Fallacies Weaken the Case for a Treaty

Geoffrey Blainey

Geoffrey Blainey, A.O., is Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne.

The debate over the proposed treaty exemplifies the tension between the competing goals of national unity and minority rights which is a central feature of contemporary Australian politics.  Mr Hawke will find it difficult to deliver a document which can satisfy the conflicting demands upon it, argues Geoffrey Blainey.

RELATIONS between Aborigines and other Australians are likely to remain a hot potato of Australian politics for the next 30 years, and the evidence suggests that Mr Hawke's offer to sign a treaty or grand document will make the potato hotter, rather than cooler.

In theory it is easy to bring together Aboriginal representatives and Commonwealth ministers, but it is not easy for the Aborigines to speak with one voice, and the Labor Party will certainly not speak with one voice once the negotiations for the treaty begin.  The Labor Party in each State differs strongly on the ideal treaty.  The powerful movement for Aboriginal land rights, after remarkable success, began to stumble in the mid-1980s simply because the Labor Government in Western Australia, along with Queensland and the Northern Territory, decided that it should not bear the burden of the promises made in the 1970s, mainly by people in the cities of the south-east corner.

It was Mr Hawke, who, feeling the political pressures from WA, did more than anybody to derail the hitherto strong movement for granting lands and other concessions to Aborigines.  Under pressure from his own Left he is returning again to this delicate issue.  Once negotiations on the treaty come down to the question of land rather than words, he will again feel the pressures from the big outer States which do not see why they should pay the price for the accusatory wave of guilt felt so strongly in distant cities.

CONTRASTING DEMANDS

To Mr Hawke and a wide range of black and white Australians, an Aboriginal treaty is seen as a healing medicine.  But an equally legitimate school of thought sees it as potentially a step toward converting Australia, both in the outback and the ethnic suburbs, into a nation of tribes.

The contrasting demands of national unity and minority rights and privileges are becoming the great umbrella issue of Australian politics.  In the emotional winds now blowing, it is a hard umbrella to unfurl, let alone hold.  In the end, Mr Hawke could be left with only the handle of the umbrella.  Given the expectations he has aroused amongst Aborigines, perhaps the handle is all that he himself can expect to hold.

Even if Mr Hawke triumphs, and finally signs a treaty that pleases him and most Aborigines, will the treaty last?  The Liberals have announced that they will tear it up.  If it's a treaty consisting of honeyed words and happy wishes, they will surely not tear it up.  If the treaty is wide in its repercussions, even the Labor Party in the year 2000 may decide to cancel it or revise it.  No government in a democracy can sign a treaty binding future generations of voters.  If the Aboriginal leaders of today are succeeded by a more militant group, the treaty will not survive.  The very concept of a treaty between a nation and a racial fragment of that nation is hazardous.

Once the Aborigines have been assumed to be a mini-nation for the purposes of negotiating a treaty they could well see themselves as entitled henceforth to view themselves as a continuing mini-nation with rights to call for periodic revisions to the treaty.

While the pitfalls of the proposed treaty are deep, powerful forces are pushing the Labor Government toward this experiment.

A special climate favours Aborigines in those educational circles central to and sympathetic to Labor.  We have gained a long overdue appreciation of the achievements and ingenuity of Aborigines when they occupied this continent.  We have a heightened awareness of racial politics.

Australia is also urged by the Third World and by the United Nations to give special aid to Aborigines -- a pressure increased by the Pope and the leaders of most of the mainstream churches in Australia.  Similar pressure comes from scores of Aboriginal leaders who are forceful and fluent on radio and television.  In the space of 15 years the Aboriginal crusade has gained political punch.  The conditions under which so many Aborigines live will, in effect, harden that punch.

The force of the arguments in favour of a treaty, land rights and special concessions for people of Aboriginal descent has been aided by a reluctance to oppose these claims.  The reluctance is aided legitimately by the view that the Aborigines have been shabbily treated in the past.  It is aided less legitimately by the widespread use of the ''racist'' tag against those who criticise the extent of grants to Aborigines.

The case for a treaty rests partly on the picture of Aborigines deliberately wiped out by the white man's guns and poisons.  True, they were often hunted.  True, the reprisals against them when they killed shepherds and draymen were ruthless.  Those episodes remain a scar on Australian history.  But the main cause of Aboriginal death after 1788 was smallpox, measles, influenza and diseases to which they had no immunity.  This tends to be overlooked.

ABORIGINES NOT UNIQUE

Likewise, the case for a treaty rests on the argument that Aborigines were almost alone among the people of the world in that they were conquered without the benefit of a peace treaty.  And yet conquest without the palliative of a treaty is not uncommon.  Even Aborigines themselves presumably conquered other tribes or annexed lands without signing some kind of treaty.

Again and again, in the dealings of Europeans with Europeans, the losers of a war have been forced to sign treaties in which they had scant say, except to provide a signature.  At the end of each world war, Germany accepted defeat but had no influence whatever in deciding the terms imposed on her, nor on the huge territory confiscated.

I do not dismiss the idea of canvassing an Aboriginal treaty.  But I doubt the wisdom of most reasons offered today in support of such a treaty.

Even if the British Government had tried to transact treaties with each Aboriginal tribe in, say, the period 1788 to 1858, the treaties would have been worth little.  The difficulties of language, let alone of understanding each other's organisation and culture, would have been acute.  And who could have enforced a treaty when the Government itself had little control over the outback and when Australia was still divided into hundreds of self-contained tribal areas?

The confrontation on Australian soil between whites and blacks was one of the most baffling in modern history.  Again and again representatives of the nation which had just invented the steam engine met people who could not boil water.  There was a deep gulf, not only in technology but in ways of viewing the natural world and organising and harnessing it.  Race relations are still suffering from the vastness of that original gulf.

The treaty also demands discussion of that long-evaded question:  who is an Aborigine?  There can be no treaty without defining whether a fraction of Aboriginal ancestry is sufficient to entitle people to special rights and compensation.  To define an Aborigine is to unlock a hidden cupboard of cant.  The present definition is primarily racial.  Future generations may well see an Aboriginal treaty, if based on the present definition, as a venture in racial discrimination by a politician who currently claims to detest such discrimination.

It is understandable that a generous treaty has become the great goal of Aboriginal politicians.  And yet there seems little hope of Mr Hawke delivering either the kind of treaty they want, or the kind which he seemed to promise when earlier this year he made his gracious but astonishing speech to the ranks of tribal elders.