Here's a tale of bastardy on bastardy.
The Federal Government had been looking for a site to dump nuclear waste from our one nuclear reactor for some time.
They tried it on with South Australia, but the State Government - with an eye on the votes - wouldn't have it.
In fact no State wanted to be saddled with it.
They had a sort of evaluation by a committee of experts of 41 potential sites.
The six they chose as most likely were all in safe Government seats.
So they were canned in a hurry and suddenly the committee's conclusions became 'obsolete', according to a minder of the then Science Minister.
What to do?
Out of the blue they found three sites in the Northern Territory, all of them owned by the Defence Department and therefore unencumbered.
One of them - Fishers Ridge, near Katherine - had already been investigated by the experts and dismissed as 'unsuitable on hydrological grounds'.
The other two are in pretty remote parts of Central Australia.
But, like Fishers Ridge, they are close to people.
Mt Everard and Harts Range have small Aboriginal outstation communities; Fishers Ridge adjoins a pastoral property and is also near good freshwater fishing and fish breeding grounds.
All, it is said, will undergo rigorous scientific assessment.
Before the last Federal election in 2004, the Government's Senator for the Northern Territory - one Nigel Scullion, a former commercial fisherman with one of those sexual harasser moustaches - found some spine and said 'Not on my watch!'
The thing is, they chose the sites in the Territory because they can.
We're not a State yet and we don't have the Constitutional power to refuse a proposal for Federal land.
Once safely re-elected, Scullion's spine miraculously disappeared and he became an ardent supporter of the proposal.
And there the plot thickens.
Scullion apparently had some discussions with the Northern Land Council, the representative body under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 for Traditional Owners of Aboriginal land in the top half of the Territory.
He then comes up with an amendment to the forthcoming Radioactive Waste Management Bill that's before Parliament to make it possible for Traditional Owners - or anyone else for that matter - to nominate a site for consideration.
Remember the concept of rigorous scientific assessment?
The name Muckaty Station - north of Tennant Creek and in the remote scrub of the Barkly - hits the news and not for the first time.
In the 80s it was widely rumoured to be up for sale to Japanese interests.
It has since become Aboriginal land but, like a lot of cattle country in the Territory, it's pretty impoverished.
The Land Council denied Muckaty was the site they'd be proposing for a nuclear waste dump, but the rumours persisted.
One group of Traditional Owners gets duchessed to Lucas Heights to see how safe a nuclear reactor is and how harmless the waste would be once treated.
And another hits the trail to protest against the idea.
So at one stroke the Land Council - the body that's supposed to represent Aboriginal interests and which is bound by law to consider the wishes of all people affected by a development proposal - seems to have been very successful in engendering division.
It might be churlish, perhaps even libellous, to suggest that its enthusiasm for the site had something to do with the fact that the husband of one of the Traditional Owners was a member of the Land Council's executive.
But they've pursued it behind closed doors with a vigour.
Nigel Scullion, in the meantime, had got his reward: a junior Ministry in the Howard Government to replace a Queenslander who was accused of corruption (and no, that's not a tautology).
One observer was heard to remark, in paraphrase, 'The Scum Also Rises'.
Finally, last Friday week, the announcement came.
Part of Muckaty was to be proposed as a site for a nuclear waste dump.
In exchange, if the site were to be chosen, the Traditional Owners would receive $11 million to go into a trust fund for housing, transport, education and culture, according to an NLC media release.
A further $1 million was to be set aside for educational scholarships.
But if the rigorous scientific assessment proves Muckaty to be unsuitable, it's all pie in the sky.
Once again Aboriginal people have to offer to give up their traditional rights in the hope opf getting something they should have, like all other citizens, as a matter of right.
This time the Federal Government's agenda was aided and abetted by the body supposed to represent the interests of Aboriginal people.
And to add insult to injury, they gave Clare Martin, our Chief Minister a kicking for it because, their chairman said, she'd ignored a national responsibility in favour of short term political gain.
She had, he said, '...misled and failed Territorians and...Aboriginal groups who benefit from development and employment opportunities on their country'.
Of all the things you'd want to take Clare Martin to task for - and the list is legion - the last thing you'd have a go at her for is sticking to the will of the majority.
Yes, I know, it's probably a first, but you can't knock her for it, can you.
You can - and I do - knock the chairman of the NLC for a thoroughly grubby little performance.
Slagging off Clare Martin does not distract attention from the stunt the Land Council has pulled on all the people of the Northern Territory, not least among them the Traditional Owners of Muckaty Station.
I suspect he and the council did it for short-term political gain, since they're perennially on the nose with government.
The piety and self-righteousness of the man in his attempt to gild utter venality is enough to make a reasonable person vomit.
Pots and kettles?
Yes, but it takes us back to blankets and beads.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Friday, June 01, 2007
Plus ca change
Our Productivity Commission regularly investigates Indigenous disadvantage as a social and economic cost to the nation.
Their latest report, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage gives the usual depressing rollcall of statistics - premature death rates, chronic diseases, imprisonment, overcrowding, low educational attainment and so on.
With little or no improvement in any of the social indicators.
Reaction from the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the egregiously awful Mal Brough, was predictable.
First cab off the rank in the blame game was the defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), a representative body (fully-elected Board) which in 2004 finally died from the slow death of a thousand cuts it had been suffering from the day the Howard Government was first elected nearly 12 years ago.
Boofhead Mal said the government couldn't be blamed for the lack of progress.
It was all the fault of ATSIC.
I think my memory is in better shape than Mal's, because I recall one of the first acts of the Howard Government was to take responsibility for Indigenous health away from ATSIC and give it to the Federal Health Department.
ATSIC was never responsible for education, only for giving advice which the mainstream department largely ignored.
It was underfunded for housing and kept warning the Federal Government that it needed to spend $4 billion to clean up Indigenous housing nationwide.
Get the picture?
Then Mal said it was all the fault of Indigenous people anyway and if only they'd show a bit of personal responsibility all would be well.
The Productivity Commission offered four critical elements in making a way out of the mess:
• Cooperation between Aboriginal people and government and business;
• A bottom-up, rather than top-down approach;
• Good governance; and
• Continuing government support.
Most of these are self-evident and I won't go into them too much.
This government hasn’t cooperated, it hasn’t sought direction from Indigenous people, it’s failed to engage with them and it’s run by the ‘user pays’ mentality.
On the question of governance, the report said there were six indicators of good governance – governing institutions, leadership, self-determination, capacity building, cultural match and resources – all of which it says must be in play if success is to be sustained.
I think the government falls down on all of them.
And it certainly falls down heavily on the concept of a 'bottom-up' approach.
Mad Mal loves telling people what to do and he hates listening - a trait he has in common with most of the people who've held this portfolio.
They all know best.
The tragic thing about all this is that the profile of disadvantage the Productivity Commission lays out is not news: it's an update on what we already knew from other reports.
The only way the profile will change - in other words the only way Aboriginal people can have any expectation of decent lives - is when central government realises it can't get away any more with blaming and shaming or top-down policy.
They have to start listening to advice and acting on it.
And, above all, they have to have an elected representative structure (emphatically not Child of ATSIC) to help them do it.
Lapdog advisory bodies just don't cut it because (and this is being repeated in the Greenhouse debate) governments will always try to get away with what's least inconvenient.
And that's no longer good enough for Indigenous people and other Australians in the 21st Century.
Their latest report, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage gives the usual depressing rollcall of statistics - premature death rates, chronic diseases, imprisonment, overcrowding, low educational attainment and so on.
With little or no improvement in any of the social indicators.
Reaction from the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the egregiously awful Mal Brough, was predictable.
First cab off the rank in the blame game was the defunct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), a representative body (fully-elected Board) which in 2004 finally died from the slow death of a thousand cuts it had been suffering from the day the Howard Government was first elected nearly 12 years ago.
Boofhead Mal said the government couldn't be blamed for the lack of progress.
It was all the fault of ATSIC.
I think my memory is in better shape than Mal's, because I recall one of the first acts of the Howard Government was to take responsibility for Indigenous health away from ATSIC and give it to the Federal Health Department.
ATSIC was never responsible for education, only for giving advice which the mainstream department largely ignored.
It was underfunded for housing and kept warning the Federal Government that it needed to spend $4 billion to clean up Indigenous housing nationwide.
Get the picture?
Then Mal said it was all the fault of Indigenous people anyway and if only they'd show a bit of personal responsibility all would be well.
The Productivity Commission offered four critical elements in making a way out of the mess:
• Cooperation between Aboriginal people and government and business;
• A bottom-up, rather than top-down approach;
• Good governance; and
• Continuing government support.
Most of these are self-evident and I won't go into them too much.
This government hasn’t cooperated, it hasn’t sought direction from Indigenous people, it’s failed to engage with them and it’s run by the ‘user pays’ mentality.
On the question of governance, the report said there were six indicators of good governance – governing institutions, leadership, self-determination, capacity building, cultural match and resources – all of which it says must be in play if success is to be sustained.
I think the government falls down on all of them.
And it certainly falls down heavily on the concept of a 'bottom-up' approach.
Mad Mal loves telling people what to do and he hates listening - a trait he has in common with most of the people who've held this portfolio.
They all know best.
The tragic thing about all this is that the profile of disadvantage the Productivity Commission lays out is not news: it's an update on what we already knew from other reports.
The only way the profile will change - in other words the only way Aboriginal people can have any expectation of decent lives - is when central government realises it can't get away any more with blaming and shaming or top-down policy.
They have to start listening to advice and acting on it.
And, above all, they have to have an elected representative structure (emphatically not Child of ATSIC) to help them do it.
Lapdog advisory bodies just don't cut it because (and this is being repeated in the Greenhouse debate) governments will always try to get away with what's least inconvenient.
And that's no longer good enough for Indigenous people and other Australians in the 21st Century.
Forty years on
It was forty years ago today....
Sounds like a song.
And it was forty years ago this very day that the Beatles released Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Can you remember what you were doing?
I was early in line at the record shop, rushed home with the truly amazing disc (yes, vinyl) tucked under my arm and couldn't wait to put it on our creaky little turntable.
In the days before pods, wav files, CDs even, the tinny little stereo could still blow your mind - with the right sounds.
Omigod, look at the cover.
Just look at those dope plants.
Who's that in the corner?
Did you hear that?
Did you hear that?
Shh.
Listen to this!
Twenty-two years old and full of shit and I wouldn't have missed it for quids.
Ah youth: where is thy sting?
And it's also forty years last Sunday since Australia struggled into the beginnings of a social and cultural transformation that is yet to be realised.
On May 27 1967 - I think it was the first time I voted - Australia voted in a Referendum to amend the Constitution to:
- allow Aborigine people for the first time to be counted in the national census; and
- to empower the Federal Government to assume responsibility for legislating for Aboriginal people over and above the States.
Astonishingly, a shade over 90 per cent of all voters said 'Yes' to the proposition.
And saying 'yes' to a referendum question is something Australians hardly ever do.
An earlier referendum on the question, in 1944, was defeated.
But that's probably because the central question of the referendum was to allow the federal Government to retain powers normally held by the States for the period of post-war reconstruction.
The fact that we did say 'yes' in 1967 is testimony to incredibly hard work done by a handful of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal campaigners, like the Queenslanders Faith Bandler (whose father, I think, was a ni-Vanuatu) and the poet and writer Oodgeroo Noonuccal; Jessie Street, a well-known social activist, one of whose sons later became Chief Justice of New South Wales; Victorian Bill Onus, whose son Lin became a leading Aboriginal artist; and countless other people from, as they say, all walks of life.
The feeling at the time was that it just had to be done and I think there was a lot of goodwill about the whole thing.
Certainly both parties supported it, which is increasingly a rarity these days.
And we all felt Aboriginal people had to be recognised as Australians and take their place in our society instead of being swept under the carpet, our treatment of them an embarrassment.
The campaigners built on the work of a handful of Aboriginal activists (although I doubt they'd have used the term then) in the 1930s, who petitioned the Government for Aboriginal representation.
One of them, William Cooper, made a heart-felt plea for recognition on the occasion of the 150th anniversary (or the Sesquicentennial, if you want to get pedantic) of the settlement at Port Jackson.
Bear in mind that at the time the authorities (funny old word, that) simply grabbed a group of blackfellas from missions and settlements in rural NSW, put them on trucks, drove them off to Sydney and kept them locked up in a camp before bringing them out in loincloths, waving spears, at the re-enactment of Capt Cook's landing - and his claiming the entire continent in the name of King George - at Botany Bay.
And then they trucked them back again into the obscurity of the Far West - out of sight, out of mind.
Caught in a flickering old black and white newsreel, Cooper nervously but unwaveringly asserts the right of Aboriginal people to be recognised and very generously offers to share their country with us.
In an early assertion of the right of Aboriginal peoples to share the economic wealth of the country with the rest of us, he says '...there's plenty of fish in our rivers for all to share...' or some such.
It is very moving to see it today and particularly moving when you consider all he was asking for was a seat at the table as an equal.
In legal terms the Referendum wasn't such a great change, as the eminent Aboriginal lawyer and academic Larissa Behrendt, who is Director of Research and Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, pointed out on radio the other day.
It took five years for the Whitlam Government to actually set up a Department of Aboriginal Affairs, for instance.
But that little change was like a crack in the dam and it led to what might be described as big changes.
The forty years since have seen a roll-call of events, institutions and people: Nugget Coombs, Syd Jackson, Polly Farmer, Lionel Rose, the National Aboriginal Council, Gary Foley, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Marcia Langton, Noonkanbah, the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in the Northern Territory and other forms of Land Rights in the various States, the Tent Embassy, the Royal Commissions into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Stolen Generations, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, the Mundines, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Mr Djerrkura, Geoff Clark, the Krakouers, the Native Title Act, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Aiden Ridgeway, Yvonne Margarula, the late Murray Chapman, Kathy Freeman, Rover Thomas, John Mawundjul, John Bulun Bulun, Linda Birney, Marion Scrymgour, Barbara McCarthy, Alison Anderson, my friend Josie Crawshaw and so on.
(Without being facetious, and drawing the strands of this post somewhat together, the characters and events would have made a record cover to rival even Sergeant Pepper.)
And, in a simple illustration, forty years ago it would have been unthinkable for any official public gathering to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of whatever country the event is in; now it's unthinkable not to.
But Indigenous people are still dying early (average age of death some 17 years younger than for non-Indigenous people), are more likely to suffer preventable chronic diseases like diabetes, renal disease, tuberculosis; in remote areas are likely to be living in a house with as many as 30 other people, they are unlikely to finish school and and are highly likely to be unemployed.
That's not to say that the referendum itself was a failure.
It's successive governments that have failed in imagination, courage and determination.
It's governments who have shut out Indigenous people from a seat at the table.
Forty years on from expressing a national sense of purpose and unity on one of the burning questions of the age, we are now living under a government that is blaming Indigenous people for the conditions many of them live in and making them pay for services and infrastructure that people living in cities regard as theirs by right.
In 2007, we still have a long way to go and clearly a Constitutional change hasn't been enough to make serious change happen.
Perhaps it's time, once again, to say Treaty Now!
Sounds like a song.
And it was forty years ago this very day that the Beatles released Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Can you remember what you were doing?
I was early in line at the record shop, rushed home with the truly amazing disc (yes, vinyl) tucked under my arm and couldn't wait to put it on our creaky little turntable.
In the days before pods, wav files, CDs even, the tinny little stereo could still blow your mind - with the right sounds.
Omigod, look at the cover.
Just look at those dope plants.
Who's that in the corner?
Did you hear that?
Did you hear that?
Shh.
Listen to this!
Twenty-two years old and full of shit and I wouldn't have missed it for quids.
Ah youth: where is thy sting?
And it's also forty years last Sunday since Australia struggled into the beginnings of a social and cultural transformation that is yet to be realised.
On May 27 1967 - I think it was the first time I voted - Australia voted in a Referendum to amend the Constitution to:
- allow Aborigine people for the first time to be counted in the national census; and
- to empower the Federal Government to assume responsibility for legislating for Aboriginal people over and above the States.
Astonishingly, a shade over 90 per cent of all voters said 'Yes' to the proposition.
And saying 'yes' to a referendum question is something Australians hardly ever do.
An earlier referendum on the question, in 1944, was defeated.
But that's probably because the central question of the referendum was to allow the federal Government to retain powers normally held by the States for the period of post-war reconstruction.
The fact that we did say 'yes' in 1967 is testimony to incredibly hard work done by a handful of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal campaigners, like the Queenslanders Faith Bandler (whose father, I think, was a ni-Vanuatu) and the poet and writer Oodgeroo Noonuccal; Jessie Street, a well-known social activist, one of whose sons later became Chief Justice of New South Wales; Victorian Bill Onus, whose son Lin became a leading Aboriginal artist; and countless other people from, as they say, all walks of life.
The feeling at the time was that it just had to be done and I think there was a lot of goodwill about the whole thing.
Certainly both parties supported it, which is increasingly a rarity these days.
And we all felt Aboriginal people had to be recognised as Australians and take their place in our society instead of being swept under the carpet, our treatment of them an embarrassment.
The campaigners built on the work of a handful of Aboriginal activists (although I doubt they'd have used the term then) in the 1930s, who petitioned the Government for Aboriginal representation.
One of them, William Cooper, made a heart-felt plea for recognition on the occasion of the 150th anniversary (or the Sesquicentennial, if you want to get pedantic) of the settlement at Port Jackson.
Bear in mind that at the time the authorities (funny old word, that) simply grabbed a group of blackfellas from missions and settlements in rural NSW, put them on trucks, drove them off to Sydney and kept them locked up in a camp before bringing them out in loincloths, waving spears, at the re-enactment of Capt Cook's landing - and his claiming the entire continent in the name of King George - at Botany Bay.
And then they trucked them back again into the obscurity of the Far West - out of sight, out of mind.
Caught in a flickering old black and white newsreel, Cooper nervously but unwaveringly asserts the right of Aboriginal people to be recognised and very generously offers to share their country with us.
In an early assertion of the right of Aboriginal peoples to share the economic wealth of the country with the rest of us, he says '...there's plenty of fish in our rivers for all to share...' or some such.
It is very moving to see it today and particularly moving when you consider all he was asking for was a seat at the table as an equal.
In legal terms the Referendum wasn't such a great change, as the eminent Aboriginal lawyer and academic Larissa Behrendt, who is Director of Research and Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, pointed out on radio the other day.
It took five years for the Whitlam Government to actually set up a Department of Aboriginal Affairs, for instance.
But that little change was like a crack in the dam and it led to what might be described as big changes.
The forty years since have seen a roll-call of events, institutions and people: Nugget Coombs, Syd Jackson, Polly Farmer, Lionel Rose, the National Aboriginal Council, Gary Foley, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Marcia Langton, Noonkanbah, the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in the Northern Territory and other forms of Land Rights in the various States, the Tent Embassy, the Royal Commissions into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Stolen Generations, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, the Mundines, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Mr Djerrkura, Geoff Clark, the Krakouers, the Native Title Act, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Aiden Ridgeway, Yvonne Margarula, the late Murray Chapman, Kathy Freeman, Rover Thomas, John Mawundjul, John Bulun Bulun, Linda Birney, Marion Scrymgour, Barbara McCarthy, Alison Anderson, my friend Josie Crawshaw and so on.
(Without being facetious, and drawing the strands of this post somewhat together, the characters and events would have made a record cover to rival even Sergeant Pepper.)
And, in a simple illustration, forty years ago it would have been unthinkable for any official public gathering to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of whatever country the event is in; now it's unthinkable not to.
But Indigenous people are still dying early (average age of death some 17 years younger than for non-Indigenous people), are more likely to suffer preventable chronic diseases like diabetes, renal disease, tuberculosis; in remote areas are likely to be living in a house with as many as 30 other people, they are unlikely to finish school and and are highly likely to be unemployed.
That's not to say that the referendum itself was a failure.
It's successive governments that have failed in imagination, courage and determination.
It's governments who have shut out Indigenous people from a seat at the table.
Forty years on from expressing a national sense of purpose and unity on one of the burning questions of the age, we are now living under a government that is blaming Indigenous people for the conditions many of them live in and making them pay for services and infrastructure that people living in cities regard as theirs by right.
In 2007, we still have a long way to go and clearly a Constitutional change hasn't been enough to make serious change happen.
Perhaps it's time, once again, to say Treaty Now!
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