People who are grieving can make very silly and damaging comments. Perhaps this explains the speech given in State Parliament at the end of last month by the Labor member for Cook, Steve Bredhauer.
Reacting to the loss of a close friend, a 42 year-old Aboriginal woman who was one of the political leaders of the Wik tribe, Mr Bredhauer said her death from "ignorance, fear and loathing" should be on the conscience of every Australian. Each and every one of his parliamentary colleagues had also contributed to his friend's death. And all Australians who had distorted the truth about native title, or who had sought to make political capital out of injustice and misery were guilty of complicity as well.
But it was not lies about native title, or the "ignorance, fear and loathing" of non-Aboriginal Australians that killed Mr Bredhauer's friend. She died from internal injuries which resulted from a bashing she received in a domestic incident, and the police have already charged an Aboriginal man with her murder.
Of course, Mr Bredhauer did not take the step that his statements would logically require, and ask the police to charge himself and all his colleagues -- let alone the other 18 million of us -- as accessories.
However upset Mr Bredhauer may have been at the time, his emotional outburst certainly looks as though it was an attempt to make political capital out of a tragic and needless death. He was promoting a political view of the causes of Aboriginal disadvantage and misery that is widely held by people on the left of the Labor Party, as well as by many Australian Democrats, church people and academics.
It is a very destructive view. By implying that other Australians should somehow be held accountable for actions that are solely the responsibility of particular individuals, it helps to perpetuate the very misery that it purports to condemn.
On the one hand ludicrous claims about collective responsibility make it that much easier for non-Aboriginal Australians to throw up their hands in despair and disgust, and tune out at the very mention of Aboriginal problems.
On the other hand such claims provide easy alibis for those Aborigines who are unwilling to make the effort to take control over their own lives. They can blame their misfortunes on everyone but themselves, and even feel that by doing so they are expressing the broader political interests of Aboriginal people by increasing white Australians' sense of shame and guilt.
To adapt W.S. Gilbert's pithy observation in The Gondoliers, "when everyone is somebodee, then no one's anybody" -- when everyone is made responsible for something, then no one is responsible at all.
If a person distorts the truth about native title -- something that is just as common among Mr Bredhauer's political mates as it is amongst some of his opponents -- that person is guilty of being dishonest, nothing more. Aborigines who see or hear these distortions may become angry, but this doesn't entitle them to abandon their self-control and lash out at their families or neighbours.
I am frequently angered by the falsehoods about Aboriginal issues which are peddled by organisations such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, but no-one in my household has ever suffered violence as a result. And none of my friends or acquaintances seem to think that such restraint makes me an especially admirable or remarkable person.
The Bredhauers of the world have a standard response to all this, and it has become a constant refrain in our public life. They argue that it is impossible to understand the breakdown, despair and all the other problems that plague many Aboriginal settlements without considering the history of dispossession, humiliation and bureaucratic control that Aborigines have endured. It is easy for comfortable members of the middle class to condemn violence and other crimes, but they do not suffer the poverty and frustration that is the lot of many Aborigines.
In general terms, they do have a point. It is foolish to pretend that the present can be explained without reference to the past. And there can be little doubt that certain kinds of social and cultural conditions encourage high levels of destructive behaviour. (Although the Bredhauers seem to think that the harmful social and cultural conditions always derive from non-Aboriginal prejudice and other external sources. They are very reluctant to accept that internal corruption or inappropriate cultural traditions might also be a problem.)
Nevertheless, historical or cultural explanations for broad patterns of social behaviour can never be excuses for the actions of individuals. Humans can overcome even the most horrifying circumstances, retaining their dignity, integrity and humour in the face of terrible oppression and discrimination.
There are many Aborigines -- and others -- who are deeply offended by suggestions that the prejudice and worse that they or their families and forebears have suffered excuses them from behaving in a morally responsible manner. They see such suggestions as a great way of diminishing and disempowering people, and of keeping them under the thumb of the officials and bureaucrats who would interfere in their lives.
But the closing thoughts should belong to Mr Bredhauer. In his speech he also stated "every time we fail to stand up for what we know is right and to speak out against those who persistently fail every test of human decency in relation to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, then we too have contributed to not one, but many deaths".
The most basic test of human decency is the willingness to treat all other people with dignity. This means accepting them as free and morally responsible individuals, and not as the involuntary victims of external forces who are incapable of making their own choices about right and wrong. Comrade Bredhauer is in danger of being hoist with his own petard.
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