|
|
[Home] [Help] [Databases] [WorldLII] [Feedback] |
|
Australian Indigenous Law Reporter |
Indigenous Statements - Australia
Senator Aden Ridgeway
Edith Cowan University
9 July 2002
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Noongar people, the traditional owners of the land we meet on tonight and I would like to thank them for allowing me to speak on their country. I also pay my respects to your elders, those with us here tonight and those who have gone before us. I would also like to thank Edith Cowan University for inviting me to deliver this speech — the second in their Indigenous lecture series.
Being NAIDOC Week, and the time of the year that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people celebrate our cultures and our communities, I am also very pleased to be here to join in the celebrations — and I apologise in advance for not reaching the comic heights of Mary G last night.
I want to reflect on the national reconciliation process, and ask some challenging questions about how we can remove the obstacles that stand in the way of a better and more equal relationship between black and white Australians. As part of this discussion, I want to focus on the current political leadership in Canberra, which I think is a serial underachiever when it comes to reducing Indigenous disadvantage. Not surprising when you appreciate that it is driven by the conviction that better economic opportunities and individual initiative alone will deliver real equality between all Australians. I also want to put forward some of the obstacles to progress that exist within Indigenous communities, and why these need to be confronted and addressed if we are to see a new generation of Indigenous leaders coming forward.
One recent event that has focused my mind on these issues is the 10 year anniversary of the Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) decision. I was asked to deliver a speech at Monash University on the anniversary of the decision last month, and the process of writing the speech prompted me to reflect on what has been achieved in Indigenous affairs over the last decade, and whether or not Indigenous Australians have really reaped the rewards that the High Court opened up to us in this landmark case. To do justice to the question, I think you need to put the Mabo decision into the broader context of public policy making in Indigenous Affairs over the last 100 years and more particularly the period since the ’67 referendum.
In my mind, this latter date marks a real turning point in the history of Indigenous affairs in this country. It was an era when I think you can, for the first time, recognise the emergence of a truly national social conscience in relation to Indigenous peoples in Australia. Without this shift in the national psyche, I don’t think the States and Territories would have passed land rights legislation, and we certainly wouldn’t have had the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody or a 10 year dialogue about reconciliation.
But has Australia really maximised the opportunities that these achievements opened up to us, or did we allow them to be squandered by half-hearted political responses?
Just as many people thought the 1967 referendum and the citizenship rights it conferred on Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders would transform our life experience and deliver equality, so too, many people placed great hope in the ability of the Mabo decision to right the wrongs of the past and belatedly deliver social justice to the original owners of the land. After all, the High Court affirmed in law what each Indigenous person had always known in their hearts:
In this sense, Mabo was an unprecedented moral victory that had the potential to turn people’s lives around in a most profound and extraordinary way. But when it came to the legal principles contained in the Mabo decision being translated into legislation by the federal parliament, the spirit of the judgement that had been delivered by the High Court was distorted and compromised by the politics of the day.
The Indigenous leadership only gave their consent and support to the enactment of native title legislation on the basis that the Keating Government would deliver a range of social justice outcomes as compensation for the extinguishment of native title in certain areas. Whilst parts of the deal, like the Indigenous Land Corporation, did eventuate, the key plank — a social justice compact — was never delivered. In this respect, the original agreement that was brokered has not been honoured. The proposal for a treaty or national framework agreement to overcome the destructive cultural, social and economic consequences of dispossession is yet to be pursued by any national government. Even now, 10 years on, the concept of a treaty to settle the ‘unfinished business’ of the last 200 years, remains acutely controversial — amongst the broader population and our own mob.
The Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) that resulted in 1993 is one of the most ambitious, complex and far-reaching pieces of legislation ever embarked upon. It is comparable only in its scope to the Australian Constitution — with implications for all federal and state property laws. But it has established processes that are alienating and disempowering for most Indigenous people because of the fact that the Act remains centred around a reliance on litigation to achieve a final settlement of claims, or to answer the more intractable questions that the Native Title Act did not foresee or failed to address.
Our interests in the land and the associated cultural rights and responsibilities are forced to take a back seat to complex, esoteric legal questions about extinguishment. At the end of the day, the onus of proof always rests with the traditional owners to prove decent and ongoing, unbroken connection to country, guaranteeing that many Indigenous people will never ‘qualify’ as traditional owners in the legal sense of the word.
The amendments to the Native Title Act in 1998 have rendered it non-beneficial in its effect on Indigenous peoples. These amendments effectively licensed governments to racially discriminate against the interests of Indigenous peoples by elevating the property rights of non-Indigenous Australians. Politicians were able to rationalise this latest compromise of Indigenous rights as being in the interests of economic development and the vague but highly emotive concept of ‘certainty’ while providing no certainty to Indigenous people. It was a reminder to Indigenous people of just how vulnerable our statutory rights are, and how expendable the principle of equality before the law is if enough money is involved.
So when you come to look at the runs on the board, in terms of native title outcomes, it is hard to argue that it has been anything other than a spectacular failure:
• 30 determinations in 10 years;
• 590 claims still unresolved;
• less than 50 Indigenous Land Use Agreements; and
• $225 million now spent every year to oil the giant wheels of the national title process.
There is a clear need for these 590 unresolved claims to be fast-tracked so that people can get on with their lives.
On the other side of the ledger, I also acknowledge that it is primarily because of the Mabo decision that Australians have begun to take a much more honest look at the past, and have started to realise that we have a black history that sits uncomfortably with the national ethos of ‘a fair go’ for all. Ordinary Australians — black and white — have had to grapple with native title issues at the local level. People who were historically on opposite sides of the fence have had to open a dialogue and give each other a voice in decisions about land and natural resource management. This wasn’t happening 10 years ago because there simply was no imperative for non-Indigenous people to even contemplate the possibility of a native title right existing in their backyards; or that it could deliver outcomes that were good for the entire nation. Nevertheless, coupled with other revelations from our nation’s past, such as Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the stolen generations, the Mabo and Wik decisions have given rise to an unprecedented outpouring of community action in support of native title and reconciliation, culminating in the bridge walks in 2000 and the release of the Documents for Reconciliation by the now disbanded Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation that same year.
Yet for the vast majority of Australians, Indigenous affairs remains a ‘problem’, and predominantly, one that can only be addressed if Indigenous people get serious about putting their own house in order. This is a very convenient situation for any government. If most of the country thinks the problem lies with Indigenous people themselves, a government doesn’t have to try too hard — and it certainly doesn’t have to set the historical record straight. This is precisely what the policy of ‘practical reconciliation’ enables the present Government to do. The Prime Minister made it very clear in comments in May this year, 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.
The Prime Minister’s vision for a reconciled Australia is underpinned by a number of simplistic, and in my view, unsubstantiated assertions, that do not stand up to intellectual rigour or historical reality. These assertions divorce the experience of Indigenous people in this country from any historical context, and they assume that all Australians have the same life opportunities — that it is all a question of individual motivation and choice. Among their assertions are:
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 neo-liberalism, 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, the beginning of misery. 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.
The reality is however, that you cannot treat the symptoms of dysfunction in isolation from the historical causes. Good public policy can only emerge 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. I want to refer to just three examples of where I believe, as a nation, we need to be much more honest about our past, to ensure that we tailor our future responses more appropriately. They are:
(1) the role of the Constitution in shaping contemporary Indigenous disadvantage;
(2) the youthful character of Australia’s Indigenous population — and how this reality must begin to drive the decisions taken by Canberra and the Indigenous leadership alike; and
(3) the need for education, capacity building, leadership growth, and sustainable models of community governance to be at the forefront of future policy development.
I don’t think many Australians realise that the current high levels of Indigenous social and economic disadvantage have their roots in the exclusion and blatant racism that was enshrined in the Australian Constitution. Up until the 1967 referendum, s 127 of the Constitution prevented the Commonwealth from counting Indigenous Australians in the national census. Consequently, no Commonwealth Government could even purport to know the scale of Indigenous disadvantage in comparison to the rest of the population, let alone do anything to address the dire need that existed. Instead, Indigenous Australians became a statistical non-entity in our own country, and the reluctant responsibility of so-called ‘welfare’ boards, punitively administered by the States. The recent exposure of the Queensland Government’s policy of withholding and underpaying the wages of about 16,500 Aboriginal workers over an 80 year period is just one example of how exploitative and overtly racist the Indigenous affairs policies of the States were for much of the last century.
The reality at the federal level was not significantly different. The Constitution and the men who drafted it guaranteed the exclusion of Indigenous people from the legislative program of Commonwealth Governments for most of the last century. What other Australians have taken for granted, we were excluded from, including:
- the Invalid and Old Age Pension Act 1908 (Cth);
- the Maternity Allowance Act 1912(Cth);
- the Child Endowment Act 1941(Cth);
- the Widows’ Pension Act 1942(Cth); and
- the Unemployment & Sickness Benefit Act 1944 (Cth).
Full access for Indigenous Australians to social security benefits did not occur until the late 1970s and, in some remote communities, not until the early 1980s. Prior to the 1967 referendum, Commonwealth expenditure on Indigenous Australians was zero. It is only as a result of the referendum that the Commonwealth was given legal power to intervene in Indigenous affairs. And it was only after the Whitlam Government took office in 1972 that over $100 million was spent on Indigenous Affairs in one year. To give some idea of just how incremental the Commonwealth’s involvement was in these early years of responsibility — the total Commonwealth expenditure on Indigenous Affairs to 1987 — the first 20 years of Commonwealth responsibility — was just on $3 billion.
In comparison, the federal government now dedicates $2.5 billion annually to the Indigenous affairs budget. This historic overview of the Commonwealth’s role in Indigenous Affairs provides some indication of just how recent its relationship with Indigenous people really is. We remain in a phase of relationship building — taking one step back for every two steps gained.
At the end of the day, we need to remind ourselves that there are only 410,000 Indigenous Australians — the largest total since Indigenous people were included for the first time in the national census in 1971. Even though this is a quite manageable number to deal with, many Australians are still prepared to accept the stereotype of Indigenous affairs as being a terminal case of public policy failure.
How is it possible that 410,000 people should overwhelm our imagination or our ability to formulate responses to familiar challenges within community development? Indeed, there are some additional aspects to this demographic that are quite important to remember.
In my mind, the education statistics for young Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are both of concern. But in the case of young Indigenous people, they highlight just how much ground has to be made up if all Australians are to have equal life opportunities.
It would seem apparent to me that these statistics have significant implications for how policy initiatives should be structured and delivered over the short, medium and longer term. It is clear that in the longer term, inroads have to be made in relation to Indigenous educational opportunities to ensure that a new generation of leaders is able to emerge and be nurtured. The cost of failure in this regard is the possibility that current problems of high unemployment, community violence, family breakdown, and general lack of life opportunities will be compounded in generations to come. Similarly, a group of 410,000 people should no longer tolerate the ‘poor bugger me’ attitude and focus more of our energies in growing our organisations and sponsoring our young.
Despite the gloom of the present, we have every reason to be optimistic in recognising the presence of an emerging class of young Indigenous leaders to open a new phase in defining black/white relations. In this vein, I can only hope that ATSIC elections later this year give us new outcomes, fresh blood and new ideas. Not because the others haven’t done their job — because I think they have — but because those who fall into the 30 per cent club need to make room for the majority, indeed, it is time that, that 70 per cent are reflected in our leadership make-up and not confined to juvenile detention centres or our nation’s gaols.
Leaders come in all forms and I want to pay special tribute tonight to those of you who work in our Indigenous organisations, especially those of you who are working in CDEP organisations. I also want to highlight the need for Australians to throw off the romantic notion that all Indigenous people live in the remote outback. Only 30 per cent of the Indigenous population live in remote locations. The other 70 per cent live in the towns, regions and cities of Australia. They live here in the suburbs of Perth. There are Torres Strait Islanders living in Canberra and Sydney. There are plenty of the mob living in Adelaide, Darwin, Townsville, Katherine and Kalgoorlie.
These are people who for the most part have a telephone, watch TV and listen to radios in their own homes. The postman goes past everyday. The whole infrastructure of government remains within their day to day reach. But for the Indigenous people of rural, regional and urban Australia, isolation is not a factor of distance, but a matter of prejudice. Overt and institutional racism are the underlying causes of our contemporary isolation, more so than any geographic realities. If we are to tackle the scourge of racism, we first have to overcome the ignorance and misinformation that is recycled — sometimes by our political leaders, but also by friends and family.
This brings me to my third point, namely that most Australians continue to believe the popular myth that Indigenous affairs is the land of milk and honey, where organisations have endless resources.
Take ATSIC for example. It has long been the whipping boy of Indigenous affairs, even by its master, the Federal Government. But few Australians are aware that ATSIC is not an independent body — even though it has an elected board — with complete authority over the expenditure of the Indigenous affairs budget. Less than half of this year’s trumpeted ‘record’ $2.5b Indigenous affairs budget is allocated to ATSIC, and of that, the Government requires that two-thirds is spent in just three areas:
That leaves less than $400 million for the remainder of ATSIC’s responsibilities, which include some of the key planks of the Government’s ‘practical reconciliation’ agenda, like programs to combat family violence, or measures to combat drug and alcohol abuse in communities.
The other point that I would like to emphasise is that identifiable Commonwealth expenditure on Indigenous specific programs is not simply ‘on top of’ the general government expenditure that benefits all Australians. For example: close to one-third of Commonwealth expenditure on Indigenous people directly substitutes for expenditure on mainstream assistance programs. The Indigenous-specific programs deliver virtually the same outcomes, but the way in which services are structured or accessed is different on account of the cultural and other needs of the Indigenous people who use them. To name a few:
At the same time, a lot of Commonwealth assistance flows to other groups within Australian society, such as veterans and farmers, which have a disproportionately low number of Indigenous members.
But what the Commonwealth Grants Commission found in its national Report on Indigenous Funding is that despite the entrenched levels of disadvantage experienced by Indigenous people across all of the key economic and social indicators, we access mainstream services at very much lower rates than non-Indigenous people — regardless of whether we are in urban or remote areas. Some of the prime examples of where Indigenous people under-utilise the mainstream services include the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and aged care services. As a consequence, the Indigenous-specific services that were only designed to supplement mainstream services are struggling with levels of demand that they are simply not equipped to meet. And more often than not, it is the most disadvantaged Indigenous people who miss out.
The more recent CGC Report also clearly recognises that the Indigenous affairs budget has to be more wisely spent and directed to areas of greatest need. It made some very valuable recommendations about the need for greater Indigenous ‘control of, or stronger influence over, service delivery expenditure’, particularly at the regional and local levels.
However, one issue which has been absent from these discussions is the question of the number of Indigenous organisations that are already in existence, and whether by their sheer numbers they are a drain on the already overstretched funds available. I believe Indigenous communities need to ask this question at the local and regional level. Many need to make some cold, hard decisions about which Indigenous organisations are delivering beneficial outcomes and operating cost effectively, and which ones are not. We have to start rewarding the successful and accountable organisations, rather than treating all of the good, the bad and the ugly organisations in exactly the same way. When you look at just how many Indigenous corporations have been established over the last 30 years of fragmented program delivery, the need for rationalisation and consolidation is obvious.
According to the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations, who administers the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act, there are about 2188 registered Indigenous corporations nationally. This translates into a national average of one corporation for every 187 Indigenous people. I regard this figure as a conservative estimate. In any case, it provides some indication of the level of duplication and the administrative over-servicing that is occurring in many Indigenous communities.
I am also mindful of the extent to which the Native Title Act and the Indigenous Land Corporation have contributed to this plethora of Indigenous corporations and prescribed bodies corporate. Both Acts provide that only prescribed bodies corporate can hold title to land or act as agents for native title holders. In addition, the Native Title Act has given rise to the establishment of numerous representative Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander bodies in most States, which have a pivotal role in the operation of the Act, particularly in terms of the services and advice they provide to their Indigenous clients.
These corporations are the latest contestants to enter the increasingly competitive arena that is frequently and disparagingly referred to in the national media as ‘the Indigenous industry’. These organisations follow in the footsteps of the many community-based organisations that began to spring up in the 1970s as Indigenous communities around Australia were mobilised in the struggle for land rights, self-determination and basic citizenship rights.
I think it is important to recognise that this so-called ‘industry’ has come about as a result of legislation by our nation’s parliaments, and social agitation by Indigenous people themselves. Its emergence was motivated by the recognition that Indigenous Australians have a right to good health, legal representation, a decent education, adequate housing, equitable employment opportunities, and land — and that they will not achieve these outcomes if they are not given the extra assistance required to put them on the starting blocks with the rest of Australia.
I for one am not suggesting that we should try to wind the clock back to the 1960s when few Indigenous owned and controlled organisations existed. On the contrary, I regard the prevalence of a network of Indigenous controlled organisations as a highly desirable development that is just as necessary today as it was back then. So, whilst we should respect and pay tribute to those Indigenous leaders who have battled to achieve this institutional and economic platform for their communities, we also need to look at how well this vast and expanding body of Indigenous corporations is serving the community in 2002 and what reforms can be undertaken to make them work more efficiently for Indigenous people.
Some Indigenous leaders have publicly acknowledged that the plethora of organisations has become a significant drain on many of the communities they were set up to serve, both in terms of human and financial capital. These organisations are subject to a number of accountability checks and balances as is any similar organisation. However, I believe we must honestly examine the existence and operations of these organisations against service delivery expectations, community expectations and performance. A series of national benchmarks should be set up as performance measures for all Indigenous community organisations to meet.
Although some communities have developed innovative ways of incorporating traditional authority structures and governance procedures into the operation of their boards of management, others have an uphill battle in managing the general administrative and reporting requirements. Often these day to day responsibilities have been added to the load borne by our Elders, or worse still, the day to day decision making is contracted to outside consultants at great financial cost, and often at the expense of the community retaining real control over important business decisions. I am heartened, though, by what we’ve seen recently in the Northern Territory — with that Government biting the bullet and creating regional health partnerships between Government and Indigenous organisations and communities.
All Indigenous health money — that is, Territory and Federal money — for a particular region will be pooled and administered by a community-controlled health board. This will not only put Indigenous people in charge, it will also cut down on duplication, bureaucracy, and the general complexity and over-administration, with which most people working in the delivery of Indigenous services are only too familiar. While the Territory Government’s action is not about rationalising the operations of Indigenous community organisations, it does attack part of the problem at its source; that is, streamlining funding so it is directed, effective and most importantly, Indigenous-controlled.
In finishing, I want to make these final points: It is clear that our current circumstance is derived from the dominant position of government in Indigenous affairs and the failure to see Indigenous rights as a crucial plank in changing the status quo.
No Australian Government has ever wholeheartedly embraced the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to self-determination, and the associated inherent rights that flow from it. Recognition has only ever been partial — the Mabo decision is a testament to that — 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 ‘colour-blind’ 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, native title being the prime example.
Reconciliation is about the next generation. It is about giving our young people the opportunity to take up the challenges and develop the skills to avoid that pathway to gaols and unemployment queues. Issues such as education, capacity building, leadership, and sustainable models of community development must be addressed as our top priorities. And as a community, we should be more willing to celebrate and learn from our successes.
I believe that despite the gloom of the present, we have every reason to be optimistic in recognising the presence of an emerging class of young Indigenous leaders to open a new phase in defining black/white relations. 410,000 is not a lot of people. We can turn our future around. We have the guidebook in the form of our cultures — the stories and wisdom that our Elders have passed on to us. These survival skills are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. We just need to learn new ways of applying that knowledge to our own lives so that there is a better match between institutions and people, and between resources and needs. Governments may come and go, but we will always be here, so long as we continue to nurture our young so they can take forward our stories, our memories and our future.
Thank you. ?