Reconciliation

In politics, some issues you manage, some you resolve.  Clearly, the Prime Minister has chosen to manage the issues of Aboriginal Reconciliation and mandatory sentencing.  He did so quite brilliantly by removing the only real leverage the Reconciliation Council possessed -- a timetable, and by exposing the UN Human Rights Committee, which reported on sentencing, as a lobby.  The response to the issue of "The Stolen Generations" is an attempt to resolve the problem by tackling head on the basis on which Aboriginal interests have sought to inflate their claims on society.  We would like the Prime Minister to take the next step in Aboriginal affairs and resolve the issue of Reconciliation.

The wide portrayal of reconciliation as a "good thing" has blocked fundamental questions.  The Draft Document for Aboriginal Reconciliation seeks to grant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples a "unique status" and the right to "determine their own destinies".  On the one hand there is a commitment to equality and human rights, as well as to a "united Australia", on the other, the idea that a racially or culturally defined section of the nation should be given a "unique status", and be encouraged to move towards separatism.  This is a serious problem.

Should the basis on which Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders make claims on the broader society be any different from that of other Australians?  Does Australia have to accept the whole package proposed by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in order to be "reconciled"?  Will other Australians be prepared to support indefinitely a section of the population which chooses a way of life that may not be economically or socially sustainable, yet which also expects to have its life chances measured in the same way as everyone else?

Explaining today's problems as the outcome of past injustices, and insisting that it is the responsibility of the government and all other Australians to rectify matters, makes it easier for many Aborigines to avoid the steps necessary to take control over their own lives.  For example, if dispossession from land and the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents is the cause of current problems, why are some of the highest Aboriginal death rates in Australia to be found in regions which have suffered the least amount of dispossession and interference, such as East Arnhem Land?

A major part of the political strategy of Reconciliation is that there is an Aboriginal "people", but Aboriginal people are voting with their hearts for integration.  Sixty four per cent of Aboriginal couple families are unions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal partners.  The largest concentrations of indigenous people are in Sydney and Brisbane and the major urban centres of NSW and Queensland.  Does it really make much sense to talk about the "peoplehood" of Aborigines, or Aboriginal homelands?

Another part of the strategy is that Aboriginal people should live under their own law.  Fr. Frank Brennan points to the unacceptable standards of some customary law in the Murgon case, where a young Aboriginal man was charged by the police for allegedly stabbing to death a publican.  Elders tried the man in his absence and without evidence found him guilty and banned him from the community for life!

Given the current celebration of indigenous cultures, there is a marked unwillingness to consider whether aspects of traditional beliefs such as a sorcery theory of misfortune and disease might not be even worse than old-fashioned prejudice directed against Aborigines.

Some Aboriginal leaders persist in the fantasy that a return to an earlier economy is an option.  John Watson, chairman of the Kimberley Land Council wrote recently, "what needs to be recognised is that Aboriginal people had an extremely viable economy before our lands were occupied by white people late last century".  Which begs the questions, what standard of living did that "viable" economy sustain, and would it be an acceptable standard for Aboriginal people now?

The 1997 review of the Community Development Employment Projects Scheme (work-for-the-dole) in Aboriginal communities stated, "the importance of CDEP to ... the 30,000 indigenous Australians involved cannot be overstated.  Without it, some remote communities would simply not exist".  This demonstrates how artificial some communities are.

A more enduring and realistic economic strategy recognises an increasing absorption of the indigenous workforce into paid employment.  Unfortunately, the prospects for creating employment in remote communities are poor.  The real strategy for employment will be the same as it has been for rural communities for generations, migration to centres of employment.  The chances of achieving some form of political independence may depend on remaining in remote communities, the prospects for economic independence rest with leaving remote communities.

The agenda of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation will not assist the recovery of Aboriginal people.  It does not come to terms with the truth that there cannot be different contracts for different, racially defined, parts of a nation.  The real tragedy of Australia's history is that for so long, Aboriginal people faced a different set of rules to the rules which applied to others.  Trying to write a different set again is a regression.

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