Black Politics

Inside the Complexity of Aboriginal Political Culture

Allen & Unwin

Contents

A HISTORY OF POLICY FAILURE

In policy terms, Aboriginal people in Australia have rarely been seen as anything other than a 'problem to be solved'. Rather than engaging with Aboriginal people and working in meaningful partnership with them, successive Australian governments have looked for a solution to 'the Aboriginal problem'. Racialised views of Aboriginal competence have allowed for often-Draconian policy to be justified as being 'for their own good'. These points were made by Patrick Dodson in a lecture in 2000, where he argued that for all governments, at all stages in Australia's post-invasion history, policy has been about 'their solutions to us as the problem':

The problem of our being here; the problem of our disposal; the problem of our assimilation; and the problem of having us appreciative of all that governments have done 'for our own good'. (Dodson 2000: 13)

The result of this view has been continual and unambiguous policy failure. Policy programs from protection, assimilation, self-determination and, most recently, intervention have all been delivered with a measure of simplicity that does not match the complexity of Aboriginal political culture. Despite (sometimes) good intentions, none of these policies has actually improved Aboriginal lives, and in many instances they have made them infinitely worse. Indeed, as Tristan Ray, the coordinator of the Central Australian Youth Link-Up Service, has suggested in response to the 2007 Northern Territory 'intervention', if the current situation in Aboriginal communities in the Territory is to be described as a national emergency, it is an emergency 'created in part by decades of inconsistent, incompetent and reactive government policy' (Ray 2007: 195).

Indigenous affairs is acknowledged by experts as 'an extraordinarily complex policy domain'. Policy that is simplistic or doctrinaire, or that ignores the diversity of Aboriginal lives and aspirations, is unlikely to succeed by any measure (Altman 2005: 36). But as anthropologist Gaynor McDonald (2001) has suggested, one problem with much policy in the Indigenous Affairs portfolio has been that it is designed to turn Aboriginal people into 'a certain kind of Australian citizen'. This intention can often sit uneasily with aspects of Aboriginal identity, social life, kin relationships and community authority structures (2001: 2). There is an implicit suggestion in much contemporary policy and public debate that Aboriginal culture is 'in itself pathogenic', with the further implication that if Aboriginal people could just be more like white people their problems would be resolved (Morrissey 2006: 352). The reality, however, is that many of the challenges facing Aboriginal people in their interactions with government and, more significantly, in the management of their own lives, derive from a complex combination of 'cultural persistence' and the legacy of colonisation (Sutton 2001: 149). These issues go to the heart of the argument in this book — that is, that the bulk of Indigenous Affairs policy has simply failed to respond to the complexity of Aboriginal political culture.

It is not true to suggest that government has no awareness of these areas of complexity. Some, if not all, of the tensions that will be explored in the following chapters have been observed over time in a range of documents, including government reports. For example, in 1988 the then Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) made a submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs in which it discussed 'the federal government's philosophical and practical difficulties in delivering services to Aboriginal people while simultaneously affirming Aboriginal self-determination' — in other words, it had identified the complexities involved in claims for both sovereignty and citizenship. The DAA report also noted that the economic circumstances in many Aboriginal communities made people in those communities dependent ongovernment funding, thereby leaving DAA 'in the unhappy situation of sometimes being seen to limit Aboriginal autonomy', a clear articulation of the complexities of autonomy and dependency. The submission further commented that 'community development sometimes undermined the preservation of traditional cultural patterns'— the tension considered here in Chapter 4, examining tradition and development (all quotes contained in Rowse 1992: 1–2). Clearly there is some knowledge of these tensions that have informed the policy process over time, and yet ...? Who knows where this knowledge has gone or how it has influenced policy development today. It is certainly little in evidence.

This chapter offers a brief overview of the history of Indigenous Affairs policy, with a focus on the period since the election of the Howard Coalition government in 1996. It would be patently impossible to attempt a comprehensive history of Indigenous Affairs policy here. As this book is concerned with the broad sweep of Aboriginal political culture, it cannot also take into account the differences in policy across Australia's states and territories over the last 220 years. What is relevant here, however, is the frequency with which Indigenous Affairs policy has changed direction, often quite dramatically, in a relatively short period of time. The rapidity of these changes has left Aboriginal people in turmoil. In our interview, Muriel Bamblett described this experience as like being 'caught in a big washing machine ... You've got change all the time; every time we just get used to something you move to another cycle and the cycle keeps changing and we keep moving and we haven't got used to the last cycle before we're moving on to the next cycle.'

In our interview, Tom Calma discussed at some length the history of failed government policy in this regard. Unfortunately, Tom points out, 'government has never maintained a policy long enough to be able to let any of this stuff bed down':

The moment something starts, there's a change of government or there's a change of government policy, which then undermines whatever advancement has been happening. So we now have a situation where the government is able to say, 'Well, look, we've tried a whole lot of things and they've failed.' They blame it on the Aboriginal people.

Yet, despite this cycle of blame — a cycle that began with the earliest confrontations between colonisers and original inhabitants — Aboriginal people have continued to struggle for the preservation of their autonomy and dignity, and for control over their own lives.

From dispossession to self-determination

Colonisation in Australia has followed a similar pattern to that in countries such as Canada, New Zealand and the United States. In this pattern, relations between the colonising force and Indigenous peoples have fallen into three distinct periods. Judy Atkinson describes these periods as:

• invasion and frontier violence;

• the intercession of well-meaning but often ethnocentric and paternalistic philanthropic and religious groups; and

• the reassessment of government responsibility to Indigenous needs around the 1930s to 1960s that continues to the present day.

This book is focused primarily on this last period, which Atkinson suggests has been just as damaging as the earlier periods as it has allowed the increasing intrusion of the state into Aboriginal lives, 'creating dependencies and dysfunctions that have re-traumatised Indigenous peoples' (Atkinson 2002: 58).

The early frontier history of the British colonisation of this land has been well documented (see, for example, Reynolds 1982; Elder 2003). This was a violent time that saw Aboriginal people dispossessed of their land, often through armed conflict. The conflict spread across the continent from the southeast, bringing disease and alcohol along with massacres and sexual violence, as colonial outposts were established in what are now Australia's states and territories. In short, during the early decades following white invasion, the political response to the 'native problem' was to contain and dispossess Aboriginal people in order to access land for farming. Despite orders that the establishment of penal colonies take place with the consent of the Indigenous inhabitants, early British arrivals took the attitude that the continent of Australia was terra nullius (although this term was not used until much later) and simply took over. It is clear from historical accounts that the invaders' views of the original inhabitants ranged from at best curiosity to at worst outright hostility. The racialised thinking of the time produced a general view of Aboriginal people as 'savages', which was used to justify their brutal treatment.

By the time of Federation in 1901, just over 100 years later, the general policy framework had moved towards what became known as 'protection'. Violent conflicts over land had for the most part given way to the creation of reserves and missions on which Aboriginal people were kept separate from white society but accorded no rights to the land on which they were contained (Burgmann 2003: 70). Between 1901 and 1946, all Australian states passed legislation that would control Aboriginal people's independence of movement, marriage, employment and association, and that authorised the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Protection policies assumed that Aboriginal people were merely an ancient remnant who would inevitably die out. During this period, Aboriginal people were 'protected' in poorly paid or unpaid service, often never even seeing the meagre wages they earned (Brennan et al. 2005: 58–9). As it became evident that Aboriginal people were not dying out, however, national policy changed again, and by 1951 the state had adopted a policy of 'assimilation'. The underlying assumption this time was that, rather than dying out, Aboriginal people would be absorbed into the white population to live like other Australian citizens. Ostensibly, assimilation was a commitment by the state to the 'advancement' of Aboriginal people, rather than a view of their inevitable demise (Morgan 2006a: 15). It was soon clear, however, that 'advancement' was really code for 'more white, less black'. Assimilation policy was also riven by internally conflicting ideas, as Frances Peters-Little (2000) has noted, in that Aboriginal people were often expected to assimilate into white society while still being subjected to segregation laws that restricted them to reserves and missions (2000: 4).

Despite the extraordinary challenges they faced during these discriminatory policy eras, a large percentage of Aboriginal people maintained a degree of independence from the state and prioritised their continuing connections to land and kin (Brennan et al. 2005: 59). Resistance to colonial authority shifted focus during this period, evolving from armed struggle to political struggle as Aboriginal people began to demand their entitlements from the state. New political struggles over land rights began to emerge in the 1960s: 1963 saw the Yolngu bark petitions sent to Canberra in protest over the mining of their land on the Gove peninsula, and 1966 witnessed the Gurindji walk-off from the Wave Hill station. In subsequent years, demands for land rights were fought out in the courts and on the streets, eventually bringing change — for example, through the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976. As a result of these struggles, there are now land rights regimes around the country, bringing some degree of certainty that governments and developers can 'no longer push Aboriginal people off their land to build or mine or run cattle' (Tilmouth 1998: xi). The Central and Northern Land Councils claim that the Northern Territory Act gave Aboriginal people some 'breathing space' to 'develop our land in a way that we choose and at a pace that we choose ... to help us achieve economic security for the future' (Central and Northern Land Councils 1994: 8). However, legislating for land rights has also had some unintended consequences for Aboriginal people, not least the masking of economic marginalisation and dependency on many small outstations through the primary focus on their political and cultural significance. It was assumed that land restoration would lead to economic development, despite the fact that returned land is generally remote, arid and of low commercial value (Altman et al. 2005: 3).

The issue of land rights underscores the competing voices to which governments must listen in the formulation of policy. The mining and pastoral industries are clearly significant stakeholders in issues of land use and ownership, and have been influential — often to the disadvantage of Aboriginal people — in this domain. Indeed, before the 1992 Mabo decision (discussed in Chapters 3 and 7), Australian governments engaged in land and resource management processes as if Aboriginal people had not existed or held any rights before the arrival of the British (Howitt 2001: 202, 203). The mining industry opposed the proposed Native Title Act during 1993 negotiations, first seeking to prevent the introduction of the Act at all, and later lobbying the Commonwealth government for amendments on the grounds that the proposed Act was 'unworkable and an impediment to development' (Howlett 2006: 13). Ongoing concerns relate to the social impact of mining crews on Aboriginal communities (Yu in KALACC 2006: 86), which has seen 'small communities overturned by alcohol troubles or the presence of too many white blokes' (Pitjantjatjara letter quoted in Lippmann 1981: 62).

But in the 1970s there was growing optimism among Aboriginal leaders and activists that the Australian state was at last beginning to recognise their status as first nations peoples and to make policy accordingly. In 1972 the Whitlam government introduced the formal policy of self-determination, which was endorsed and further developed by the successor Fraser government. Under Hawke and Keating, there was talk of a treaty (which never eventuated), Native Title became enshrined in legislation (although the promised social justice package component was never developed), the creation of ATSIC meant that Aboriginal people had elected representation for the first time, and the official decade of reconciliation was initiated. By the mid-1990s, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that these changing policy settings were neither improving the quality of, nor lengthening, Aboriginal lives. Defence of existing policies was increasingly half-hearted, and growing despondency meant there was little energy available to develop new policies. This situation provided an opportune moment for the election of a new government, one that would transform the Indigenous Affairs landscape with an aggressive rejection of all policy that accepted current responsibility for past policy failure (Gaita 2007: 10). The Howard government came to power, as Peter Jull has suggested, with some powerful rhetoric that it mistook for a policy (2005: 1).

The Howard years

Almost as soon as John Howard became prime minister in March 1996, it was clear that he intended to undo much that he had inherited in the Indigenous Affairs portfolio. The first target in the new government's sights was ATSIC, created in 1989 to recognise the unique place of Indigenous peoples in Australian history and contemporary society, and to address both historical disadvantage and ongoing discrimination (Jonas and Dick 2004: 8). Announcing an audit of ATSIC was the first statement made by the new government once in office. ATSIC survived on that occasion, but in 2002 the Howard government set up another review. The review team — consisting of former Liberal MP John Hannaford, Former Labor MP Bob Collins and Indigenous academic and activist Jackie Huggins — released its final report, In the Hands of the Regions, in November 2003, making recommendations for structural change to the organisation but not recommending that ATSIC be abolished. Despite this, in 2004 the government followed the lead of the then Opposition leader, Mark Latham, in announcing that it would abolish ATSIC after the upcoming federal election, suggesting that the decision was in accordance with the findings of the review.

ATSIC was blamed for lack of progress in areas where it had never had any program responsibility, and this supposed failure was in turn used to explain the poor living conditions and short life expectancies of many Indigenous people. This political sleight of hand caused outrage among Aboriginal people. As Bill Jonas and Darren Dick have argued: 'It is one thing to suggest that ATSIC could perform its obligations to Indigenous peoples better; it is another thing entirely to suggest that there should not be a national representative body through which Indigenous people can participate in government decision making about their lives.' (Jonas and Dick 2004: 14)