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THE BOXSEAT: The government's dead hand on a living doc
Issue 194 - 05 Feb 2010
ISSUE 194, February 4, 2010: On the eve of the first sitting of Parliament for the year, BRIAN JOHNSTONE* reflects on a government that has a long way to go.
Henry Thoreau said it best. Governments that govern least govern best. It's a principle that could, and should, be readily applied in any participatory democracy, particularly in a crucial area such as Aboriginal affairs.
But it never has... and likely never will, certainly not in the foreseeable future.
The principle kept running through my head as I spent part of the holiday break reading a report from the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat on the State of the World's Indigenous Peoples.
The report arises out of the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September 2007.
The report is produced as an information tool to "facilitate the implementation of the declaration", which the United Nations believes has the potential to "become extremely influential".
This potential, however, can only be realised if "Indigenous peoples, states, civil society and the UN system make use of the declaration and make it a living document that has real relevance for Indigenous peoples around the world..."
The Under Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs, Sha Zukang, points out in his foreword that Indigenous peoples around the world continue to suffer discrimination, marginalisation, extreme poverty and conflict.
Some are being dispossessed of their traditional lands as their livelihoods are being undermined. Meanwhile their belief systems, culture, languages and ways of life continue to be threatened, sometimes even by extinction.
Increasingly, he notes, governments are recognising these threats, and matching recognition with action. He cites land claim settlements and constitutional amendments to important symbolic actions such as apologies for past mistreatment and failed policies.
It's a note of cautious optimism which sits eerily at odds with the body of the report. It's a grim read... and the impoverished status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is laid bare in a series of telling statistics.
The report notes a recent study applying the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)'s Human Development Index (HDI).
The report explains that the HDI is a summary composite index that measures a country's average achievements in three basic aspects of human development: health, education and a decent standard of living.
The study applied the HDI to Indigenous peoples in Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand. It showed clearly that Indigenous people lag significantly behind the general populations in each of the chosen countries.
The discrepancy was particularly pronounced in Australia. According to the study, the HDI of Australia's Indigenous peoples is similar to that of Cape Verde and El Salvador!
It will surprise no-one reading NIT that these HDI scores are mirrored by other key indicators from Australia.
The report points out that although some progress has been made in Australia in recent years, particularly in education, the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples' quality of life "by virtually all standards is still very significant".
There is a continual emphasis throughout the report on the principle of self-determination and the principle of free, prior and informed consent in all government dealings with Indigenous peoples.
This emphasis is in accord with the bottom line principle outlined in every major report on Aboriginal affairs handed to federal and state governments in recent years.
Government can only improve when its citizens are empowered in the provision of services.
I sat down to write this column on the eve of the first sitting of the federal parliament for 2010.
I did so conscious that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was due to deliver a report on the first day of the sitting on the progress of his government in closing the life expectancy and opportunity gaps so grimly reflected in the UN Report.
I wondered how the bureaucrats compiling PM Rudd's report would frame the document in light of the UN report and the paternalistic policies being pursued by the Rudd Government.
As you will recall the Rudd Government gave its formal support to the UN Declaration in April last year while continuing to blithely ignore the principles of self determination enshrined in it, particularly in its policy settings around the so-called emergency intervention in the Northern Territory. You might also recall the hysterical reaction from the federal opposition at the time.
The shadow Attorney General George Brandis described support for the declaration as a "grave error" that could have "grave consequences", without ever actually explaining what he meant.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, then Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma described it as a "watershed moment" in Australia's relationship with its Indigenous people. Both were well and truly wide of the mark. In reality the Declaration is a non-binding statement of values and principles by the UN. It is unenforceable in law.
The ongoing pursuit of the paternalistic policy responses by the Rudd Government in the Northern Territory, and elsewhere, belie any real commitment to the principles enshrined in the Declaration.
Its support for the Declaration was, and is, rank political symbolism. Its actions, both before its "support" for the declaration and since, clearly demonstrate a dead hand on a "living document".
This newspaper has come in for a fair deal of criticism over its coverage of the ill-conceived militaristic intervention from the day it was announced by former Prime Minister John Howard and his Indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough.
The current government, which meekly supported Howard and Brough in opposition, now chooses to ignore all valid criticism by refusing to acknowledge, let alone respond, to any reasonable inquiries about the intervention while spraying funding announcements and anecdotal evidence of its alleged successes around like confetti.
But the conservative mainstream media, which has largely supported the intervention, is now starting to see it for what it is... another monumental policy failure.
The opinion pages of The Australian have led the support but one wonders what its desk bound opinion writers will make of the latest lengthy dispatch from Nicolas Rothwell, one of its correspondents up north.
Indeed, one wonders, what will be the response, if any, from PM Rudd and his dutifully dull ministerial sidekick Jenny Macklin.
Rothwell recently made a 3,000 kilometre journey through the far reaches of the Western Desert visiting communities and outstations in a bid to take the "true pulse" of the central Australian bush and gauge the effect of the intervention two and a half years on.
His report appeared in the 'Inquirer' section of the Weekend Australian on January 30-31. Its content mirrors that contained in the reports from NIT editor-at-large Chris Graham during his brief sojourn into the Territory late last year.
Rothwell notes that "despite the rhetoric being pumped out in Canberra and Darwin, it is plain that another policy failure is unfolding across the inland; money is being poured into the region, nourishing support staff and project managers but failing to benefit the Indigenous citizens it is intended to help...."
"Indeed under the present dispensation little has changed and little can change," he continues, "power over local affairs has been withdrawn from the communities while the welfare and training system in place constitute a perfectly structured trap.
"The consequences are widely felt. A dreadful disconnect between the administered and the administrators is palpable."
Rothwell reports that a new mood of "gloom and resignation has taken hold now that the emergency response has been smothered by a new tide of bureaucratic initiatives".
"Never," he continues, "have there been so many outsiders living on communities and living off them, as locals well know. What limited autonomy once existed at the level of the remote community councils has been prised away and new tiers of administration imposed.
"Welfare persists, though in more tightly constrained fashion. Some public housing is being provided, though at the cost of enforced leases over Aboriginal land.
"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Aboriginal people in the centre's remotest settlements are now being policed and watched more than they are being helped.
"The intensity of the outside attention tends to backfire; it infantilises and erodes capacity rather than builds it up. Money flows in, but it is being spent on the outside contractors and providers of services rather than bush jobs.
"A complex new architecture of governance has been put in place but it is, once more, an architecture that blithely ignores the traditional patterns of Aboriginal social authority and contributes to the breakdown of old ways."
Rothwell accurately notes that overcrowding is still the key factor in the Aboriginal bush and provides a number of snapshots to show that the SIHIP program will go nowhere near meeting the unmet demand.
But I found the most chilling and Orwellian aspect of the report was when he turned his attention to the network of 50 government managers imposed to oversee the 70-odd prescribed communities.
He notes that all of them "file detailed intelligence reports to Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the Canberra department charged with running the emergency response's next phase, when the word intervention will be retired and "normalisation" put in its place.
"These reports which, somewhat creepily, are not shared with the target communities, are transmitted to the remote service delivery board of management in Darwin and they serve as the basis for fine tuning policy.
"But since their writers speak no desert language and must rely on paid local 'engagement officers', such documents catch little of the mood of discontent and cynicism that has spread through the communities...."
There was no free, prior or informed consent within the "prescribed" communities when Howard and Brough announced the charge of the bandaid brigade. There has been none since.
It is clear the intervention has only served to increase helplessness and hopelessness and will continue to do so. The secret intelligence reports says it all. Their secrecy is no doubt clearly designed to avoid free, prior and informed dissent.
boxseat@nit.com.au
* Brian Johnstone is a Walkley award winning journalist and a fortnightly NIT columnist.
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