Kevin Rudd got it absolutely right today.
His measured and genuine 'Sorry' to the Stolen Generations hit the spot and resonated throughout the land.
People I know who live with the legacy of those times are walking tall today and they're smiling from ear to ear after all the tears have been shed and shed again.
They've been waiting for this day for a long time, however hopeless it may often have seemed, particularly in the decade of obduracy and mean-spiritedness that characterised the Howard years.
Today's tears are tears of joy and pride and I think we all shed them.
I have to say I had my doubts about whether Kevin07 could pull it off.
Not any more.
Using no frills and no bullshit language - he spoke the language of the people, not politics or the bureaucracy - he told the story like it was, said the word 'sorry' and built the beginnings of a way out of the mess we've found ourselves in.
In contrast, Brendan Nelson and those of his Parliamentary colleagues who actually stayed away from the event showed very clearly that they still didn't get it.
Nelson pursued an ideological battle or two by clinging to the idea that somehow home ownership and mutual responsibility would bring change.
It just wasn't the day for it: his remarks were as inappropriate as his ideology is irrelevant to the task in hand.
Today was a beginning.
And what a beginning!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Who's including whom?
Australia now has a Minister for Social Inclusion.
And what, pray, does that mean?
Good question.
To talk about social inclusion and what it means, I'm told you first need to think about social exclusion.
It's pretty clear who gets excluded from taking a full part in our society - the poor and the otherwise marginalised (Aboriginal people, refugees, people who have first languages other than English, the illiterate, the disabled and so on, who may also be impoverished anyway).
So SI is sort of about making sure they're all in and getting their share of the cake.
We hear the UK and Eire, among other EU countries, have been pursuing Social Inclusion policies and actually cutting the numbers of people below the poverty line, raising literacy levels an d generally doing a loaves and fishes act on social ills.
I don't want to condemn out of hand what is obviously a worthy goal.
But, to mix my metaphors, I still smell the odd rat in the woodpile.
I think it's a positive that we've chucked the patronising and exclusivist term 'tolerance' out the window.
It did, after all, smack of cultural supremacy.
But I think there's an inherent tension - and one that's very, very difficult to resolve - between a government's neurotic need to control the agenda and its desire to embrace social inclusion.
Can they resist the urge to be gatekeepers?
Can they stop being anally retentive?
And if inclusion is truly inclusive, are they able to learn from other people, other cultures and other ways of doing things?
There's another fundamental difficulty and that's the apparent inability of politicians and bureaucrats to talk about anything in simple terms that we can all understand.
Politicians favour windy and evasive language, while bureaucrats go for the impenetrable and the pompous every time.
I'd like to be charitable and propose that they may not realise it, but their use of language is nothing more than a form of exclusion.
Most of us don't talk, write or apparently even think in quite the same way as they do and we're in danger of being left out of the discourse entirely if we can't decipher what they're on about.
There's a classic case of this in the Territory recently.
The Department of Local Government sent out a Q and A several pages long on the impacts of amalgamating local councils.
I defy anyone of moderate educational ability to make sense of it.
It rates about 22 on a Gunning Fog Index test of reading comprehensibility, as against an ease of understanding score of NINE.
And it doesn't A the Qs it proposes anyway.
There's a long and honourable lineage of writers and thinkers - George Orwell and Don Watson spring readily to mind - who've tried vainly to point out the need to use Plain English if you want to communicate with the greatest number of people.
And it's in true Plain English that the clarity or otherwise and the intent of your message should come across loud and clear.
But perhaps telling people exactly what you mean is geting a bit too inclusive.
And yes, I understand that social inclusion ain't quite as simple as framing our messages to get to the greatest number.
But opening up the language of our daily discourse is as good a place as any to start, isn't it?
And what, pray, does that mean?
Good question.
To talk about social inclusion and what it means, I'm told you first need to think about social exclusion.
It's pretty clear who gets excluded from taking a full part in our society - the poor and the otherwise marginalised (Aboriginal people, refugees, people who have first languages other than English, the illiterate, the disabled and so on, who may also be impoverished anyway).
So SI is sort of about making sure they're all in and getting their share of the cake.
We hear the UK and Eire, among other EU countries, have been pursuing Social Inclusion policies and actually cutting the numbers of people below the poverty line, raising literacy levels an d generally doing a loaves and fishes act on social ills.
I don't want to condemn out of hand what is obviously a worthy goal.
But, to mix my metaphors, I still smell the odd rat in the woodpile.
I think it's a positive that we've chucked the patronising and exclusivist term 'tolerance' out the window.
It did, after all, smack of cultural supremacy.
But I think there's an inherent tension - and one that's very, very difficult to resolve - between a government's neurotic need to control the agenda and its desire to embrace social inclusion.
Can they resist the urge to be gatekeepers?
Can they stop being anally retentive?
And if inclusion is truly inclusive, are they able to learn from other people, other cultures and other ways of doing things?
There's another fundamental difficulty and that's the apparent inability of politicians and bureaucrats to talk about anything in simple terms that we can all understand.
Politicians favour windy and evasive language, while bureaucrats go for the impenetrable and the pompous every time.
I'd like to be charitable and propose that they may not realise it, but their use of language is nothing more than a form of exclusion.
Most of us don't talk, write or apparently even think in quite the same way as they do and we're in danger of being left out of the discourse entirely if we can't decipher what they're on about.
There's a classic case of this in the Territory recently.
The Department of Local Government sent out a Q and A several pages long on the impacts of amalgamating local councils.
I defy anyone of moderate educational ability to make sense of it.
It rates about 22 on a Gunning Fog Index test of reading comprehensibility, as against an ease of understanding score of NINE.
And it doesn't A the Qs it proposes anyway.
There's a long and honourable lineage of writers and thinkers - George Orwell and Don Watson spring readily to mind - who've tried vainly to point out the need to use Plain English if you want to communicate with the greatest number of people.
And it's in true Plain English that the clarity or otherwise and the intent of your message should come across loud and clear.
But perhaps telling people exactly what you mean is geting a bit too inclusive.
And yes, I understand that social inclusion ain't quite as simple as framing our messages to get to the greatest number.
But opening up the language of our daily discourse is as good a place as any to start, isn't it?
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
A New Year
One of the nicest things I did last year was take a trip out bush, visiting some remote community schools. This is taken from 4000ft, out of the window of a little single-engined Cessna on the way to Galiwin'ku. It's one of the rivers that flow into Arnhem Bay and it's pretty typical coastal country in this part of the world - mangroves, mudflats, muddy great rivers and coastlines dribbling away into the sea.
I've been quiet for six months because it's been a funny sort of year.
The Intervention knocked me and a lot of other people for six. What can you say about a juggernaut that refuses to stop even though both of its creators have been dumped by the voters? Labor will have to come up with a different way of dealing with Aboriginal people; if it doesn't, it's condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past. 'Intervention' is a term that should pass out of the language. It's too butch, too condescending and decidedly not inclusive. I'd like to see people talking about 'support' instead. The premises on which it was based - allegations of widespread child abuse - have not been sustained and the net effect is that Aboriginal people have been damned as dysfunctional because the Australian media did not bother to question Howard's and Brough's assertions.
But back to the year which, like most years, was a curate's egg.
Highpoints:
1. The political demise of the mean-spirited and devious John Howard in a near-landslide election result. Not only did the little weasel lose power, he lost his seat. Good riddance to his negativity, his racism and his pathetic assertion that the Liberals were the only safe pair of hands for the future of Australia. At the same time the pathologically fixated Mal Brough - the White Knight of the Intervention - also lost his seat and faces a wonderful career selling hair products again. Instant Karma!
2. The unedifying spectacle of the Liberals publicly eviscerating each other as the putative leadership strutted their stuff in a grubby little pissing contest.
3. My resignation from working directly in the political sphere. While I was very happy with the change of government, I couldn't see myself continuing to work under the Labor Party's version of Mission Control. They're the sort of people who give anal retentives a bad name (an oldie but a goodie!). And political work is hardly family-friendly anyway, even when you do work from home.
4. Being present at the funeral celebrations for George Rrurambu Burrarrwanga, late of the Warumpi Band. It was moving, funny, humbling and edifying all at once. The very best of Yolngu showbiz in a melange of ceremony, rock and roll and Christian ritual. Ted Egan, our then Administrator, gave a short speech in Yolngu Matha and then sang one of George's songs, also in Yolngu Matha.
5. Pulling off Welcome to Country, a community identity building event at our school where Larrakia people welcomed all of us and the Arnhem Land clan we're named after - Wangurri people. We have a sister school relationship with Dhalinybuy School, the homeland school the Wangurri kids go to. Our kids talk to their kids via computer, using interactive distance learning technology. We broadcast the event - kids performing, speeches etc - into the Dhalinybuy using the same technology.
6. Becoming a freelance contractor again. My first gig is to work with remote community schools and build up skills among the parents in school governance and getting them working with teachers. I hope we can extend the Sister School concept as part of this project.
7. Going to two family weddings - one son, one daughter - in the one year and having a ball at both. Seeing all my kids together (five, count them, five!) and my two grandchildren, Otis and Inez, makes me feel really proud. They're a wonderful mob.
8. Getting to see Al - my oldest friend in Australia - twice in the one year, which is most unusual.
9. Discarding some negative stuff and speaking to my brother for the first time in nearly 10 years.
10. Continuing to negotiate a positive and loving relationship with my lovely Ellie.
11. Yoga.
12. Getting new CDs by Richard Thompson, Paul Kelly and Krishna Das.
13. Watching the little lads grow up and being fascinated with their articulateness, their literacy and the ingenuity of their explanations of the world around them.
14. The beginning of this year's Wet - 112mm of rain in one 24 hour stretch - and more on the way.
15. Reinventing my cooking thanks to Ellie, the new Weber and cookbooks from CSIRO and Jill Dupleix.
16. My continuing and growing friendship with a close schoolmate who I lost touch with for 40-odd years and with whomj I've now been yarning for seven years. Alan Vickers, here's to you!
And with a year like that, who wants to think about low points?
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Pots and kettles
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.
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.
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!
Thursday, May 24, 2007
What price dignity?
As soon as Aboriginal people reject outright something the Government wants them to do, out come the weapons of mass distraction.
Town camps in Alice Springs - 20-odd small settlements housing about 3000 people - have long been regarded as a blight on the landscape.
A community-based organisation, Tangentyere Council, represents the separate housing associations, who've been doing the job no-one else wants do; for some years neither the Federal nor Territory Governments have shown any inclination to negotiate a better way.
Tangentyere (pron like: Tang - enjeera) has been running municipal and social services,designing, building and maintaining houses, which rapidly become overcrowded.
The camps are dilapidated and there's the things you might expect to see among the dispossessed and desperate.
But they've been under Aboriginal control for decades.
And they've been underfunded, so Tangentyere's work has been in the nature of a holding pattern.
Along comes a new Indigenous Affairs Minister who can see an instant solution.
There's $60 million on the table for repairs, new buildings and infrastructure.
Lots of talk about how this will help create a decent future for families.
We all know it's necessary.
The people of the town camps and their housing associations know exactly how much good it would do and they've been crying out for an injection of just this kind serious money for ages.
They don't actually want to live the way circumstances have left them living for the past few decades.
They want to see change as much as anyone else does.
But, as with everything that this Minister offers, he expects a quick turnaround for a decision.
he expects it to be done his way and no other way.
And he has price tag.
The $60 million comes at the cost of the housing associations relinquishing responsibility for managing the town camps; and they have to consider proposals for sub-leasing the land to make way for, among other things, private ownership.
Instead of managing their housing, they'd be represented on a new advisory Board, but the Territory Government would take over management.
The town campers walked away from the offer last weekend and they walked away from it again yesterday.
Clearly, they felt losing a sense of control over their lives was too high a price.
So there's no deal and the offer is withdrawn.
They should never have been put in that position, of course.
A 'take it or leave it' approach is not going to work.
Deadlines that don't allow for complex negotiations within the Aboriginal polity won't work.
There has to be room for people to walk away after sealing a deal with their dignity intact.
It looks like neither Mal Brough nor the Territory Government can see this.
Clare Martin is still trying to broker some compromise.
But Mal has brought out the weapons of mass distraction.
He fears for the children and warns of dire consequences - perhaps even murders - if the town camps don't get cleaned up.
Over the top?
Just a shade.
Shaming people after the event isn't going to help matters when people know you already have a history of trying to bully people into doing things you want, your way.
And he's got an answer to the age-old question: What price dignity?
It's not for sale.
Town camps in Alice Springs - 20-odd small settlements housing about 3000 people - have long been regarded as a blight on the landscape.
A community-based organisation, Tangentyere Council, represents the separate housing associations, who've been doing the job no-one else wants do; for some years neither the Federal nor Territory Governments have shown any inclination to negotiate a better way.
Tangentyere (pron like: Tang - enjeera) has been running municipal and social services,designing, building and maintaining houses, which rapidly become overcrowded.
The camps are dilapidated and there's the things you might expect to see among the dispossessed and desperate.
But they've been under Aboriginal control for decades.
And they've been underfunded, so Tangentyere's work has been in the nature of a holding pattern.
Along comes a new Indigenous Affairs Minister who can see an instant solution.
There's $60 million on the table for repairs, new buildings and infrastructure.
Lots of talk about how this will help create a decent future for families.
We all know it's necessary.
The people of the town camps and their housing associations know exactly how much good it would do and they've been crying out for an injection of just this kind serious money for ages.
They don't actually want to live the way circumstances have left them living for the past few decades.
They want to see change as much as anyone else does.
But, as with everything that this Minister offers, he expects a quick turnaround for a decision.
he expects it to be done his way and no other way.
And he has price tag.
The $60 million comes at the cost of the housing associations relinquishing responsibility for managing the town camps; and they have to consider proposals for sub-leasing the land to make way for, among other things, private ownership.
Instead of managing their housing, they'd be represented on a new advisory Board, but the Territory Government would take over management.
The town campers walked away from the offer last weekend and they walked away from it again yesterday.
Clearly, they felt losing a sense of control over their lives was too high a price.
So there's no deal and the offer is withdrawn.
They should never have been put in that position, of course.
A 'take it or leave it' approach is not going to work.
Deadlines that don't allow for complex negotiations within the Aboriginal polity won't work.
There has to be room for people to walk away after sealing a deal with their dignity intact.
It looks like neither Mal Brough nor the Territory Government can see this.
Clare Martin is still trying to broker some compromise.
But Mal has brought out the weapons of mass distraction.
He fears for the children and warns of dire consequences - perhaps even murders - if the town camps don't get cleaned up.
Over the top?
Just a shade.
Shaming people after the event isn't going to help matters when people know you already have a history of trying to bully people into doing things you want, your way.
And he's got an answer to the age-old question: What price dignity?
It's not for sale.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
She's only human, thank the Great Spirit
'There are certain threshold issues that you get to and it causes you to confront who you are and what you are and I suppose the McArthur River issue was one that did cause a lot of anxiety within myself. As a Government Minister, what are some of the things that I should have been doing a bit more proactively? I’ve never hidden that fact from my caucus colleagues or others about what that had done on a personal level and it was my time to get away and to think about it. I am fully committed to the Labor party and our Government. There are times when we do, each one of us, it is a hard job. I don’t walk out of Parliament House or anywhere else and go home and wash my skin and the aboriginality disappears, that stays with me 24/7...I'm only human.'
Marion Scrymgour, Member for Arafura, Minister for Environment in the Northern Territory Government, proud Aboriginal woman, great human being, on radio this afternoon (ABC 105.7 FM, 23 May 2007).
Marion has been under fire from all sides since she declined to vote on the Macarthur River mine issue.
Rather than vote against the Bill - which woud have meant breaching the concept of Cabinet solidarity - she absented herself from the Chamber and took two weeks leave to think things through.
She's stood by what she did, in spite of Opposition attempts to try and wedge her.
And in doing so, she's highlighted a continuing dilemma for Aboriginal people who step across into mainstream politics: how do you reconcile being an Aboriginal person with the possibility that you may be called on to take a position that may be against the interests of either a specific group of Aboriginal people or against Aboriginal people generally?
We've created that dilemma with our narrow political systems, of course.
It's in the interests of a political party to have elected Aboriginal members and Labor has milked all it can from the fact that it has had the first ever Aboriginal Minister of the Crown (John Ah Kit) and the greatest number of elected Aboriginal members ever elected to an Australian parliament (six, of whom two are Ministers).
But we don't seem to be able to recognise Aboriginal politicians as first and foremost Aboriginal people.
First in the eyes of the government is Labor Party membership.
It's as if these Aboriginal members are divorced from the bulk of their constituency - which in all but one of these members is a majority Aboriginal constituency
So there's a continuing tension between the demands of the party and party system (conventions of Cabinet solidarity for one; party discipline for another) and people's identity - as there is for anyone of integrity who enters the political arena at this level.
It's especially tense for Aboriginal people, who are held to be role models/spokespeople for their people in whatever field they may succeed.
And that's because we apply our measures of success to the status they have won.
And if they become Members of Parliament, then we think they can't be - as they normally would be - bound by family and cultural ties to question decisions a government makes that may well be against the interests of their people.
We think they simply have to abide by the party platform and/or the fiat of the leader.
Which means in effect that, whenever it comes to the crunch and the interests of Aboriginal people are going to be subsumed by the needs of the majority - which means they are discarded - the Aboriginal members have to compromise their Aboriginality
People think Barbara McCarthy is flaky because she stood up for her relatives in the face of huge pressure from a multinational mining company and the party of government of which she is a member.
And the same goes for Alison Anderson and Karl Hampton, who stood by her and voted against the legislation.
Others think Marion Scrymgour is flaky because she was honest enough to admit to a deep-seated angst about the pressures on her to accept decisions that she knew - deep in her bones - were against the interests of her people.
The pressure we put on Aboriginal politicians who enter mainstream politics is the pressure to collude in their own opppression.
Thanks be to the Great Spirit that some of them - the truly human ones - have the guts to tell us that it's too much too bear, at least some of the time.
Thank you Marion, Barbara, Alison and Karl for the reality check.
If our system of government - particularly one that operates in Aboriginal country and relies on Aboriginal voters for its success - is to be truly inclusive, then we have to develop a new realpolitik that truly recognises and acts on the imperatives of other cultures.
If we can't do it, we don't belong in the 21 st century and we certainly don't deserve to govern.
Marion Scrymgour, Member for Arafura, Minister for Environment in the Northern Territory Government, proud Aboriginal woman, great human being, on radio this afternoon (ABC 105.7 FM, 23 May 2007).
Marion has been under fire from all sides since she declined to vote on the Macarthur River mine issue.
Rather than vote against the Bill - which woud have meant breaching the concept of Cabinet solidarity - she absented herself from the Chamber and took two weeks leave to think things through.
She's stood by what she did, in spite of Opposition attempts to try and wedge her.
And in doing so, she's highlighted a continuing dilemma for Aboriginal people who step across into mainstream politics: how do you reconcile being an Aboriginal person with the possibility that you may be called on to take a position that may be against the interests of either a specific group of Aboriginal people or against Aboriginal people generally?
We've created that dilemma with our narrow political systems, of course.
It's in the interests of a political party to have elected Aboriginal members and Labor has milked all it can from the fact that it has had the first ever Aboriginal Minister of the Crown (John Ah Kit) and the greatest number of elected Aboriginal members ever elected to an Australian parliament (six, of whom two are Ministers).
But we don't seem to be able to recognise Aboriginal politicians as first and foremost Aboriginal people.
First in the eyes of the government is Labor Party membership.
It's as if these Aboriginal members are divorced from the bulk of their constituency - which in all but one of these members is a majority Aboriginal constituency
So there's a continuing tension between the demands of the party and party system (conventions of Cabinet solidarity for one; party discipline for another) and people's identity - as there is for anyone of integrity who enters the political arena at this level.
It's especially tense for Aboriginal people, who are held to be role models/spokespeople for their people in whatever field they may succeed.
And that's because we apply our measures of success to the status they have won.
And if they become Members of Parliament, then we think they can't be - as they normally would be - bound by family and cultural ties to question decisions a government makes that may well be against the interests of their people.
We think they simply have to abide by the party platform and/or the fiat of the leader.
Which means in effect that, whenever it comes to the crunch and the interests of Aboriginal people are going to be subsumed by the needs of the majority - which means they are discarded - the Aboriginal members have to compromise their Aboriginality
People think Barbara McCarthy is flaky because she stood up for her relatives in the face of huge pressure from a multinational mining company and the party of government of which she is a member.
And the same goes for Alison Anderson and Karl Hampton, who stood by her and voted against the legislation.
Others think Marion Scrymgour is flaky because she was honest enough to admit to a deep-seated angst about the pressures on her to accept decisions that she knew - deep in her bones - were against the interests of her people.
The pressure we put on Aboriginal politicians who enter mainstream politics is the pressure to collude in their own opppression.
Thanks be to the Great Spirit that some of them - the truly human ones - have the guts to tell us that it's too much too bear, at least some of the time.
Thank you Marion, Barbara, Alison and Karl for the reality check.
If our system of government - particularly one that operates in Aboriginal country and relies on Aboriginal voters for its success - is to be truly inclusive, then we have to develop a new realpolitik that truly recognises and acts on the imperatives of other cultures.
If we can't do it, we don't belong in the 21 st century and we certainly don't deserve to govern.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Beware John Howard's wedgie
Over recent weeks, the Prime Minister and his Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, have been making a series of increasingly bizarre pronouncements on education.
He's talked about what he calls 'political correctness' among schoolteachers.
And we know Howard has odd views on history and geography.
The teaching of these subjects ain't what it used to be in his day, he's been heard to say.
And he wasn't auditioning for a part in a Canberra version of the 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch either.
More recently he and the lovely Julie have talked about the concept of performance pay for teachers and the automatic expulsion of school bullies.
There's a hidden wedge in every one, of course.
Best thing is to ignore the lot.
The real issue is senior politicians making deliberately ill-informed statements that either incite, or at least pander to, prejudice against public education.
And they do that at their peril.
Parents are voters, too.
He's talked about what he calls 'political correctness' among schoolteachers.
And we know Howard has odd views on history and geography.
The teaching of these subjects ain't what it used to be in his day, he's been heard to say.
And he wasn't auditioning for a part in a Canberra version of the 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch either.
More recently he and the lovely Julie have talked about the concept of performance pay for teachers and the automatic expulsion of school bullies.
There's a hidden wedge in every one, of course.
Best thing is to ignore the lot.
The real issue is senior politicians making deliberately ill-informed statements that either incite, or at least pander to, prejudice against public education.
And they do that at their peril.
Parents are voters, too.
Nature, cultures and snouts in the trough
Walking along the Esplanade early yesterday morning, I heard a barking owl in the bush behind Lameroo cliffs.
And then I saw it in the gloom, perched on a branch and repeating its cry: woof woof.
I'm not kidding.
That's why they're called barking owls.
Underneath the trees, orange-footed scrub fowl witter about like avian extras in a Monty Python movie.
This is little more than 100m from a large international hotel, a cocooned and air-conditioned haven that protects the moderately well-off visitor from the world around them; from the world they travelled thousands of kilometres to experience.
It may well be a sign that nature is holding its own in our city.
But for how long?
Cranes are on the skyline, big holes are in the ground and the real estate agents are grinning voraciously.
Well might they.
They and their mates in the land development world, among them the unbelievably wealthy Sultan of Brunei, have transformed Darwin with a plethora of apartment buildings.
Now, the population ain't growing and I'm not sure who's buying them, or more importantly living in them, but there's another new building every time you turn around, it seems.
So there has to be a heap of money in it.
For the few.
Last month the Government sponsored a planning forum to 'develop a vision for Darwin'.
Nice idea.
But it's about 20 years too late.
What Darwin used to be is gone.
It's been ripped up and knocked flat, to be replaced by a collection of buildings of neither wit nor style and without a shred of environmental sensibility.
In other words they're not just ugly; they don't take advantage of the balmy breezes above Darwin Harbour and their reliance on airconditioning makes them energy-expensive.
So I think the exercise is called 'shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted'.
The planning forum was attended by invited stakeholders - the industry and government - only.
It seems that the people - the ones who work, live or shop in the city, even (or especially) the people who sleep in the parks - don't really count.
True, there was a public forum late in the day.
The people of Darwin were allowed to ask four questions.
Meanwhile the people whose snouts have always been in the trough have got carte blanche to keep them there.
And get rich in the process.
I'm not just worried about this on aesthetic grounds.
The people who get invited to planning forums of this nature will tell you that the kind of development we will continue to experience is necessary to give Darwin a proper image to cater for visitors, people from overseas and interstate, and investors.
In other words you take a place that has its own unique attraction and turn it into an andoyne replica of everywhere else in the world.
Meretricious kitsch (probably a tautology) replaces the real and the lived-in.
Welcome to the new Singapore.
It seems to me that it also involves a more or less deliberate attempt to obliterate history, culture and a sense of place.
There is no place for these in the airbrushed, sanitised vision of who we are and where we live.
There is no place for tangible reminders of Darwin's history, like blackfellas freely wandering the streets as if they owned the place.
Well, some of them - Larrakia people - do, actually.
But the 'antisocial behaviour' of some - living their lives in public places - makes them all unwelcome.
There is still an Aboriginal town, a black skin, underpinning the white town that tourists and transient whitefella residents think is the real Darwin.
Aboriginal people - some from Larrakia families, others from all parts of the Territory and many of them from the Stolen Generations - don't just live and work here.
They are a network that supports the greater part of the city's sporting, social and cultural life
If the transient whitefellas can't see this and don't know about it, however, it doesn't exist.
For the time being, the black town is still there.
But, like the barking owl and the scrub fowl, I wonder for how much longer.
It's an inconvenient intrusion on the seamless vision of a brave new world of pastel-coloured buildings and and clean, happy punters with their soy lattes and dhukka on pide.
Where I live in the Northern Suburbs, I walk my dogs in the early dawn along a beach that is washed by the Timor Sea.
Within coo-ee of the University, the hospital and Darwin's only big shopping mall, Aboriginal people are camped on the beach under the casuarina trees.
Fires are smouldering.
The sand is littered with shellfish - clams and long bums.
As it has been for thousands of years.
Here at least there will be none of the development that has poxed the city.
The coastal reserve protects mangrove swamp, paperbarks, remnant monsoon vine forest and tropical woodland, replete with pandanus - all behind the dunes - as it shelters the people who use it is a temporary home..
If you're lucky, some mornings you'll see white-breasted sea eagles and osprey or curlews, whimbrels and dotterels.
In the monsoon forest you might catch a glimpse of the azure flash that is a rainbow pitta's wing panel.
Or on the boardwalk through the mangroves you'll catch the fleeting edge of a threat from a fiddler crab's waving claw as it disappears down its hole in the mud.
I hope it will still be there when my children are old.
And it should be, as long as the smart money doesn't find it.
And then I saw it in the gloom, perched on a branch and repeating its cry: woof woof.
I'm not kidding.
That's why they're called barking owls.
Underneath the trees, orange-footed scrub fowl witter about like avian extras in a Monty Python movie.
This is little more than 100m from a large international hotel, a cocooned and air-conditioned haven that protects the moderately well-off visitor from the world around them; from the world they travelled thousands of kilometres to experience.
It may well be a sign that nature is holding its own in our city.
But for how long?
Cranes are on the skyline, big holes are in the ground and the real estate agents are grinning voraciously.
Well might they.
They and their mates in the land development world, among them the unbelievably wealthy Sultan of Brunei, have transformed Darwin with a plethora of apartment buildings.
Now, the population ain't growing and I'm not sure who's buying them, or more importantly living in them, but there's another new building every time you turn around, it seems.
So there has to be a heap of money in it.
For the few.
Last month the Government sponsored a planning forum to 'develop a vision for Darwin'.
Nice idea.
But it's about 20 years too late.
What Darwin used to be is gone.
It's been ripped up and knocked flat, to be replaced by a collection of buildings of neither wit nor style and without a shred of environmental sensibility.
In other words they're not just ugly; they don't take advantage of the balmy breezes above Darwin Harbour and their reliance on airconditioning makes them energy-expensive.
So I think the exercise is called 'shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted'.
The planning forum was attended by invited stakeholders - the industry and government - only.
It seems that the people - the ones who work, live or shop in the city, even (or especially) the people who sleep in the parks - don't really count.
True, there was a public forum late in the day.
The people of Darwin were allowed to ask four questions.
Meanwhile the people whose snouts have always been in the trough have got carte blanche to keep them there.
And get rich in the process.
I'm not just worried about this on aesthetic grounds.
The people who get invited to planning forums of this nature will tell you that the kind of development we will continue to experience is necessary to give Darwin a proper image to cater for visitors, people from overseas and interstate, and investors.
In other words you take a place that has its own unique attraction and turn it into an andoyne replica of everywhere else in the world.
Meretricious kitsch (probably a tautology) replaces the real and the lived-in.
Welcome to the new Singapore.
It seems to me that it also involves a more or less deliberate attempt to obliterate history, culture and a sense of place.
There is no place for these in the airbrushed, sanitised vision of who we are and where we live.
There is no place for tangible reminders of Darwin's history, like blackfellas freely wandering the streets as if they owned the place.
Well, some of them - Larrakia people - do, actually.
But the 'antisocial behaviour' of some - living their lives in public places - makes them all unwelcome.
There is still an Aboriginal town, a black skin, underpinning the white town that tourists and transient whitefella residents think is the real Darwin.
Aboriginal people - some from Larrakia families, others from all parts of the Territory and many of them from the Stolen Generations - don't just live and work here.
They are a network that supports the greater part of the city's sporting, social and cultural life
If the transient whitefellas can't see this and don't know about it, however, it doesn't exist.
For the time being, the black town is still there.
But, like the barking owl and the scrub fowl, I wonder for how much longer.
It's an inconvenient intrusion on the seamless vision of a brave new world of pastel-coloured buildings and and clean, happy punters with their soy lattes and dhukka on pide.
Where I live in the Northern Suburbs, I walk my dogs in the early dawn along a beach that is washed by the Timor Sea.
Within coo-ee of the University, the hospital and Darwin's only big shopping mall, Aboriginal people are camped on the beach under the casuarina trees.
Fires are smouldering.
The sand is littered with shellfish - clams and long bums.
As it has been for thousands of years.
Here at least there will be none of the development that has poxed the city.
The coastal reserve protects mangrove swamp, paperbarks, remnant monsoon vine forest and tropical woodland, replete with pandanus - all behind the dunes - as it shelters the people who use it is a temporary home..
If you're lucky, some mornings you'll see white-breasted sea eagles and osprey or curlews, whimbrels and dotterels.
In the monsoon forest you might catch a glimpse of the azure flash that is a rainbow pitta's wing panel.
Or on the boardwalk through the mangroves you'll catch the fleeting edge of a threat from a fiddler crab's waving claw as it disappears down its hole in the mud.
I hope it will still be there when my children are old.
And it should be, as long as the smart money doesn't find it.
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