Author Andrew Smallman
I we were to ask almost any group of Australians the
question…”Has aboriginal policy in Australia over the last 235 years been
successful ?”…..I suspect the answer from most respondents would be a
resounding NO.
The main factual basis of this view is that approximately
one fifth of aboriginal Australians currently live in sub-standard conditions
in outback and remote areas with poor health, welfare and quality of life, poor
housing, high unemployment, low life expectancy, excessive alcohol use, excessive
levels of incarceration and high levels of child neglect and abuse leading to
removal of children from families.
Many aborigine activists use words like rightful place, recognition,
reconciliation, self determination, justice and empowerment. No attempt is
made to define the meaning of these words but I think we get the idea that they
occupy a realm somewhere near the apex of Maslow’s triangle.
But the real problems remain where they have stubbornly
persisted for many years. Conceptually at the bottom of Maslow’s triangle and
geographically in outback and remote settlements where about one fifth of
people who identify as aborigines live.
A substantial majority of the 812,000 Australians who
identified as aborigines in the 2021 Census are urbanised. They live in cities
and large towns. They have a basic level of education and their children often
do better. They have a paying job and decently stable housing. They live in
reasonable harmony with their multicultural neighbours. They have a mostly
positive outlook about the future for themselves and their children. Most can’t afford waterfront mansions or
fancy cars or ski holidays at Aspen but neither can most of those who do not
identify as aborigines.
For this majority group, life has been getting better over
the last 100 years or so.
In this discussion I will try to show what is going right
for urbanised aborigines (they are engaged with the mainstream of modern
society) and what is going wrong for
those in remote areas (they are dis-engaged from the mainstream of modern
society). I will propose a set of
actions which I think can improve quality of life for aborigines currently doing badly in
remote areas.
Any worthwhile discussion about any matter of importance
rests on some ideas, ideologies, beliefs, doctrines, call them what you will,
which form a foundation on which analysis
can proceed. These beliefs are mostly but not exclusively acquired in
childhood. We carry them around with us and evaluate ideas or events which
might affect us by how well we think they fit with these beliefs.
My discourse rests on
three premises. If the reader
profoundly disagrees with these premises it will be difficult for him or her to
relate to my discussion in a positive way.
1. Forward looking strategies can be successful, if they are
the right ones. Backward looking strategies cannot. We cannot “fix” or “undo”
the past. It is done, for better or worse.
It is often impossible to restore something lost especially if that
something is part of a culture which has undergone great change.
We explore the past in order to understand which of our
blundering attempts to do the right thing have been successful and which have
not. We strive to avoid repeating past mistakes and in the process try to avoid
making new ones.
2. In a multicultural, liberal, representative democracy
such as Australia I hold it fundamental to the character of the nation that all
shall be held equal in law and society regardless of ethnicity, age, sex,
disability, wealth, religion or recency of arrival in the land.
The baby born one minute ago has the same rights and (when
old enough to assume them) responsibilities as any other citizen.
The immigrant from Tibet who received her citizenship papers
yesterday has the same rights and responsibilities as a person whose ancestors
lived in Terra Australis.
3. Programmes intended to benefit some group of people must
be independently evaluated as to their effectiveness in achieving a clearly
identified outcome. I spent much of my adult life working as director of a
district mental health service. Here I witnessed first hand the damage which
can be done by well intended but un-evaluated programmes and by data collection
activities which are just window dressing.
Each of these programmes acquires
a political power structure consisting of consumers and their families, service
providers and their administrative structures, lobbyists and friends in
parliament. Any proposal to “review” one of these programmes is taken as a
threat and resisted with maximum force. My personal experience is with mental
health services but it is clear enough that
massive fortunes are being wasted on un-evaluated programmes right
across the spectrum of human activity including aboriginal services.
This issue is one of the most pressing and vexed facing
modern societies. Our political representatives are cowed into silent
acquiescence to the maintenance of programme fiefdoms due to the screaming
scare campaigns which ensue whenever an attempt is made to achieve more
productive policy settings.
Where am I going with
this?
I will try to show that the best policy for aborigines is no
policy at all.
Some people will take umbrage at this notion. I can only ask
that the reader who does so at least give my discourse twenty minutes of their
attention.
Please bear in mind that:
a) I have not heard a single person stand up in public and say
that that our current or past policies are serving aborigines well and
b) Many people, both aborigines and not-aborigines, have said on the public record that we as a nation should seriously consider
a major change of strategy.
The question we need to answer is what precisely that
different strategy should be.
In order to proceed with this endeavour we must attempt to
identify what is wrong with current policy and where and how things went wrong.
Some features of
current aboriginal policy
* A desire to restore lost aboriginal land and culture.
* Frequent use of words the meaning of which is not
clarified such as rightful place, justice, self determination, empowerment and
reconciliation.
I argue that these words are weaponised in the campaign for
aboriginal rights. Their value as weapons depends on their ability to evoke
emotional responses sympathetic to aboriginal causes, whatever these might be.
It is essential that the factual meaning of these words never be clarified.
* Representing the aboriginal experience as entirely
negative, consisting only of losses and traumas, never mentioning the positive benefits
of the modern world for people who identify as aborigines such as health, education,
housing and employment.
Historian Geoffrey Blainey in 1993 referred to this as the
“black armband” view of aboriginal history.
* Conceptualising aborigines as fundamentally and
intrinsically different from not-aborigines without ever specifying what is the
nature of this difference. This presumed difference necessitates separate
aboriginal dwelling places, health services, education services, housing,
legal, welfare and many other services specifically for aborigines. In fact
there are no such fundamental differences and none has been demonstrated. I
argue that aboriginal activists push this line relentlessly as part of their thus
far successful campaign to establish an aboriginal political class.
* Basing policies on emotions with a notable lack of thoughtful
analysis and a lack of independent evaluation.
Bertrand Russell is often cited as the primary source of the
statement…”most people would rather die than think; in fact they do so”. …or words to that effect as variously
reported.
Most humans find that the process of trying to think
analytically about issues is extremely challenging so they opt for other
approaches, generally based on intuitive emotional reactions to a perceived
problem. This has led to policies and
programmes being put into effect on the basis of romantic ideals and untested
assertions. Policies intended with goodwill to benefit aborigines may in
practice have the opposite effect due to welfare dependency or other
un-anticipated negative impact. But if
we attempt to challenge the effectiveness some aboriginal benefit programme the
screaming protest which ensues is usually enough to shut down the challenge.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and littered
with bad policies.
A key notion which
has been lost from debate about aboriginal policy
* This is the concept of equality. Equality of capability, of opportunity, of civil
rights and legal and cultural status. I identify the 1967 Referendum as the
inflexion point from which debate about aboriginal policy turned away from the
idea of equality and became entrenched in a plethora of special provisions.
Specifically I believe the 1967 referendum put the wrong
question to the people. I put the view that the question should have been to
repeal S51(26). To remove the Commonwealth race power altogether.
My thesis is that the notion of aborigines as fundamentally
different and in need of special provisions in perpetuity is the principal
reason for the failure of aboriginal policy from 1967 to the present day
(2023).
Some history
Archaeologists tell us that our species, Homo sapiens, arose
in Africa around 200,000 years ago and from about 60,000 years ago spread
across the planet to occupy most geographic regions suitable for human
habitation.
Successive waves of human groups followed the initial
explorers, often producing conflict as they attempted to occupy land already
inhabited by previous settlers. These invading groups might have been seeking
greener pastures or trying to exert dominion over others or both.
Repeated waves of these incursions occurred across Asia, the Middle East and Europe, extending
across what is now the Bering Strait to the Americas and all the way to Terra
Australis. The usual and best outcome
has been that over time, invaders and defenders eventually reach a settlement,
engage in miscegenation and evolve into a blended group of people with mixed
ancestry.
Sometimes the new arrivals brought to one part of the world
a technology which had been discovered elsewhere. Thus knowledge about the
wheel, numbers, writing, metals, agriculture and much more found its way across
the middle east, Europe, Asia and beyond.
The story of human habitation in Terra Australis has some
characteristics determined by global climate change and in particular ice ages. During the last glacial period, from 100,000
years ago to about 25,000 years ago, sea levels fell, making it possible for
migrating people to travel from Africa, around southern Asia and all the way to
Terra Australis via the region we now know as Indonesia. They might have been
able to travel on foot all the way or at most required only short sea voyages.
After the glacial period came a warm period which extends to
the present time. This caused sea levels to rise, cutting off human access to
Terra Australis from anywhere else on the planet for many thousands of years.
Thus the mixing of cultures, ideas and technologies which
happened repeatedly in other parts of the globe could not happen in Terra
Australis.
Thoughts about origins
of the doctrine of aboriginal different-ness
When Captain Cook and his men landed in Kurnell in 1770 the
new arrivals and indigenous people must have regarded each other as so alien
and different as to be some kind of different race.
We understand that the notion of superior and inferior races
was ingrained in 18th Century Anglo-European culture, as was the
equally pervasive notion of superior and inferior “classes” of people within
the same ethnic group.
We now know that all humans are members of the same “race”
(the human race} and that the notion of hereditary superiority supporting a
class structure in society is incorrect.
We now know that the differences between aborigines and the
incoming colonists were due to different opportunities having been available to
the two groups.
We now know that if any humans, aborigines or
otherwise, have good nutrition in the
womb, good child care with love and parental wisdom, family expectations of
education and personal development, schooling, employment and housing then they
can rise to the occasion and build for themselves and their children a good
quality of life.
But in the 18th and 19th Centuries
these insights had not yet become apparent.
Aborigines were initially treated by the new arrivals as an
impediment to expansion of the empire and were displaced from their traditional
lands and culture by force and diseases such as measles to which aborigines
lacked immunity.
Then followed a period in which aborigines were herded into
mission settlements or otherwise rounded up and displaced from their
traditional lands. As far as I can tell
from historical records this appears to have been based on the idea that
aborigines were an inferior race, the individuals of which needed special care,
protection and direction.
In the middle of the 20th Century policy makers
sought to distinguish “full blood” from “half caste” aborigines. From my
reading it appears that the “half castes” were regarded as being neither white
nor black and apparently not belonging to either camp.
A policy was implemented by which “half caste” children were removed without
consent from their families to be raised in institutions or in foster families.
The people who implemented this policy appear to have regarded it as a
programme of improvement for the children involved.
This abrogation of the human rights of aborigines has been
universally condemned. However one outcome of these policies was that several
generations of aborigines got an education in reading and writing the English
language and arithmetic. This allowed them to move on to mainstream employment
and in some cases to higher education. Miscegenation gained momentum to such an
extent that the vast majority of people who identify as aborigines in Australia
today are of mixed ethnic heritage.
My thesis is that these events which occurred
over more than a century served to harden the idea in the minds of some people
that aborigines are fundamentally and constitutionally (in the biological
sense) different from not-aborigines. We can see in the statements of some
people on the public record that this has become an article of faith or
doctrine, so firmly is the idea held. In the context of the debate in mid 2023
about the indigenous voice to parliament we can see that most people expressing
this idea are self appointed aboriginal leaders, all of whom by the way are of
mixed ethnic heritage. Biologically they are just as much not-aborigines as
aborigines.
But there are plenty of people, both aborigines and
not-aborigines who realise that the doctrine of fundamental difference is
deeply flawed and is not consistent with the growing mass of evidence about
aboriginal characteristics and capabilities.
Towards the middle of the 20th Century there was
a shift in the narrative about aborigines. Aboriginal activists began to understand
that given equal opportunity aborigines are just as capable of managing the
complex challenges of modern society as anybody else.
Several groups of aboriginal activists pressed strongly for
equality for aborigines in every sense of the word. Many people were involved
in aboriginal rights campaigns in the 1950’s and 1960’s. One of the leaders was
Faith Bandler who became a driving force in the Federal Council for Aboriginal
Advancement (FCAA) which pressed for greater acceptance of aborigines as an
integral part of Australian society.
Five principles of FCAA were:
* Equal citizenship rights with other Australian citizens.
* An adequate standard of living equivalent to that expected
by other Australians.
* Equal pay for equal work and the same industrial
protection as other Australians.
* Free and compulsory education for detribalised aborigines.
* The absolute retention of all remaining native reserves,
with native communal or individual ownership.
We can see that the main concerns of the FCAA were around
the issue of equality.
Section 51(26) and
the 1967 referendum
Section 51 of the Australian Constitution has a list of the
powers granted to the Commonwealth under the Constitution.
As drafted, around 1898, Section 51(26) empowered the Commonwealth to
make laws with respect to…”the people of any race, other than the aboriginal
race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make laws.”
The people drawing up the Constitution in the last years of
the 19th Century believed that there were different “races” of
humans and that some races, particularly those whose people had coloured skin,
were “inferior”.
I think that at the time aborigines were excluded from
Section 51(26) because the states were expected to make provisions for them.
Over the next 60 years it became very clear to those
prepared to accept evidence in plain sight, that there is only one (human) race
and that no people of any shape, size or colour are inferior in any way.
The appropriate Constitutional change in 1967 was simply to
repeal Section 51(26). This would have prevented the Commonwealth from making
any laws about anybody on the basis of their presumed race or ethnicity or skin
colour.
Why was Section
51(26) not repealed ?
This is where the historical record available in the public
domain is disappointingly lacking in detail.
Writing in several articles in The Australian newspaper Henry
Ergas says that Faith Bandler and her group initially proposed repeal of
Section 51(26). But somebody convinced the proponents of repeal to support alteration
to include aborigines.
And so it came to pass that the proposed Constitutional
amendment was to remove from S51(26) the words
“other than the aboriginal race”. By this means the Commonwealth
would gain the power to make laws for aborigines.
The argument for repeal disappeared from the public place.
There was no Constitutional Convention. When the Constitution alteration bill was
presented to the parliament all members voted yes to the proposed amendment. The NO case did not appear in the public domain. There appears to have been no significant
discussion or debate about repeal of S51(26).
Repeal of S51(26) would have ended the era of special
provisions for aborigines at least at the Commonwealth level.
The amendment which was actually approved in 1967 ensured a
dramatic expansion in funding and support for special provisions for
aborigines. Not because they were independently identified as having a need for
such special provisions but because they self identified as being aborigines.
Special provisions vs
equality
The special
provisions agenda is the counterpoint to the equality agenda. The special provisions agenda won the
battle in the 1960’s.
However it is my thesis that in so doing it set the stage
for the next 60 years of failed aboriginal policy.
I think it is clear enough from evidence available in the
public domain that those aborigines who have been the greatest recipients of
special provisions over the years (many of whom live in outback and remote
areas) now have the poorest quality of life and conversely those aborigines who
have received the lowest level of special provisions (many of whom live in
urban areas) have the best quality of life.
The special provisions are part of the problem. Segregation of services into aboriginal and
not-aboriginal is part of the problem. Living in remote settlements is part of
the problem. Being an aborigine is not, of itself, a problem. The poor quality of life experienced by some aborigines is due to their
unsatisfactory circumstances not their ethnicity.
Who was opposed to
the repeal of S51(26) ?
I think there were, and still are in 2023, two groups
involved here.
The first group
consists of people who appear to believe, contrary to evidence, that people who
identify as aborigines suffer from some kind of intrinsic disadvantage
requiring special provisions in perpetuity. The notion of intergenerational
trauma following historical displacement and dispossession has been offered as
one process contributing to this notion of perpetual disadvantage.
Strangely, I rarely see discussed in public forums the fact
that millions of people who now call Australia home have also suffered from
personal or historical persecution, violence, discrimination, dispossession and
displacement, forcing them to leave their homelands and migrate to Australia. These
immigrants have suffered just as much persecutory discrimination as aborigines
but there appears to be no forum suggesting that they should be the recipients
of perpetual special provisions. In fact the great majority are doing just fine
without such provisions.
The second group
consists mainly of aboriginal activists and aboriginal rights warriors who seek
a pathway to aboriginal fiefdoms and aboriginal sovereignty. This type of activism has been in play for a
long time and is gaining momentum.
The Yirrkala bark petitions from 1963 to 2006 express
aspirations for “…Self determination and self management… and …permanent
control of ancestral lands….”
The pursuit of aboriginal sovereignty finds explicit
expression in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the heart …”This sovereignty is
a spiritual notion…..the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of
sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with
sovereignty of the Crown.”
Who is an aborigine
? Who is an indigenous person ? Who are
“firstnationspeoples” ?
In 1788 the answers to these questions were self evident.
The indigenous people were the aborigines and we had no difficulty
distinguishing them on sight from the newcomers.
Since then the waters, so to speak, have become increasingly
muddied by generations of miscegenation and multi-cultural immigration.
It is no longer clear who is and who is not an aborigine.
When pressed to explain how they would make this distinction, aborigine
activists say they would use the three part test which has been favoured since
the 1980’s. In brief this requires that a person:
(1) be of aboriginal descent. Unfortunately the notion of “aboriginal
descent” has never been defined. More significantly attempts by various people
to establish an independently verifiable definition aboriginal descent, for
instance by DNA analysis, have been
flatly rejected by aboriginal activists.
(2) self identify as aborigine. Anyone can do that. The
Australian Census has a tick-a-box question which allows anybody to say they
are an aborigine.
(3) be accepted as an aborigine by an aboriginal community. What
does “accepted” mean ? What constitutes an “aboriginal community“ ? Aborigine activists evade these questions.
The only thing clear here is that nothing is clear. And
aborigine activists want it to stay that way. They indicate by their actions
that they want the matter to remain swirling in the muddy waters of obfuscation
and confusion.
Why? We must guess, but a likely reason could be that in the
absence of any independently verifiable means of identifying who is an
aborigine the decision will be left to those same activists, thus giving them
considerable power.
My thesis is that in 2023 the question is pointless. It
serves no purpose of value to anybody except aboriginal elites who are using
the matter for political advantage.
What about indigeneity
?
Some commentators have attempted to get around the murky
waters of defining aboriginality by proclaiming that some people need special
measures in law and policy because they
are “indigenous”. Unfortunately this approach gets us nowhere at all. The
notion of indigeneity might be even less capable of practical definition than
that of aboriginality.
How many generations must a human or animal or plant survive
in any location for it to be regarded as indigenous? Nobody knows.
I am 80 years old. I was born in Australia. My parents,
grandparents and great-grandparents were born in Australia. If I am not
indigenous to Australia then what am I ? A tourist ?
I argue that the attempt to divide Australians into
indigenous and not-indigenous is entirely without merit. It serves no useful
purpose to anybody except the aborigine elites who want to use the issue to
carve out a political identity. They have already been quite successful in this
endeavour.
“First nations
people”
This terminology has found its way into widespread use in
recent years. As far as I can tell, nobody has tried to define the meaning of
this appellation. But defined meaning is not the point of this term. I see it
as yet another weaponised word usage in the emotional push for aboriginal
separationism, aboriginal sovereignty and aboriginal governance.
Aboriginal land
rights, urban aborigines and those in remote areas.
From the earliest days of colonial settlement aborigines
were dispossessed of their lands and displaced to unfavourable places and
circumstances.
Many years of protest, activism and political action by
aborigine groups eventually saw Gough Whitlam make land rights part of his
election platform in 1972. The Woodward Commission recommended that identified
aboriginal groups should be granted freehold title to specified parcels of land.
The Land Rights (Northern Territory)
Bill of 1975 was introduced into parliament by Whitlam and eventually
passed into law by the Fraser government in 1976. The four original Northern Territory Land
Councils were Central, Northern, Tiwi and Anindilyakwa.
Since then numerous aboriginal land rights acts have been
passed by the States, regional and local land councils established and 151
Aboriginal Land Trusts established. These trusts actually hold title to the
land. This is a type of collective
title for the benefit of the members of the collective who can be identified by
an established set of criteria.
Land rights legislation was and still is hailed as a great
triumph for aboriginal rights and aboriginal activism.
However a half-century later we can see that there are some
intractable problems with land rights
which work against the interests of some aboriginal individuals and
families. I also believe that in some
cases existing arrangements work against best practice management of the land.
Non negotiable, non-transferrable
interest in the land.
One of the many problems with collective title is that no
individual has a negotiable (meaning able to be sold or otherwise transferred)
interest in the land. If a person or family wishes to relocate for education,
employment or any other reason they cannot sell their entitlement in the land
for money. They have to walk away with nothing unless the land council offers
them a benevolent gift. But there is no incentive for land councils to do this
as by so doing they diminish the number of people in the collective.
This can lead to situational entrapment in remote
settlements for people who want to move to urban areas for better education and
employment opportunities but who lack the means to do so.
On the collective people do not have exclusive right to any
piece of the land and do not have exclusive right to the house in which they
live. This creates serious conflicts within the community.
Land management
Several land councils have control over and responsibility
for vast expanses of country. By way of example the APY (Anangu, Pitjantjatjara,
Yankunytjatjara) lands in North Western South Australia cover an area larger
than Tasmania but have a population of only about 2000 people. The land is
stressed by climate change, desertification, feral animals and feral plants
such that intensive co-ordinated management strategies need to be implemented
on a vast scale covering many thousands of kilometres to have any hope of
managing the land responsibly. Tiny human populations in remote outstations
have no way to achieve this.
Health welfare and
quality of life
Aborigines living in remote and outback locations (the
numerical minority): Are more likely to
be living on aboriginal title land, less likely to speak, read and write
English, less likely to have a job, more likely to be incarcerated and if children,
more likely to be removed from family because of neglect or mistreatment.
Urban aborigines (the numerical majority): Are unlikely to be living on aboriginal
land, more likely to be able to speak, read and write English, have acquired
employable qualifications, have a job and have a stable home and family life.
They are much less likely to be incarcerated or for their children to be
removed because of neglect or abuse.
In summary:
Living on remote outstations and in very small outback towns
is, for a significant number of aborigines, part of the problem.
One of the unintended consequences of aboriginal land rights
has been that a significant minority of aborigines are effectively trapped in
outstations with no prospect of improving their quality of life as long as they
stay put.
Land rights has not been a universal blessing for
aborigines.
The relationship between land, rights and individual
ownership needs to be comprehensively reviewed with a view to evolving better
ways to help individuals and families to move away from remote communities if
they wish to do so.
Aborigines as
internal migrants
Over the last 235 years there has been a dramatic change in
the lifestyles of most people who identify as aborigines. In the early years
much of this was imposed by the expanding colonial presence. But in the last
hundred years or so, aborigines have increasingly opted for an urban lifestyle
by choice. In so doing they have raised their standard of living to a level
much higher than other aborigines who have chosen to remain in or been unable
to escape from outback and remote areas.
One way to improve the quality of life of aborigines living
in remote areas might be to establish a voluntary internal migration
affirmative action plan to support these people if they wish to move to places
which offer better opportunities for education,
employment and stable housing.
Constitutional
recognition of aborigines
We must examine this issue because the question to be put to
the Australian people at the 2023 referendum will be:
“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of
Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
The English word recognise comes from the Latin recognoscere
meaning to know again. In current English language usage the meaning of the
word has been broadened to include acknowledging the existence or validity of
something or somebody. This includes political recognition.
Nowhere will any search of the etymology or meaning of the
word recognise lead us to some kind of political multi-tier representative congress.
The way the word recognise is being used in the current
debate about the indigenous voice to parliament and the executive is at best
disingenuous. It is certainly misleading.
I regard it as a mischievous abuse of language.
Demands for constitutional recognition of aborigines have
been in play for several years. There
are many documents and reports available in the public domain. For instance,
Here are some quotes from the Lowitja Institute website:
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are legally
excluded in the Australian Constitution—the nation’s founding legal document
that came into effect in 1901—in that their prior existence and survival on
this land for tens of thousands of years is not acknowledged.”
My comment: The notion that a group of people are “legally
excluded” because they are not specifically mentioned in the constitution is vexatious
nonsense. No ethnic group is mentioned in the constitution. Australia is a
multicultural society which is home to people of about 200 ethnic groups. There
is no case for any of them to be specifically mentioned in the constitution.
The prior existence of aborigines in Terra Australis is
acknowledged as a historical fact. There is no argument about this.
“Constitutional recognition would be a huge step forward
for addressing the health inequity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians”.
My comment: This is wishful thinking. No argument or
reasoning is produced to substantiate this assertion.
“Acknowledgement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples’ prior existence as the oldest living culture on earth, and as the
First Peoples of Australia, can provide a powerful sense of identity, pride and
belonging, and can assist people to improve their chances for full
participation in all Australia has to offer—all of which will have positive consequences
for health and wellbeing.
My comment: I suspect the first sentence in this quote might
be getting a bit closer to the real, and emotional, driver of the recognition campaign. That is
about identity, pride and belonging. I do not find the assertion in the least
bit compelling but I can appreciate that some people believe it. I think that
identity, pride and belonging are the products of our own endeavours in life
and cannot be attributed to symbolic affirmations in some document.
Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people in the Constitution will right a historic wrong, and establish a sound
basis for further progress towards health and healing both for Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Australians, and for the nation as a whole.”
My comment: The idea that symbolic words written in a
document can right historic wrongs is magical thinking. We cannot undo the
past. We can only learn from our mistakes and strive not to repeat them while
endeavouring to avoid new ones.
Expert panel 2012
The report of the expert panel co-chaired by Patrick Dodson
and Mark Liebler, on recognising
aboriginal and Torres Strait island people in the constitution was
released in January 2012. The perplexing
narrative and strange recommendations of this 323 page report are, I think,
symptomatic of the confused nature of the whole recognition issue.
The narrative includes the notion that constitutional
recognition is the “logical next step” following the 1967 referendum.
Unfortunately no logical or even illogical explanation is offered for this
assertion.
The report recommended a new Section 51A containing a set of
words “recognising” aboriginal people but retaining the race powers. This would
replace Section 51(26).
In addition there were proposed new Sections 116A
prohibiting racial discrimination and 127A recognising languages.
The authors of the report got themselves into such a muddle
that they wanted to insert words about recognition in Section 51 which is a
list of Commonwealth powers, and nothing to do with recognition, then add bits about racial discrimination and
languages which do not belong in the constitution at all.
It is hardly surprising that neither the government of the
day (Gillard, Labor) nor aboriginal activists could figure out what to do with
it.
In due course a group of aboriginal activists elected to
retain just two of the 160,000 words, those being constitutional recognition and apply them to a proposal which did not
appear in the report at all and which has no meaningful connection to the
notion of recognition.
This proposal is for the indigenous voice to parliament (details
to be advised) together with treaty (not defined) truth (not defined) and sovereignty (not defined).
Australians are being invited to vote for this package of
sweeping changes to our constitution and government without the benefit of
advice as to what any of those proposed changes actually involves.
Constitutional recognition is a Trojan Horse by which
several kinds of new and untested notions are being inserted into the
Australian polity by stealth.
The case for an
indigenous voice to parliament, and my rebuttal
Stripped down to the bare bones, I think the case for the
indigenous voice to parliament rests on three assertions:
1. That aborigines do not have a say in matters which affect
them.
My rebuttal: This is simply untrue. Aborigines have all the
opportunities for a “say” in matters affecting them which other Australian
citizens have. In addition they have a special minister for aborigines in the
commonwealth and each state and territory parliament. They have an extensive
network of aborigine lobby groups related to the very large aboriginal welfare
industry which disburses something in the range of 30-40 billion dollars
annually. People in control of that much money have a lot of power. In addition
there are many aboriginal land councils and aboriginal corporations with
considerable influence in the halls of power.
2. The voice will close the gap.
My rebuttal: Not a single word of argument, analysis, case
study, reasoning or plausible or even implausible narrative has been put
forward by voice proponents to explain how the voice might operate to improve
the health, welfare or quality of life (close the gap) of anybody anywhere.
3. People who identify as aborigines are held to be somehow
unable to speak for themselves. Thus
they require an additional multi-tier
representative bureaucracy.
My rebuttal:
(a) Aboriginal
people have shown themselves over a hundred years to be perfectly well able to
speak for themselves and to use the existing organs of democratic
representation effectively. The proposed voice will be exercised by people
chosen by unknown means from groups of unknown composition to carry out
unspecified activities.
(b) The voice as
proposed is a type of affirmative action programme. There is every reason to
think that an affirmative action programme for aborigines living in remote
areas might be something worth pursuing. But the essential
feature of such programmes is that having achieved their objective they are no
longer required. The last thing on earth we should be contemplating is
inserting any such a programme into the constitution.
Suggestions for a way
forward
At the beginning of this dissertation I put two questions:
1) What is wrong with
aboriginal policy in Australia?
And
2) Might there be a
better way ?
After examining hundreds of documents and visiting some
remote are settlements and thinking about this for several years I have come to
the view that the main problem with fixed aboriginal policies (as distinct from
time and outcomes limited affirmative action plans) is that they exist in any
form at all. All official policies ever
devised have been intended to benefit or in some way improve aborigines, even
those now regarded as abhorrent such as policies leading to the stolen
generation.
I think most Australians would agree that aboriginal
policies to date have been a failure in the sense that they have failed to
close the gap and have left a significant minority of aborigines living in very
poor conditions.
It seems to me that the last thing we should be doing is
re-cycling old bad policies, calling them new and adding them to the
ever-growing list of already failed policies.
The notion that
aborigines’ problems will be solved by an extra “voice” of some kind has been tried and failed several times in
the past.
My suggestions for a better way are in very brief summary as
follows.
1. Ensure that all
support services are based on need and that recipients have access to the best
available depth and breadth of support available. Merge
existing aborigine-only services with mainstream services over a period of 15
years.
2. Establish
a Land Rights and Native Title Commission with a tenure of 50 years to help
resolve the many problems embedded in current arrangements. In
particular the problem that title to land acquired under land rights
legislation is held by a corporation and provides individuals and families with
no negotiable stake in the enterprise.
3. Establish
a transitional voluntary affirmative action programme to enable people
currently existing in the purgatory of native outstations to move to locations
where they can find a better quality of life.
4. Repeal part 26 of Section 51 of the Australian
Constitution. Section 51 lists the areas in which the Commonwealth
can make laws. Section 51(xxvi) enables the Commonwealth to make laws for the
peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect
to: …
the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special
laws.
The
Constitution was written in 1901 when it was thought there were different
“races” of humans. We now understand that was incorrect. We are all of the same
species but of different and usually mixed ethnic origins.
I regard this part
of the Constitution as an abomination. It does not comply with Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights which holds that all humans are born free
and equal in dignity and rights.
End of dissertation. 6593 words
.
