home | news l

While ideologues bicker, indigenous Australians die

By Rosemary Neill

24 May 2002 - In 1996, the Howard Government came to power trumpeting its commitment to free speech, especially in the area of indigenous affairs. Last week, Aboriginal social justice commissioner William Jonas accused it of seeking to "shut down debate" about reconciliation.

Jonas - a government appointee - was right. Through dour silence and calculated neglect, the federal Government has tried to kill off the reconciliation movement; a movement that drew hundreds of thousands on to the streets of all the state capitals exactly two years ago. (John Howard was not among them.)

Reconciliation documents that were the culmination of years of work (and millions of dollars in public funding) were handed to the Government in 2000. Yet it hasn't responded to them in a comprehensive, public way. This is shabby.

The reconciliation process was set in train following a unanimous vote in federal parliament in 1991. Jonas reminded us: "Reconciliation was an initiative of government, not of indigenous people themselves, and one to which indigenous people responded and acted in good faith."

When Howard declared that reconciliation would not be achieved by the centenary of Federation - the originally agreed deadline - he was abrogating the moral responsibilities of high office. With statements of national symbolic significance, the punters are only as ready as their leaders are. Instead, Howard dismissed the reconciliation deadline as a "mistake".

As NSW Aboriginal leader Linda Burney has said, there can be no reconciliation without social justice. Equally, there can be no social justice for indigenous Australians without reconciliation.

It is well known that the Government is intent on pursuing "practical reconciliation". Howard adopted this mantra to distance himself from a Keating-era rights agenda. Practical reconciliation also amounts to a cynical denial that the past stalks the present; that historical racial injustice plays a role in contemporary disadvantage.

Jonas argued persuasively that the Government's narrow approach has stifled debate about reconciliation. Sunday is Sorry Day and the second anniversary of the history-making march across the Syd ney Harbour Bridge. Monday marks the start of Reconciliation Week. Yet in the national political conversation, reconciliation has become as marginal as, say, ideas about nationalising heavy industry.

Advocates of the practical approach who mock the rights agenda never ask this question: What has practical reconciliation done to improve the 19 to 20-year life expectancy gap between black and white Australians? Surely this is the ultimate litmus test of Howard's practical strategy.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says data quality is still too poor to make indigenous life expectancy comparisons between 1996, when Howard was elected, and now. Although ABS data is improving, the lack of reliable statistics is a comment in itself about our failure to take seriously that Australia has a bigger indigenous- non-indigenous life expectancy gap than any other wealthy nation. What the ABS can confirm is that "the 20-year life expectancy gap is not shrinking".

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's latest figures on indigenous mortality suggest an ongoing epidemic of death in middle age. From 1997 to 1999, almost half (about 45 per cent) of the recorded deaths of indigenous males occurred before the age of 45. The corresponding rate in the wider population was 10 per cent. As an institute spokesman wryly notes: "If there has been an improvement, it is not immediately apparent."

If the Howard Government has sidelined reconciliation, it is also true that many on the Left have pursued a rights agenda in splendid isolation from the sometimes worsening economic and social problems of indigenous communities.

There was a sharp reminder of this at the launch of the Don Watson biography of Paul Keating in Sydney earlier this month. Indigenous leader Noel Pearson was launching the book, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart. He was warmly received in a room bursting with true believers, as he spoke of Keating's crowning achievement - passage of the 1993 Native Title Act.

But when Pearson started to attack both sides of politics over the paucity of ideas about how to deal with indigenous social crises, the temperature dropped. It felt decidedly chilly as he advocated zero tolerance of alcohol in dysfunctional indigenous communities. When he finished, the applause was polite rather than enthusiastic - I have seen a similar, left-leaning crowd give Pearson a standing ovation just for turning up to talk about native title.

Later, I heard that some people felt Pearson's speech had been inappropriate. So the white middle class still doesn't get it - it refuses to accept the gravity of the indigenous substance abuse and violence problems, and it cannot see why an indigenous leader who is attempting to confront the full horror has little time for the pleasantries of a celebrity-studded book launch.

All this confirms how an unhealthy dichotomy continues to split indigenous affairs; small-l liberals celebrate heady native title victories but deny the compromising reality of communities whose social problems remain entrenched - even after they have won land rights. A conservative government buries issues of symbolic importance but has little to say about the most important practical priority of all - improving black life expectancy.

And we call this progress.

Rosemary Neill is author of White Out: How Politics is Killing Black Australia, to be published by Allen & Unwin in July.

Source: The Australian

Rights are a practical matter, Mr Ruddock

By WILLIAM JONAS

Monday 30 July 2001 - Reconciliation Minister Philip Ruddock expressed the view on this page last Monday ("Aborigines reach a turning point") that the recent debate about domestic violence, economic independence and welfare dependency among indigenous people is a move away from a rights-based approach.

He said this "new" focus was consistent with the Federal Government's policies directed at the individual, and so was a victory for a practical approach to indigenous issues. Against this, a rights-based approach was depicted as being preoccupied with symbolic and semantic issues, such as a treaty, an apology and compensation - which the minister inferred produce no tangible results for Aboriginal people.

As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, whose statutory duty is to promote and protect the human rights of indigenous people, I am concerned that a rights-based approach is being painted as having no relationship to the wellbeing of the individual.

I am concerned there is a view gaining currency that issues of indigenous disadvantage and human rights are mutually exclusive. That is not the case. The two are inextricably linked. When I go out into indigenous communities and speak about social justice and racism, what is striking is that, at an individual level, people's experience is fundamentally forged by their being Aboriginal.

What a rights-based approach seeks to do is ask why an individual's experience of being Aboriginal manifests, to a disproportionate extent, as unemployment, bad health, low literacy levels, high incarceration rates and high mortality rates.

Policies based on an understanding of the pattern of discrimination that affects all indigenous people are more likely to result in positive outcomes for indigenous individuals and communities.

A focus on "rights" does not imply silence on the issues of welfare-dependency, indigenous empowerment and community violence. It merely means a different approach to these issues from that advocated by the individualist model - a model that ignores historical antecedents and assumes everyone has the same opportunities.

A government cannot and should not rely simply on economic rationalism and individual initiative to transform indigenous communities. A rights-based approach seeks to understand the underlying and historical causes of unemployment and welfare dependency for Aboriginal people. Without this understanding, government policies simply manage the problem. They do not offer a way forward.

The focus on "practical reconciliation" maintains a situation where indigenous people are subject to the beneficence and good intentions of government. It does not change the unequal basis of the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people.

Integral to the shift from welfare dependency to empowerment is the equal enjoyment of human rights. In this sense I agree with Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson when he says: "The substantial agreement has to be that the country is going to respect the rights of Aborigines to autonomy and self-determination and, in turn, it means that Aboriginal people will accept that they need to take responsibility for their own self-determination."

Economic development must take place within the social and cultural context of indigenous values, in which kinship and family responsibility rank alongside the wellbeing of the individual. Aboriginal people must both control and take responsibility for this process.

Dr William Jonas is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner of The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.

Source: The Age

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