Nation at the crossroads

I have been involved in Aboriginal Affairs since 1957. I have seen governments come and go. I have read most of the reports into Aboriginal Affairs in that time and all the reports into Aboriginal health. My summary is this: the fundamental recommendations are remarkably similar but Australian governments have avoided their implementation. This fact is known around the world and the abiding opinion of many foreign governments is that Australian governments have failed in Aboriginal Affairs. There is a view internationally that this failure reflects an endemic apathy towards the welfare of Aboriginal peoples and this apathy reflects a rather imperfect understanding of the implications of the basic tenet that all humans are equal.

If we look to our near neighbour New Zealand, the Maori are held in high respect in that country. Their traditions and ceremonies have an established place in the fabric of New Zealand society, their languages are spoken by many non-Maori and there is a treaty dating from 1842 between Maori and the New Zealand Government. The Maori are well represented in the professions and in commerce and have been for several generations. Their health status reflects their capacity to access the economic and social production of their country.

We have to ask why Australia has failed, why Australian governments have failed to deal with the racism that Aboriginal people continue to experience, why some governments have even sought to exploit racist tendencies in Australian society for political gain.

This is not to say that there are not many decent Australians who support Aboriginal rights. In fact, it is almost as though we have two Australias: one that wants to join the international community in the best traditions of civil society and the other that prefers to flirt with notions that are not dissimilar to those of pariah states of the past like the apartheid regime of South Africa which incidentally operated under laws that had been copied from Queensland.

To make the point a little clearer, there are many Australians who have a mature understanding of human rights and they support Aboriginal self-determination. Then on the other hand, there are those who do not understand the body of thought that constitutes the discourse on human rights and they support the view that government should control the affairs of Aboriginal people even in some cases to the extent that Aboriginal people should be deprived of other rights or benefits that would otherwise be available to all citizens. The rationale for the approach is that “it is for their own good.” It looks quite ugly in print does it not?

Part of the wrong approach involves a reliance on the views of self-appointed or government-appointed “experts,” either Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, in Aboriginal Affairs. Typically, these people are promoted as messiahs of one kind or another and are believed to have a special sort of intelligence that can provide “breakthrough” solutions for their political masters.

They speak for themselves or mouth the ideas of those who remunerate them.

In Aboriginal culture, the community is the expert. We arrive at decisions by consensus. Our system is ancient and it has served us well for 60,000 years. When Aboriginal people place themselves above our community consensus processes and promote themselves as “leaders,” they transgress a fundamental and defining principle of Aboriginal culture. In so doing, they effectively deny their own Aboriginality and adopt the practices of those who do not perceive the legitimacy of our ways.

An example of the right approach was the extensive consultative process that led to the development of the National Aboriginal Health Strategy in 1989. This document was the result of consensus between Aboriginal communities and all levels of government.

It was the first occasion in Australian history since 1788 that Aboriginal peoples and Australian governments had worked together under the Aboriginal decision-making process of consensus. It set a precedent of which all Australians should be proud but its true historical significance has been largely unheralded. The National Aboriginal Health Strategy was lauded overseas but it is yet another source of policy that remains unimplemented in Australia.

The National Aboriginal Health Strategy envisioned a system whereby Aboriginal peoples would control their own primary health delivery system and Aboriginal health policy. The model derived from the general principle of self-determination and is generalisable across Aboriginal Affairs. It is the right way, the way forward.

The wrong way, the current and past way, is to administer Aboriginal Affairs via non-Aboriginal bureaucracies. As well as being the very antithesis of self-determination, they operate in a vastly different cultural environment from that of Aboriginal communities and pursue priorities that are not those of our peoples.

Bureaucracies have not always conducted their relationships with Aboriginal peoples in accordance with the principles that should underpin civil and respectful communication. We are regularly spoken to with contempt, hectored, lectured at and treated as inferiors of lesser intelligence whose ideas are to be dismissed. I do not wish to appear to criticise all bureaucrats. Many are disgusted and embarrassed by what they witness but the fact remains that our interactions with government officials are characterised by such behaviour with sufficient regularity as to be commonplace.

Inexperience and disinterest have led to repeated cycles of failed promises or unanswered calls for action. As Professor Dobson pointed out in 2003, ATSIC had campaigned for a decade for funding to implement child abuse prevention strategies but its requests were met with funding cuts! The results of this failure of government are seen so tragically today.

In my view Australia stands at the crossroads. We can mature as a nation, indeed we can acquire true nationhood if our country acknowledges the human rights of Aboriginal people including our right to self-determination, acknowledges the wisdom of our cultures and actively promotes respect for our traditions and life-ways. When Aboriginal people feel equal in Australia, then this country will have achieved a critical milestone in its history. We have a choice and we believe that Australia can move forward.

However, sadly, I currently see retrogression to a policy milieu informed by an underlying philosophy whose differences from racism are at best subtle. We are used in a desperate game of wedge politics where the prize is electoral success. But I ask whether dishonourable success is success at all. I ask whether it is moral for politicians and their parties to acquiesce in such circumstances simply as a tactic to neutralise an attempt to drive a wedge. Decent people would not have the stomach for such opportunism.

Australia needs to do some soul searching.

Source: South Sydney Herald July 2007 http://www.southsydneyherald.com.au/