"I'd have thought that the Aboriginals would have been pretty happy with the apology," a white Australian taxi driver remarked as he drove me through Redfern, symbolic home of Sydney's Aboriginal community.  He was referring to the apology issued by Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal people on 13^th February 2008.

In his apology, Rudd declared that "the mood of the nation is for reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians".  According to Sol Bellear, Chair of the Redfern-based Aboriginal Medical Service, "a lot of non-Aboriginal people seem to think that now the apology's been made, it's the end of disadvantage and poverty for Aboriginal people.  It's not."

On 16th February 2004, the Sydney suburb of Redfern was the scene of the worst race riot in the city's history.  Since then, John Howard's centre-right Liberal Party administration was ousted by Rudd's  Australian Labor Party (ALP), in October 2007.

Redfern is located on the edge of Sydney's central business district (CBD).According to  Heidi Norman, who has written extensively about Redfern's Aboriginal community, the Stolen Generation became identified with the suburb.  "Many Aboriginal people who grew up in institutions found their way back to their families through Redfern" she says. The bulk of Redfern's Aboriginal population is concentrated in a series of streets known as ‘the Block', situated on the suburb's western border. At the centre of the Block, which occupies less than 8000 square feet, is a new architecture-designed community centre. This is surrounded by dilapidated Victorian terraces and Aboriginal murals which seem incongruous with the gleaming Manhattan-style skyscrapers visible in the distance.  The Block is owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company.  Initially, it represented something of an innovation as an Aboriginal-run housing project.

Over time, the Block has acquired a reputation for being a ‘no go' area for outsiders.  Statistics indicate that Redfern's crime rate is twice or three times that of the New South Wales (NSW) state average in a number of areas.  Since the 1990s, the public image of the Block has been tarnished by the heroin trade that has proliferated, particularly among young Aboriginal people.  One local resident tells me: "You would probably have trouble buying heroin in most parts of Sydney, but it's dealt pretty openly here".

Beyond the Block, Redfern has been subject to varying degrees of gentrification.  Proposals to bulldoze the Block and extend the business district into Redfern are said to have created something of a siege mentality among local Aboriginal people.  Criminologist Chris Cunneen describes the local Aboriginal community as "much more highly politicised than a lot of other communities", with a particular history of tensions between police and the suburb's Aboriginal community. 

The Redfern riot

The  Redfern riot of 2004 is emblematic of these tensions. On 16^th February a night of ‘unparalleled' rioting began following the death of a seventeen year-old Aboriginal teenager TJ Hickey.  Police were attacked with bricks, bottles and petrol bombs, and the railway station was set alight. The teenager, who had a history with local police, had been cycling to visit his mother, who lived in the Block.  On the way, he lost control of his bike and crashed into a railway fence, where he was impaled on spikes.  Many Redfern Aboriginal people maintain he was being pursued by a police vehicle. They also say it was provocation by police that sparked the riot among mourners on the following day,

Ray Minniecon, a pastor in the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship and veteran Redfern activist, puts the riot down to a build-up of frustration and anger on the part of young Aboriginal people as a result of persistent police harassment.  "My own kids have asked ‘Dad, why do the police pick on me?  They don't pick on the Asians.  They don't pick on the white fellas.' You can understand the anger they feel at not being allowed to be who they are and enjoy the same freedoms as other young people in Sydney", he tells me.

Research backs up this claim that Aboriginal youths are stopped and searched more frequently than their white peers. Cunneen agrees.  "There is an expectation, particularly in Redfern, that if you're young and Aboriginal, you're going to get a hard time of the police."

Ray Minniecon suggests that the riot might have played out differently had the apology been issued beforehand.  Research into the Redfern riot has indeed identified Aboriginal peoples' history of colonisation and dispossession as a factor influencing the sense of exclusion and ‘generalised hostility' felt by the youths involved.  The wording of Rudd's apology went some way towards addressing this.

The apology

Ostensibly, the apology was concerned primarily with the Stolen Generation of some fifty-thousand Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families between 1910 and 1970. However, it was broadly received as an acknowledgement of the consequences of white settlement on the indigenous population.

On a practical level, the apology proposed a vision for reducing the life-expectancy, economic and educational differentials between white and indigenous Australians called ‘Closing the Gap'. No mention was made of the intervention (or  Northern Territory National Emergency Response) begun by the Howard government in 2007. This followed  publication of a report alleging rampant child neglect and sexual abuse within the Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory.  A range of measures were implemented ranging from changes to land tenure, the quarantining of welfare benefits, the deployment of extra police and restrictions on alcohol use.  The Howard government suspended the Race Discrimination Act.

Controversy still surrounds the effectiveness of the intervention. Those opposed consider it to have been punitive and to have infantilised the majority of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory who had no involvement with child abuse.  But although many were expecting the Rudd government to discontinue the intervention, they were disappointed.

Soll Bellear, Chair of the Aboriginal Medical Service, and a member of his local Labor Party considers the Rudd government to have reneged on several of their election promises relating to Rudd's vision for ‘closing the gap'.  These relate to housing, education and criminal justice. The health indicators of Australian Aboriginals lag behind those of other indigenous peoples across the world, he points out.  Even after the apology, the Australian government is failing to address Aboriginal issues holistically. They are not consulting the Aboriginal people.  "Aboriginal issues require Aboriginal solutions" he emphasises.

The references in Rudd's apology to the importance of ‘localised' and ‘flexible' solutions are, in Bellear's view, demonstrative of a "white perspective".  According to Bellear, the ‘gap', alluded to by Rudd, was being closed more rapidly in the 1970s and 80s by "community-controlled" organisations such as the Aboriginal Medical Service.

Shane Phillips, an Aboriginal Redfern resident whose family have lived in the suburb for generations, is the CEO of an organisation called Tribal Warrior.  This non-profit community organisation provides specialised training programmes oriented around the maritime industry to create job opportunities for its clients.  One of its key objectives is the promotion of social, economic and cultural development among Aboriginal people and communities. Of the Rudd apology, Phillips says "It was a good start." He argues that Aboriginal people need to rise above anger and indignation, however justified, in order to achieve the social and economic development envisaged by his organisation. Phillips describes some of the economic development that has begun to take place in the Block.  This includes the emergence of five Aboriginal-owned businesses.  A decade ago, there was only one.

Phillips' vision of social and economic development among Redfern's Aboriginal community is consistent with Sol Bellear's view that the 'gap' can be more effectively closed by community-controlled organisations.  For his part, Phillips feels that it is important that Redfern's Aboriginal community stands its ground in the face of gentrification.  He tells me that Redfern is of massive symbolic importance to Aboriginal people across Australia.  "That's why we've go to remain here".

For several years, the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) has sought to promote revitalisation of the Block through the Pelmulwuy Project.  This involves a number of housing and employment-related programmes.   However, the project has stalled due to wrangling between the AHC and the New South Wales government.  Some, like Shane Phillips, are still hopeful that the project might yet get off the ground.  Others are more pessimistic.  "The government won't fund Aboriginal economic development projects" says Ray Minniecon. 

Heidi Norman maintains that Aboriginal people are likely to be worst-affected in Australia, by the global economic downturn.  Increasingly limited resources will diminish Aboriginal organisations' chances of securing funding for such projects.  The apology is by no means unappreciated by Redfern's Aboriginal community and those associated with it.  One resident of the Block, I spoke to, even says that it "has created a bit of a change" in the area.  However, Redfern seems like an uncertain place facing an uncertain future.

Telling Facts - The gap to close

Life expectancy
At 60, it is 20 years behind the average non-indigenous Australian.  That of New Zealand Maoris and American First People is over 70 years.

Education

A report in 2006 in The Australian indicates that many Aboriginal adults living in remote areas have the literacy skills of a ten-year old. Only 3% of Aboriginal students complete a university degree.

But the proportion of Aboriginal people aged 15 years and over achieving qualifications is up from 20% in 2001 to 25% in 2006.

Health

Drug use is twice as high as that of non-indigenous Australians

Poverty

72% live in relative poverty

Unemployment

Between 2001 and 2006, Aboriginal unemployment fell from 20% to 16%, but remains over three times that of  the non-Aboriginal population  

This article is published by James Patterson, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence. www.opendemocracy.net/article/saying-sorry-is-not-enough