Please don't preach
Hey Mr Rapporteur give Tony some credit, where credit is due. By Rocco Fazzari and Denis Carnahan with apologies to Madonna.
PT1M15S 620 349- Autoplay OnOff
- Video feedback
- Video settings
The Prime Minister's comments in Kalgoorlie on the "closing" of 150 Aboriginal communities have been rightly rejected by many. It is not just that the comments reflect Tony Abbott's worldview – which belongs in a time capsule of Australian political culture before Mabo – nor is it that the holder of the highest political office in the land, despite his genuine engagement and experience in Aboriginal Australia, simply doesn't get it.
The truly sad aspect of this media-grab commentary is that it encapsulates what is fundamentally amiss in the relationship between descendants of the first Australians and those Australians who arrived in the wake of Governor Arthur Phillip in 1788.
The comments and subsequent response from our Aboriginal leaders, whose frustrations have again been highlighted by this commentary in the absence of policy, have reinforced our despair at ever being able to build a true and just relationship between our peoples that is based on dialogue, negotiation, mutual respect and the recognition that this nation has culture and languages that have survived for millennia and which have successfully sustained our lifestyle well before any engagement with the colonising peoples.
Aboriginal domestic scene from Blandowski's Australien in 142 Photographischen Abbildungen, 1857.
Australia would be at risk of becoming a pariah state if its foreign policy and engagements with other nation states were run in the haphazard manner in which our policies towards Indigenous Australians are managed.
In the past weeks we have celebrated the freedom ride to western New South Wales from the 1960s; and we have laid to rest a national treasure – our sister from the South Pacific.
Yet less than a month later we are highlighting to the whole world our failure to negotiate in a considered way the right of Aboriginal people to live as Aboriginal peoples in our own lands and seas, whilealso participating in every aspect oflife as contemporary Australian citizens.
Aboriginal children playing footy at the Gunbalanya School in Arnhem Land. Photo: Pat Scala
A government's aspiration that the gap between the wellbeing of Indigenous and other Australians must be closed, and that Indigenous people cannot expect to have their lifestyles subsidised by government, does not amount to national policy or informed engagement with Indigenous people.
Removal of frontline services from Indigenous organisations working towards closing the gap would seem counter intuitive to any fair-minded Australian. But that has been the result of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy funding that was announced, ironically, just this week.
If the gap between the wellbeing of indigenous Australians and their fellow citizens is ever to be properly addressed, the starting point has to be a genuine engagement between our Indigenous peoples and all Australian governments. The negotiation must be fully informed and the first step is for governments to reach a real understanding of the diverse nature of Indigenous societies, their hopes and aspirations.
It is not a "lifestyle choice" to be be born in and live in a remote Aboriginal community. It is more a decision to value connection to country, to look after family, to foster language and celebrate our culture. There are significant social, environmental and cultural benefits for the entire nation that flow from those decisions.
There are also direct economic benefits, especially in reducing the costs of front-line services dealing with health, welfare and the criminal justice system in our regional centres. The dialogue with our people must be informed by factual data and empirical evidence informed by an Indigenous cultural framework.
As a nation we are moving slowly towards a referendum that will ask people to finally give full recognition to the status of Indigenous Australians as the nation's first peoples and to remove the historical fiction that puts the supremacy of our colonial history above the reality of indigenous peoples as custodians of the national estate.
If the referendum is ever to occur, and if it is to garner universal support, Aboriginal values, priorities and concerns need to be better understood by the whole nation, and by our leaders in particular.
Pat Dodson was the first chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.
139 comments
More comments
Comments are now closed