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Extraordinary Forum - The Future of Australian Indigenous Governance
Peter Jull[∗]
Australia’s federal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (‘ATSIC’) has become a major subject of political discussion, dispute, and one-upmanship in Australia’s long-running 2004 national election campaign. Labor Opposition leader Mark Latham and Prime Minister John Howard have now put forward major proposals, although the extent of substantive difference, like the election date, remains to be seen.
The introduction of ATSIC into the highest level of political debate was not entirely gratuitous. An unresolved crisis of ATSIC’s leadership, ie, whether or not its elected chair Geoff Clark would be removed by Howard for alleged impropriety, had focused political, media, and public attention for a year or more on this one aspect of Aboriginal administration at the expense of more general and urgent matters. Many observers both Indigenous and non-Indigenous believed that if Clark had stepped down it could have saved the organisation and the cause of Aboriginal self-determination much grief. It is true that Clark and, for a long time, his former deputy, Ray Robinson, provided the Howard Government and media with convenient distractions from and scapegoats for serious policy and program matters. But the outcome would surely have been similar. Howard’s opposition to Indigenous organisations, Indigenous autonomy, and Indigenous aspirations has been central to his long-term political strategy.
Whether Indigenous policy will benefit from the intensity of the present debate is open to question. White men shouting at each other as they position themselves for advantage vis-à-vis an electorate famously unsympathetic to Indigenous needs may do little to untangle the complexities of current Indigenous politics and policy. On the other hand, any policy debate may be useful. The past several years’ moratorium on serious discussion of Australia’s deepest social problem must end.[1] This debate is contextualised in the notes and comment below.
Indigenous Australia is faced with a number of clear problems and issues. Perhaps most fundamentally, Australia’s Indigenous peoples suffer extreme socio-economic disadvantage. Australian governments have lacked the political will or persistence to adequately fund possible solutions. Of course, issues of basic material and physical disadvantage also act as a screen behind which more difficult and complex problems lie.
The last decade’s public discussion of Indigenous affairs in Australia has hinged on false oppositions. For example, notions of symbolic recognition, rhetorical documents, and statements such as an apology for the stolen generations are often held in opposition to practical nuts and bolts community service programs. These are not mutually exclusive choices, nor are they the only ones on offer. Similarly, self-determination is contrasted with assimilation into ‘the mainstream’. However, the most desirable policies combine both, promoting some form of autonomy within Australia and greater access to the benefits of contemporary society.
Another issue is that control of Indigenous peoples, rather than consent and consultation, remains the main priority of Australian state governments. At one level this means tough policing. It also means that talk of ‘partnerships’ usually refers to little more than self-management, ie, some Indigenous involvement in non-Indigenous ’solutions’.
In practice, the Australian governments view Indigenous programs and policy as a subset of non-Indigenous welfare-state programming. Indigenous issues are treated as administrative matters, rather than as a fundamental part of a political relationship from which negotiated and agreed outcomes should flow. Cultural and political autonomy are basic aspirations of Indigenous peoples, and such feelings are reinforced by white national rhetoric demanding ‘unity’ (read: uniformity). The ‘mainstreaming’ of services for Indigenous peoples is not the future: it is a failed past. Governments have specialised bureaux dealing with Indigenous issues because practical experience dictated they do so, at least until full autonomy could be transferred to Indigenous peoples themselves.
Moreover, Indigenous peoples have needs and aspirations which do not fit neatly within ‘mainstream’ systems, whether because of their inconvenient locations, socio-economic profile, legal status (or lack of such status, as in unrecognised property rights), or other factors. Whatever its precise functions, a specific Indigenous affairs element in executive government is usually necessary in any country.
There is also insufficient recognition of the economic resources, traditional economies, and land/sea/resource rights and traditional economies of Indigenous peoples, or the importance of such a base for successful communities. For instance, the Tropical coasts of Australia from the Coral Sea around through Torres Strait and the Gulf, around the Top End, and down the Indian Ocean shores, would benefit from a bottom-up Indigenous coastal and marine environment and development strategy to ensure healthy and productive communities, and better protect the environment for all Australians.[2]
Finally, in recent years Australian governments have rolled back or overridden long overdue legal recognition of basic Indigenous rights. They have cut funding to and wound up Indigenous organisations. They have denounced ‘privilege’ and ‘special benefits’, and both attacked and undermined Indigenous leadership. They have abused Indigenous spokespersons for fighting unexceptional legal battles at home or issuing cries for support abroad.
The Prime Minister has openly stated that Indigenous peoples and concerns should disappear from the news, and he has eroded their visible leadership structures. Governments have denied the success of Indigenous governance abroad, while refusing to listen to proposals for change at home. They have done almost everything they could to refuse and remove hope, and then they want Aborigines and Islanders to prove their loyalty and commit themselves to national unity. And yet they assume that should the country face political violence it will necessarily come from foreign evildoers rather than as a result of public policies at home.[3]
ATSIC has faced some major external challenges. Perhaps the biggest is that the Howard Government has been unwilling to recognise it as institutionally legitimate. Indeed, it is uncertain that Howard would accept any Indigenous body as legitimate because he is a forthright assimilationist as he has made clear in public interviews in recent weeks.
Howard and many others do not accept that Indigenous people have the right to any political institutions at arm’s length from non-Indigenous control. ATSIC has been a scapegoat for anti-Indigenous feeling among the public and frustration with persistent Indigenous socio-economic ills. ATSIC’s visibility has made it a convenient target for many reasons, few of which have anything to do with its actual role or performance.
ATSIC was also inherently flawed. There has been a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between its roles as an integral part of the federal public service and its stated function as an elected representative (in two tiers of regional and national Indigenous spokes-bodies). There has also been conflict between those who wanted a strong centralised administration and those who wanted the locus of power to be the local ethno-cultural region. In some areas, there has been conflict between ATSIC regional councils and local traditional cultures. Such regional bodies have struggled to accomodate cultural difference and act as administrative units, sidelining traditional ethno-cultural units. Also, ATSIC has been a highly visible federal body with limited powers and funds, in a country where most Indigenous programs are the responsibility of the state and territory governments. Furthermore, Indigenous people are happy to complain about ATSIC’s defects in much the same way any white Australian complains about his/her state and national government, but relatively few non-Indigenous Australians would urge the abolition of the state. In the light of these problems, it appears likely that ATSIC was doomed to fail.
One need not support Indigenous rights or political reform in general to doubt Howard’s approach, which fails even when measured against established parliamentary and liberal democratic norms. The Government announced its policy on 15 April 2004. Prime Minister Howard stated:
We believe very strongly that the experiment in separate representation, elected representation, for Indigenous people has been a failure. We will not replace ATSIC with an alternative body. We will appoint a group of distinguished Indigenous people to advise the Government on a purely advisory basis in relation to aboriginal affairs.[4]
How could elected representation be a failure? Only by silence, surely. The real issue is rather that the Prime Minister doesn’t like what the elected people are telling him. It is extraordinary that popularly elected representatives like Howard and Vanstone would dismiss a popularly elected body and seek to choose congenial and presumably compliant advisers. They need to be reminded by the Clerks of House and Senate of the principles of the political order which has placed them in their own ministerial positions.
Howard goes on to say that
I do believe that it [ATSIC] has become too preoccupied with what might loosely be called symbolic issues and too little concern with delivering real outcomes for Indigenous people. [5]
Howard’s own term in office is full of mixed-up ‘symbolic’ and ‘real’ measures. Further, ATSIC is not and never was an agency funded or mandated to solve Indigenous socio-economic ills – this role is largely vested in the state and territory governments. Finally, it seems that the problem of the symbolic in Australia’s Indigenous affairs is ultimately a cover for the shambolic.
A 1993 conference in Canberra on Indigenous peoples and national constitutions reached a useful consensus which, in my words, goes like this:
The Federalism Forum held in Old Parliament House, Canberra, on 19–20 October 2000, wound up a decade of constitutional debate by urging that:
There needs to be wide-ranging national debate within the framework of the reconciliation process about the representation of Australia’s Indigenous population. In this context, Australia should consider as one option the recognition within the structure of the Australian federation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations.[7]
I contend that ‘self-determination’, which is increasingly recognised by Indigenous peoples and by governments and international bodies, provides a very practical guiding principle. Self-determination is already reflected in the sort of work which Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons have begun, that is, a search for practical institutional reforms to accommodate Indigenous autonomy.
It is also essential that Australia develop a national framework for the realisation of Indigenous rights. Since 1967 Australia’s Federal Government has had the constitutional power to lead Indigenous policy. There have been proposals advanced by non-Indigenous reformers on both sides of national politics (Coalition and Labor), as well as by Indigenous leaders, for a national framework. Ideas have ranged from a single national treaty, to constitutional or political statements of principle, to processes of discussion, education, and negotiation leading to some politico-legal accommodation or Reconciliation. It seems likely some framework or guidelines will eventually be accepted, if only for practical (rather than moral) reasons.
Various issues point to specific possibilities. For instance, political and constitutional arrangements for Torres Strait, like the contents of a new territorial or statehood constitution for the Northern Territory, are particularly important because they remind us the most primary challenges. How should Indigenous peoples be recognised, their economic and livelihood traditions provided for, their cultures and languages given proper status, and their right to the full opportunities of our contemporary society guaranteed, even while their traditions and social stability are maintained within their own control and set of ideals? How can we avoid the destruction of their vital eco-systems and living resources by our industrial society? In other words, how can we meet the challenges we failed or were too ignorant to meet in earlier times of white settlement – a time now called invasion more generally and with too much good reason!
On 27 April 2004, the SBS current affairs television program Insight held a studio audience discussion, ‘ATSIC – Who cares?’, with Geoff Clark, Jackie Huggins, Fred Chaney, Senator Aden Ridgeway, Olga Havnen, Boni Robertson, and many others. While the media and official debate had been a lofty debate about Eurocentric notions of governance, the Insight people brought out the more important aspects of ATSIC’s abolition. It highlighted the impact of abolition on Indigenous clients and communities, and gave voice to concerns that ‘mainstreaming’ had already failed, that a major voice for Indigenous participation in public debate and official decision-making was being stilled, and that some appointed friends of government could be and would be no substitute for an elected representative body.
In recent years, Prime Minister Howard has taken to saying that the lack of personal opposition he encounters to his position on Indigenous affairs indicates its wide acceptance. On the contrary, there is much discussion out of his range of hearing, as those interested in the subject have long since learned that it is pointless to engage Howard in discussion.
The states, for their part, could have played a more significant role in recent years. This is especially so considering that some of the State Premiers have good instincts on Indigenous issues (eg, Bracks in Victoria, Beattie in Queensland), a strong intellectual and moral commitment (Carr in New South Wales), or a real commitment to change things (Martin in the NT). Unfortunately, law and order concerns have often eclipsed such instincts.
The day after Howard’s 15 April policy announcement, it was reported that:
Jackie Huggins, a member of the [ATSIC] 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.[8]
Bill Jonas, then Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, commented that the abolition of ATSIC
does not reveal a failure of representative Indigenous structures. It reveals a deep antipathy on the part of the government towards engaging with Indigenous peoples and acknowledging the legitimacy of the aspirations and goals expressed by Indigenous peoples. ... Replacing ATSIC with an appointed board of advisors will entrench this problem further, by ensuring that the government only has to talk to select Indigenous people when it chooses to and only on issues that it wishes to engage.
And Noel Pearson said of the whole situation that
The political parties must stop taking the voters' lack of interest in, or antipathy to, Aboriginal affairs as their unstated tactical starting point. Instead of the election-driven, negative attitudes to Indigenous affairs and the insufficient reform suggestions presented so far, we need a positive political program.
Many in the governing class in Australia today apparently imagine that they have insight and power to define and prescribe ethno-political realities which they are too incurious, self-important, or impatient to understand. Indigenous representatives are needed to re-write the script.
[∗] Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Political Science & International Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Clem Chapple, 17-7-42 to 29-4-03, my lifelong friend who travelled with me in my early days among Canada’s renascent Indigenous peoples and remote places, and who left verse reminders to make sure I took warm socks to the North Magnetic Pole on my first visit in 1966. And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. A longer version of this article is available online at <http://eprint.uq.edu.au/archive/00001086/>.
[1] International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, ‘Australia’ in The Indigenous World 2001–2002 (2002) 153–168.
[2] N Sharp, Saltwater People: The Waves of Memory (2002); Peter Jull, A Sea Change: Overseas Indigenous-Government Relations in the Coastal Zone (1993).
[3] See eg, Clive Williams, Terrorism Explained: The Facts about Terrorism and Terrorist Groups (2004) 112. Williams says that ‘[l]ong-term resolution is less of a priority for many government agencies because they benefit financially from fighting terrorism at a tactical level. ... Resolving terrorism longer term confers no institutional benefits and might well put bureaucrats out of a job.’
[4] Joint Press Conference with Prime Minister the Hon John Howard and Senator Amanda Vanstone, Parliament House, 15 April 2004. A transcript is available online at
<http://www.pm.gov.au/news/interviews/Interview795.html>.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and Constitutional Centenary Foundation, The Position of Indigenous Poeples in National Constitutions: Conference Report (1993); Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and Constitutional Centenary Foundation, The Position of Indigenous Peoples in National Constitutions: Speeches from the Conference (1993).
[7] Federalism Forum, Communiqué (2000) 2.4.3.
[8] ‘Howard Silences Aboriginal Advocates’, Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia) 16 April 2004.
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