2015-08-03
John Barry
Six years ago, I attended a lecture by Professor Pat Dodson titled Indigenous Rights: Beyond Symbolism at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney campus. In the lecture Dodson questioned why, given the failure of every government since federation to lift Indigenous Australians to anywhere near parity with non-Indigenous Australians, “expert white bureaucrats” still think they know what is best for Aboriginal people?
The Greens, with our stated policy commitment to self-determination and political participation for Indigenous Australians, must do more in federal parliament to advocate for a framework of self-determination that enables Aboriginal people to set their own agenda.
In the 1980s, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development began a research project designed to explain the emerging pattern of Indigenous economic success. They asked, what was enabling some Native American nations to break away from the overall pattern of seemingly intractable poverty?
This research effort, still continuing today, has produced results with significant implications for policy. Across a sample of nearly 70 Native American nations, the most consistent predictors of sustainable economic development in native communities were not economic factors such as location, educational achievement or natural resource endowments, but rather three largely political ones:
- Sovereignty or self-rule
- Capable governing institutions
- A congruence between formal governing institutions and Indigenous political culture
But here in Australia, we have seen the systematic dismantling of Aboriginal self-determination in favour of minister-appointed advisory groups and councils that have purely advisory roles, command no staff, and have no operational budget.
The closest Indigenous Australians ever came to self-determination was the 15 year life-span of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). Established by the Hawke Labor government in 1990, ATSIC was designed as a statutory body to enable a form of “Aboriginal and Islander self-management”. However, native title expert David Ritter explains that ATSIC only ever exercised a highly contingent form of independence from the federal government as the organisation was entirely accountable to the Minister and parliament.
But even an organisation whose fate and funding was controlled by the Commonwealth was too autonomous for the Howard government, and in 2005, with the support of the Labor opposition, ATSIC was abolished. What we have ended up with, Pat Dodson believes, is a “coercive version of reconciliation, framed not by consultation and respect for the dignity of Aboriginal people, but by punitive paternalism”.
“The new architects of Indigenous policy must provide space for Indigenous people to set their own agenda for development. In the absence of a genuine dialogue around such matters, we tend to get iterations of the same policy: more assimilation masquerading under different slogans like stronger futures and closing the gap,” Dodson said.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine a worse example of Indigenous exclusion from the policy-making process than the Howard Government's 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act. Mick Dodson described the negotiation process as a “spectacle of two white men, John Howard and Brian Harradine, discussing our native title when we're not even in the room”. Unsurprisingly, the amended bill that finally passed the Senate delivered a significantly worse outcome for native title claimants.
Almost a decade later, the Northern Territory intervention — initiated by a Liberal government and continued by a Labor one — was about disempowering Aboriginal people in the name of preventing child abuse. But as Pat Dodson explains, “If governments are as seriously interested in dealing with the crisis that allegedly exists in Aboriginal communities, then surely the better method should be to support and partnership with Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to find meaningful long-term solutions”.
Now, with the Federal government no longer funding the delivery of essential services to remote communities, Aboriginal people in Western Australia are once again facing the possibility of being forced from their traditional lands. Although the WA government's justification for closing down remote communities in November last year was Commonwealth funding cuts, now it is child sexual abuse. Never mind the literally dozens of reports into child abuse in Aboriginal communities in the previous decade, each of which recommended change that was scarcely implemented.
And what about the Aboriginal people who live in these remote communities? They nervously wait, hoping for consultation, while the white political class decide their fate. It has ever been thus.
In his 2008 essay for The Monthly, Galarrwuy Yunupingu despairingly describes his memory of visits to Arnhem Land by prime ministers and policy makers dating back to the 1960s. With each new government came a trip to the Northern Territory, accompanied by reports, fresh consultations, and the promise of a new beginning. “There is not one federal politician who has any idea about the enormity of the task. And how could they? They have not had their land stolen, or their rights infringed, or their laws broken,” said Yunupingu.
As people like Dodson and Yunupingu say, even with the best intentions, white politicians cannot provide the solutions. But, what they can provide is a framework of self-determination that genuinely engages Indigenous people in their own affairs.
Given the failure of successive Australian governments to recognise the sovereign rights of Aboriginal people, it is up to the Greens to use our parliamentary representation to fight for Aboriginal self-determination. We must do more.
Earlier this year, when Prime Minister Abbott sombrely delivered the annual Closing the Gap statement, which revealed stagnation or backward movement in most long-term targets, he stated that “few things matter more than the lot of Indigenous people” and “neither side of politics can achieve meaningful progress without working with the other”.
He is right. But sadly, the only outcome of the two older parties working together on Aboriginal affairs has been to weaken Indigenous political participation and economic independence.
Our political system has failed Aboriginal people and it is abundantly clear that they have no stomach for promises that the next government will do better. As Pat Dodson advised his audience six years ago, “a system that builds on the strength and resilience of Aboriginal people and recognises Indigenous knowledge systems can enable us to navigate our own path through modernity”.
John Barry is a member of the South Sydney Greens
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