Island during his tour (also including Aurukun, Cairns, Darwin and the Kimberley) to consult about Opposition plans, conceded Labor has a selling job to convince local communities about its policy. "Our position needs some explanation," he told The Sunday Age, "but people are coming to understand it. "The Government position puts our position into sharp contrast. We would break the (ATSIC) mould and start again. They are breaking the mould and going backwards." ATSIC nationally is pitching to Labor. Acting chairman Lionel Quartermaine said on Friday that Howard had "nothing to offer" indigenous people, but ATSIC looked forward to meeting with Latham, "the first major political leader ever in Australian history to offer indigenous people the opportunity to draw up their own model for a new national body made up of democratically elected representatives". For Latham, this is a double-edged sword. He'll be glad to have the Government painted as the bad guys, but won't want to become mired pre-election in indigenous politics. Meanwhile, the Government has to deal with the backlash from its drastic solution. The trickiest aspect will be getting respected people to serve on its planned appointed advisory committee. Although ATSIC had lost respect, general Aboriginal reaction to the changes has been sharp. Even Noel Pearson, who has views in common with the Government on such issues as welfare dependency, is very critical. Pearson lambasted "mainstreaming" as returning to "big-government service delivery". As for an appointed advisory group, "what we need is, in fact, indigenous leaders - competent, talented people - to take up responsibility" for the problems confronting indigenous people, "not to be shunted sideways and made into token advisers to the Government". The flaw in the Government's approach is that its restructuring of Aboriginal affairs is strongly driven by negatives, rather than based on a positive philosophy that has the prospect of resonating with indigenous people. Howard's "mainstreaming" is rooted in his notion of "practical reconciliation" - that all that matters is redressing the deficiencies in health, education and other specific areas. Critical as this is, experience of indigenous affairs around the world as well as Australia indicates that it is not enough. The symbolism is also important. And mainstreaming will not bring great improvement automatically. We are talking about less than half the $2.7 billion indigenous budget, and programs such as indigenous work-for-the-dole and community infrastructure. Remember, the crucial health and education areas are "mainstreamed" now, and in this context the recent social justice report of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is salutary. "Indigenous Australians . . . presently endure health standards worse than those in some so-called Third World countries," it said. How the Government's mainstreaming looks in practice will much depend on the co-ordinating arrangements that are still being devised. A central figure in this is Peter Shergold, head of the PM's Department - and a one-time CEO of ATSIC. One of the wisest voices in indigenous affairs is that of Fred Chaney, a former Liberal minister for Aboriginal Affairs who is co-chair of Reconciliation Australia. Chaney is highly sympathetic to indigenous causes but also sees things in complex terms. Thus he says he "personally thinks there is a lot to be said for 'mainstreaming' ", not least because it prevents politicians and bureaucrats escaping responsibility. Although Chaney says history tells us mainstreaming hasn't worked previously, he believes there is a fresh chance, arising from new work on how to drive change in communities. This includes trials sponsored by Commonwealth, state and territory governments - with agencies working together and with local communities - that have identified key drivers of success. These drivers are building capacity in Aboriginal communities, and strengthening the capacity of government agencies to deliver services. There are also now better indicators to measure progress - or lack of it - in areas such as education, health and life expectancy. "These days we have an improved tool box, but we need to use the tools," says Chaney. "If mainstream agencies are put under the hammer, it could be different from the past. But it will require an act of will and a consistency that has not ever been there." He stresses the criticism doesn't just refer to recent years. Chaney finds the Government's intention to have no elected indigenous voice much more problematic. "Since the 1970s, an elected voice has provided a useful stimulant to debate, an indication of where Aboriginal people want to go. In my experience, nominated groups are quite different in nature. From them you get good short-term advice, but not good long-term agenda-setting advocacy." Like all governments in recent memory, the Howard Government has found Aboriginal affairs to be one of the most frustrating and difficult of policy areas. Its latest response, as William Jonas, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, neatly puts it in a statement trenchantly criticising the changes, is to try "to ensure that the Government will only have to deal with indigenous peoples on its own terms". It's one thing getting rid of ATSIC, which had become a disaster area. It's quite another to block out inconveniently discordant advice. Source:The Age An indigenous voice stilled By Richard Frankland 19 April 2004 - Can Aborigines dare to dream of a better future for their children? Today I look at my eight-month-old daughter Nakaya - "bird song" in Gunditjmara - and I know that another sliver of hope has been removed from her future. For all its faults, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission represented an investment in the belief that the continuing injustices affecting my people can and will be overcome, despite the dismal failure of John Howard's "practical reconciliation". I look at Nakaya and I know that the gulf between the lives of my people and those of the wider community remains about as wide as it was when Howard took office. Only 38 per cent of indigenous children complete school, compared with the national average of 77 per cent. Indigenous people are 14 times more likely to be imprisoned and 16 times more likely to die in custody. Thirty-eight per cent of my people are unemployed. I look at Nakaya and I know that today her life expectancy is 20 years less than that of a child born to my white friends. Will it be any better tomorrow? In fact, she is lucky to be alive: the indigenous child mortality rate is still more than three times higher than that for other Australian children. The sliver of hope that was ATSIC was based on the belief that Australia had left behind the colonialism and the assimilation policies designed to obliterate our cultural identity and, indeed, our very existence. "Self-determination" was to be the new direction and many people of goodwill worked hard to make it a reality. It was not to be. Modelling ATSIC on electoral and decision-making systems that took little account of Aboriginal culture, successive governments neglected to provide managerial expertise and showed little cross-cultural understanding. White society sat back and waited for mistakes and, when these came, funds were cut. Is it too much to expect that the mistakes made on all sides should lead to a reassessment and to reforms to preserve this brave, if somewhat misshapen, experiment? The end of ATSIC means not just that services for indigenous people will be channelled through the mainstream public service, with all the paternalistic implications of that process. The end of ATSIC means the end of "voice" for indigenous people. What Howard has set out to destroy, no doubt to great applause by Pauline Hanson, is the one avenue indigenous Australians have to speak with one voice, to negotiate with politicians and to sit down to these negotiations as equals. To replace this voice with an unelected advisory committee adds sneering derision to injury. ATSIC is the national indigenous voice, for all its faults, and to destroy it by the stroke of a pen is a major setback to the cause of reconciliation. Again I look at Nakaya and above the sadness, the rage and the grim foreboding, there is the knowledge that her culture has survived despite the Hansons and the Howards. So there is also a dream - a dream that one day some of my fellow Australians might say "hello" to her in Gunditjmara - "Ngatawanga" - and that they will treat her with the respect every human being deserves. Richard Frankland is a playwright, filmmaker and musician. Source: The Age Letters to The Age 21 April 2004 ATSIC and apartheid are poles apart Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone's likening of ATSIC to the apartheid regime in the old South Africa (The Age, 17/4) is more than political polemic: it reveals something fundamental about the Howard Government's approach to Aboriginal affairs. If ATSIC is to be equated with apartheid, then it is to be presumed that native title will be deemed even closer to the South African model. Indeed, anything suggestive of what the Prime Minister terms "experiments in separate representation" will be at risk. Schooling in Aboriginal languages, Aboriginal community development programs, special police liaison units and innumerable other measures that have been designed to redress Aboriginal disadvantage could fall foul of the Prime Minister's hostility to apartheid. The truth, of course, is that such measures represent the inverse of apartheid. Under the South African apartheid regime, African people were confined to Bantustans ("homelands") that they could leave only for the purpose of servicing the white economy (as mine labourers, domestic servants, etc). The hated pass laws allowed black people to be on white territory for these approved purposes alone. Thus apartheid segregated African people in order to further their exploitation by white society. In stark contrast to apartheid, ATSIC, native title and related measures were introduced with a view to redressing the wrongs that white society has visited on Aboriginal people. For all their shortcomings, these measures represent the hesitant beginnings of the arduous historical process whereby the destructive consequences of white-settler racism can be overcome in this country. Since Federation, the principal wrong that white society has visited on Aboriginal people has not been separating them but forcibly including them under the policy of Aboriginal assimilation, whose refusal to countenance Aboriginal difference continues to have disastrous repercussions. The Government's refusal to recognise Aboriginal people's distinctive status has continuity with the discredited assimilation policy. In seeking to make Aboriginal communities just one more tile in the multicultural mosaic, the Government is seeking to deny - and, above all, to depoliticise - Aboriginal people's special relationship to white Australian society. This relationship reflects Aboriginal people's distinctive historical experience. Its denial is above all a denial of history - the "black armband" that John Howard has so strenuously excoriated. But this history cannot be abolished by prime ministerial fiat. It lives on in the continuing national disgrace of Aboriginal deprivation. Australia cannot afford many more racial scandals. I have just returned from working at an American university. Even in that relatively informed environment, almost none of my colleagues realised that Australian troops had participated in the invasion of Iraq. Yet all were familiar with the names of "Tampa" and "Redfern", while a surprisingly large number had seen the film Rabbit-Proof Fence. We deny racial injustice at our own national risk. Dr Patrick Wolfe,
Self-determination has not failed I strongly disagree with Peter Howson (Opinion, 20/4): just because ATSIC has failed does not mean that self-determination has failed. While ATSIC has really been a failure from the beginning, indigenous bodies at the regional level have been quite successful - and with better support from the Government, could have achieved the improvements in indigenous health and education that are so desperately needed. Howson goes so far as to espouse the view that indigenous people should be integrated into Australia in a manner that would mean they lost their Aboriginal identity. This approach was attempted for more than 200 years and failed. More importantly, indigenous cultures are of value. A vibrant and active mix of indigenous cultures adds to the cultural fabric of our society, in a way that is uniquely Australian. Australia must move forward in the spirit of partnerships with our indigenous peoples, giving them voice and real ownership over the development of programs designed to alleviate problems that blight indigenous people in rural communities and cities alike. We cannot accept the notion that non-indigenous people are best placed to tackle indigenous health, education and social problems. If this were the case the problems would have been solved decades ago. We owe it to the present generation of indigenous peoples facing serious disadvantage to make a step forward - and not a step backwards. Matthew Corrigan,
Making 'em white Peter Howson's second paragraph says it all: "Nearly 70 per cent of Aborigines are already married to non-indigenous spouses. With the majority now of mixed descent, more than 70per cent professing Christianity and few even speaking an indigenous language at home, most Aborigines are now part of the wider community." Wasn't this one of the underlying motivations that led to the Stolen Generations? To make 'em "white"? How revealing, too, that Howson trumpets "professing Christianity" as a benchmark for Aboriginal integration into the "wider community". How patronising for the more informed reader who is well aware of the enormous suffering that Christian institutions have inflicted on Aboriginal Australia. Now that John Howard has removed ATSIC, it will be easier for him to implement policies to white-out Australia. After all, no need to say "sorry" if you make 'em white. Alan Griffiths, Source: The Age related links:
|
2004
gone for a song |
|
