Commentary about last week's High Court challenge to the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act has revealed, yet again, the media's tendency to take a one-sided approach to Aboriginal issues.
Many commentators said that new High Court judge Ian Callinan should stand down from the case to avoid public perceptions of possible bias. Justice Callinan previously advised the Howard Government that the Act was valid, and provided draft terms of reference for the South Australian royal commission which investigated the "secret women's business" being used to block the bridge's construction. He is also a good friend of Defence Minister Ian McLachlan, who played an important part in exposing the "women's business" as a fabrication.
However, Justice Callinan's position is not the only source of potentially undesirable public impressions relating to the case. There are at least two others. But they were ignored by the media.
The Ngarrindjeri Aborigines who want to overturn the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act argue that, following the 1967 referendum which amended the Constitution's "race power", the Commonwealth can only pass laws benefiting Aborigines. One of the more prominent advocates of this controversial interpretation is priest and lawyer Frank Brennan, whose father, Sir Gerard Brennan, is Chief Justice of the High Court. So why aren't people who think Justice Callinan should stand down in deference to public perceptions raising any concerns about Sir Gerard?
Furthermore, if the High Court rules the "beneficial legislation" interpretation is correct, and strikes down the Hindmarsh Island Act as a result, it will be fostering the very damaging public impression that Aborigines, unlike other citizens, are entitled to benefit from fraudulent claims, and that governments cannot stop this from happening.
Since the Hindmarsh Island royal commission handed down its findings in 1995, the Courier-Mail has been almost alone in publishing stories which take a properly sceptical approach to "secret women's business". Certainly, most of the recent media commentary on the High Court challenge has been quiet about just how fraudulent are the claims that the bridge would desecrate sacred sites and undermine the fertility of Ngarrindjeri women and the cosmos. Although many news stories did mention that the royal commission found the claims had been totally fabricated, either this was quickly passed over, or the stories implied that the findings were somehow questionable.
Many stories also gave the false impression that the High Court challenge was mounted on behalf of the Ngarrindjeri people as a whole. But there is a group of knowledgeable Ngarrindjeri, the so-called "dissident women", who would be delighted if the challenge fails, because they hope this would finally end the falsehoods that have been perpetrated about Ngarrindjeri culture and history over the past four years. Indeed, when I spoke to four of them this week, they indicated that they see the Government's Hindmarsh Island Act as beneficial.
The "dissident women" include a number of respected elders. Many other Ngarrindjeri support them privately, but are reluctant to denounce the "secret women's business" in public because they fear the ostracism and intimidation that the "dissidents" have experienced.
In fact, no credible argument has yet been mounted against the royal commission's findings, which were based on the "dissident women's" sworn statements, anthropological research, and various other evidence.
Some of Australia's most distinguished and experienced anthropologists have studied Ngarrindjeri culture, including Ronald and Catherine Berndt who worked with the last of the traditionally educated Ngarrindjeri in the 1940s.
Ronald did more than any other anthropologist to establish the importance of Aboriginal sacred sites, and Catherine had a life-long interest in Aboriginal women's religious traditions, which began before her Ngarrindjeri research. The Berndts specifically noted that Ngarrindjeri culture was unusual, because there was no evidence of any secret male or female sacred domains.
Deane Fergie, the anthropologist who prepared a 1994 report which led to the banning of the Hindmarsh Island bridge, was the first observer in 150 years to provide any hint of Ngarrindjeri "secret women's business". But her report gave no indication that she had made any kind of discovery. On the contrary, Fergie tried to give the impression that the Berndts' work reinforced her claims, completely omitting any mention of their negative findings.
The bridge developers and their representatives had consulted with Ngarrindjeri leaders in 1989 and 1990, and were told that their plans were acceptable provided that certain archaeological sites were protected, which the developers agreed to do. When preliminary work on the bridge began in 1990, there were no Ngarrindjeri objections.
Ngarrindjeri opposition to the bridge only began around October 1993, after a coalition of environmentalists, ferry drivers and wealthy holiday-home owners who thought the bridge would spoil their view decided that Aboriginal involvement would greatly assist their cause. Initially, the objections were based only on the existence of archaeological sites, but the Ngarrindjeri were told that these would not provide sufficient grounds for the Commonwealth to prohibit the bridge.
"Secret women's business" only emerged in April 1994. In late March an anthropologist, Lindy Warrell, visited a couple of prominent Ngarrindjeri. When the campaign against the bridge was mentioned, Warrell said that she had been studying "women's business" in the northern part of South Australia, and added "it would be nice if the Ngarrindjeri had some 'women's business' " too. Sure enough, they soon had.
Dorothy Wilson, one of the key "dissident women", attended a meeting in May 1994, when "women's business" was revealed to a number of Ngarrindjeri women. She testified to the royal commission that men were present at this meeting, and that it was a man who explained to the gathering why Hindmarsh Island was supposedly sacred to Ngarrindjeri women.
In the face of this and other similarly devastating evidence, it requires a great deal of gullibility to accept the "secret women's business" claims as genuine. While many academics, church-people and politicians have shown that they possess all this gullibility and more, the great majority of ordinary Australians who have considered the issue seem to have realised that the claims are pure humbug.
The great pity is that the Hindmarsh Island case could have been such a positive turning point. Had the national Aboriginal leadership supported the "dissident women", and said "this shows that when spurious claims are made, we will totally reject them", their integrity would have done much to advance the legitimacy of Aboriginal land and heritage claims in general. Instead, prominent Aborigines either kept quiet, or else they vilified the royal commission and denigrated the "dissident women". The Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act was designed to put an end to the nonsense. Even if the "beneficial legislation" interpretation were valid, it would be foolish to think that the Act harms Aboriginal interests.
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