Australians All

Assimilation Fails Again

John Bond

Social commentator Hugh Mackay points out that whereas Australian society is reasonably tolerant to most ethnic groups, the hostility towards Indigenous Australians is powerful. This hostility was clear in the approach of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party during its heyday, when it attracted a million votes. Since then, the Government has moved towards many elements of that approach. Is it pandering to this lobby in a search for votes, regardless of the impact on Indigenous wellbeing?

Perhaps the best way to understand John Howard’s approach to Indigenous affairs is to look at the Ministers he has chosen for the portfolio – John Herron, followed by Philip Ruddock, Amanda Vanstone and Mal Brough.

Apart from Philip Ruddock, none have had previous experience in Indigenous affairs – and Ruddock’s energies were consumed by his other portfolio, Immigration. He earned no favours from Indigenous Australians when he described his Indigenous responsibilities as his ‘recreation’.

In choosing his Ministers, Howard ignored people whose concern for Indigenous Australia was well known, such as Peter Nugent. Sharman Stone, now a Minister, has never been given responsibilities in that area, though she has a doctorate in Indigenous studies.

It is as if a bank manager were suddenly put in charge of a hospital. His administrative skills may help in his new task. But he would be ignorant of the culture which has developed through centuries of care for the sick, and that culture needs to be understood if a hospital is to run effectively.

Howard’s action is best explained by assuming that he had decided to manage Indigenous affairs from his own office, and didn’t want a Minister who was capable of taking his own initiatives.

Undoubtedly his office has been in control. The Government’s first Cabinet meeting stripped $400 million from the ATSIC budget. An Office of Indigenous Policy was established in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to give the Government a source of advice other than ATSIC. Of its 50 staff, only three were Indigenous, and none of these were in a senior position.

Then ATSIC was abolished, and the Office for Indigenous Policy Coordination established – and its staff contains only one Indigenous Australian at senior level. The number of Indigenous Australians in the wider Federal public service has fallen considerably. This will not be easily reversed, since there has also been a fall in the number of Indigenous people at university.

In many areas of Indigenous well-being, Government funding has been tokenistic. The Bringing Them Home report, which revealed the tragic effect of the forced removal policies, roused intense community concern, and nearly a million people signed Sorry Books. The Government responded by putting $15 million a year into implementing a few of the report’s recommendations. By contrast the Canadian Government, dealing with a similar history, has allocated C$4.8 billion.

In the year 2000, a million people walked for reconciliation. The Government response was to establish Reconciliation Place in Canberra, and to ‘privatise’ the issue through establishing Reconciliation Australia with one-off grants totalling $20 million.

When Indigenous women pleaded for help to overcome domestic violence in Indigenous communities, the Prime Minister called a summit. But very little has happened as a result.

The one area into which substantial Federal funds have gone is Indigenous health. This is desperately needed, as there is a 20-year gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian life expectancy – a gap which comparable countries such as Canada and New Zealand have narrowed to about five years. And the funds have made a difference. Petrol sniffing – until recently a scourge of young Aboriginals in remote areas – has been almost wiped out of Central Australia and the Top End by the introduction of non-sniffable Opal fuel, and by vigorous action by Aboriginal community leaders.

But these funds are still grossly inadequate. When the Australian Medical Association and many other bodies called recently for improved funding for Indigenous primary health care, the call was dismissed as ‘naïve’ by the Minister for Health.

And improving Indigenous life-expectancy will take more than improving health care, vital though that is. It also means improving housing, developing employment opportunities, ensuring elected representation, valuing our Indigenous heritage, and in countless other ways enabling Indigenous Australians to feel themselves respected by the wider Australian community.

This is the Government’s greatest failing. Whereas the Prime Minister, in his speeches, is quick to praise whatever segment of the community he is addressing, he rarely finds praise for Indigenous Australians. Yet the faults of the Indigenous community are shown up relentlessly by him and his Ministers, and by a substantial section of the media.

And this includes the current Minister, Mal Brough. He has shown himself more energetic than his predecessors. It has yet to be seen whether his initiatives will actually benefit Indigenous people. But he does his cause no good by his frequent criticism of Indigenous communities, too often based on allegations which are then found to be false.

The result is that Indigenous Australians feel themselves under constant attack. Gone is the spirit of the 1990s, when the work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation flowered into widespread appreciation of Indigenous Australia. At that time Indigenous people dared to believe that they would become respected by the wider community. But their hope has been dashed. Reconciliation has been off the agenda since 2000, and assimilation, in all but name, is being promoted by many Government agencies. As in most of our history since white settlement began, the underlying message is, ‘You will only be accepted if you do things our way.’

This means that the Government has no interest in developing Indigenous capacity or even, in many cases, in consulting Indigenous people on ways to answer Indigenous problems. In their view, it is irrelevant whether the needs of the Indigenous community are met by Indigenous or mainstream providers.

The results are depressing. The COAG trials on delivering services to Indigenous communities, touted as a vast improvement on the ATSIC approach, are disappointing. The Shared Responsibility Agreements, in many cases, are impossible to evaluate. Now the Government is trying to persuade many Aboriginal people to leave their traditional lands and live in urban areas. But the social statistics for urban areas give little hope that that will solve the problems. And besides, Australia doesn’t have much of a future if we solve problems by emptying out vast, and potentially productive, areas of the country.

In fact, so counter-productive are many of the Government’s actions that the question has to be asked: does this Government want to improve Indigenous well-being?

Social commentator Hugh Mackay points out that whereas Australian society is reasonably tolerant to most ethnic groups, the hostility towards Indigenous Australians is powerful. This hostility was clear in the approach of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party during its heyday, when it attracted a million votes. Since then, the Government has moved towards many elements of that approach. Is it pandering to this lobby in a search for votes, regardless of the impact on Indigenous wellbeing?

If it is, I believe it is making a grave mistake, even in terms of electoral success. If a million people walked for reconciliation in 2000, there must be millions more who didn’t make it to the walks, but who want a fair go for Indigenous Australians. A political party which shows it is seriously working for that will attract many votes.