An open letter to my aboriginal compatriots

We have been discussing for nearly two hundred years, now, how best to repair the injustices caused by colonisation, but we have not yet found the right solution – or if we have, we can never be sure that if we go to the polls there will be sufficient support in the country for it to be implemented, and short term governments have other priorities anyway.

In the meantime, life goes on.  Some manage to struggle through and make a decent go of it.  Others don’t and fall by the wayside.  Those who make it tend to live in urban areas and those who don’t are generally to be found in the outback.  The large majority of indigenous people (about 75%) live in urban areas and their numbers are growing almost three times as fast as those in remote areas.  It’s a young, vibrant population that’s simply not prepared to wait for some miraculous solution that never comes. 

They are taking their future into their own hands and trying to do something with their lives, just like most other Australians.  They have no time to waste in sterile discussions.       

According to Joe Lane, a regular commentator on the excellent forum of Online Opinion and close observer of indigenous participation in higher education, the percentage of indigenous university participation and graduation in Australia is roughly equivalent to that of Europe as a whole. He notes that in 2014, more than two thousand indigenous students graduated from universities across the country, raising the total number of graduates to more than thirty-six thousand.

However, he observes that since the late nineties, indigenous education at university level has become an urban phenomenon. While it has risen by a healthy 7-8 % per year in the cities and major urban areas, rural, remote and outer suburban participation has seriously declined.

The indigenous people living in these areas no longer have access to even the modest form of sub-degree university education which had previously been made available to them and are largely dependent on welfare for their subsistence.

Lane writes that he now sees, not just one, but two gaps, both of which are widening: the first between indigenous and non-indigenous people and the second between well-educated, work-oriented indigenous people and less well-educated, welfare-oriented indigenous people.  

But life goes on.  Not only are both indigenous and non-indigenous populations evolving fast, they are also merging. According to an Australian National University census in 2011, mixed marriages are on the rise: 56.5% of partnered Indigenous males had a non-Indigenous partner and 59.0% for Indigenous females. Again, this is almost exclusively an urban phenomenon.

With a fertility rate 25% higher than the national average, the Indigenous population is projected to continue to grow at a much faster rate than the non-Indigenous population over at least the next 20 years, with the children of these partnerships tending to be identified as Indigenous.

Not surprisingly, the key issue with tribal elders is the question of sovereignty but, alas, it is totally unrealistic to imagine that the 250 independent aboriginal nations at the time of colonisation could possibly survive in today’s aggressive world of thermonuclear weapons and technological warfare.  It is not in Australia’s best interests and it is certainly not in their own people’s best interests for aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ sovereignty to be reinstated to its pre-colonisation status.

It is, however, in everybody’s best interests that we facilitate matters and do whatever we possibly can to assist those of our indigenous peoples who, of their own free will, wish to maintain their traditional cultures and life-styles, and remain as autonomous as possible in remote and very remote areas.     

British sovereignty was officially extended to cover the whole of Australia in 1829. Everyone born in the country, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, became a British subject by birth.  Nevertheless, in a number of early decisions of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, it was held that Aboriginal people were not subject to colonial criminal laws for crimes committed by themselves upon themselves.  In that same year,1829, in R v Ballard Justice Dowling held:

Until the aboriginal natives of this Country shall consent, either actually or by implication, to the interposition of our laws in the administration of justice for acts committed by themselves upon themselves, I know of no reason human, or divine, which ought to justify us in interfering with their institutions even if such interference were practicable.

Theoretically, indigenous peoples were granted electoral voting rights when Australian citizenship was created in 1949 and all Australians, including indigenous peoples, were granted Australian citizenship, provided they were entitled to enrol for state elections or had served in the Australian defence forces.  Putting the theory into practice, however, was not so simple.  As Dr. Paula Gerber, an Associate Professor at the Monash University Law School, pointed out in an article published on the ABC web site in 2012, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not, and are still not, eligible to vote because they do not have a birth certificate.  Their birth was either never registered, or it was registered but their parents could not afford to pay for the birth certificate.

Dr. Gerber adds that without a birth certificate, it is also impossible to obtain a passport or driver’s license, and may be difficult to open a bank account, access social security, or obtain a tax file number. Without a birth certificate, some parents have even struggled to enrol their children in school.   

The formal equality of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples’ voting rights and duties was enacted by The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Act 1983 which rendered the enrolment for and voting in Commonwealth elections compulsory for indigenous Australians.

The current, 45^th Federal Parliament includes four indigenous parliamentarians - two senators and two members of the House of Representatives, one of whom, Ken Wyatt, was the first indigenous member of the House of Representatives, elected in 2010.  He is also the first indigenous member of Parliament to hold a ministerial position as the Assistant Minister for Health (from 30 September 2015).

As Australia’s Lower House has 150 politicians and the Senate 76, we should have at least 6 indigenous federal parliamentarians if strict proportionality were to be respected (Aboriginal peoples representing 3% of the population).  With four at present, we only need two more to attain strict proportionality.      

The composition of our society has also evolved.  According to the national census in 2011, over a quarter (26%) of our population was born overseas and a further one fifth (20%) had at least one overseas-born parent.  While historically, the majority of migration has come from Europe, there are increasingly more Australians who were born in Asia and other parts of the world.

This diversity can be seen in the variety of languages, religions, ancestries and birthplaces reported in the national census.  It is a direct result of the end of the White Australia Policy in 1975.  Australia has become a multicultural country and there is no turning back.  This places the relationship of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in a very different perspective.

So where do we go from here?  Personally, I see four major issues we need to address :

1. The Aboriginal tribal elders need to define realistic short, medium and long term objectives for their people to improve their individual outcomes, indicating how and when these objectives should be achieved.
2. We need to establish a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), or similar document, to the effect that as Australian citizens we constitute a single nation even though we come from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds which we are free to continue, to honour and cultivate, provided we do not encroach on the freedom of others.
3. We need to modify our pre-eminent “social contract”, the Australian Constitution, to recognise the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as the first peoples of Australia.
4. As it was the British who colonised our country under the auspices of the Crown, they bear the prime responsibility for the deep-rooted injustices caused to our indigenous peoples by colonisation.  But history records that the same ill-treatment, and worse, was inflicted on them by successive generations of Australians.  It is clear that our two governments and the Crown are jointly and severally responsible for all this and owe them compensation.

In her capacity as head of state of New Zealand, Queen Elizabeth II approved a parliamentary bill in 1995 which "apologizes unreservedly" to the New Zealand Maori for treaty violations and the invasion of its lands in 1863.   The legislation included reparations amounting to $112 million and the return of 39,000 acres to the Tainui people. The legislation states that "the Crown expresses its profound regret and apologizes unreservedly for the loss of lives because of the hostilities arising from its invasion, and at the devastation of property and social life which resulted".     

More recently, in 2013, the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, expressed “sincere regret” for torture and abuse committed by British colonial officers against indigenous “Mau Mau” Kenyans in the 1950s and announced a compensation package worth £19.9 million to be divided among 5,200 victims.

Confronted with complaints and grievances in the past, the British government had argued that it could not be held responsible for the misdeeds of its colonial predecessors and that too much time had elapsed for a fair trial.

The High Court of Westminster categorically dismissed these arguments in the “Mau Mau torture case”.  It also dismissed the argument that the victims should be suing the Kenyan government, not the British.  The judge, Lord Justice McCombe, declared that a fair trial was possible and highlighted the fact that thousands of documents had been found in a secret Foreign Office archive containing files from dozens of former colonies. The High Court granted permission on 5 October 2012 to the victims of abuses of colonisation to claim damages from the British government.

Given the excellent relations between the U.K. and Australia, it should not be necessary to resort to the courts to settle such a delicate matter as the injustices caused by British colonisation.  But we have a moral obligation to take the initiative of instigating negotiations with the British government to settle this thorny issue once and for all.  It weighs heavily on our national conscience and we should no longer content ourselves with sweeping it under the carpet.

The withdrawal of the U.K. from the European Union may be a good opportunity to broach the matter with our British friends in the lead-up to Brexit.  A new bi-lateral trade agreement will have to be hammered out between our two countries in which Australia will logically have the stronger hand and greater bargaining power.  

Also, it is difficult to imagine that Queen Elizabeth could possibly be insensitive to the tragic events of colonisation.  That would be totally out of keeping with the long-standing relationship of mutual affection she enjoys with the Australian people.  This, together with her personal stature and exceptionally long reign singles her out for the noble task of restoring the dignity of the world’s oldest surviving human civilisation, Australia’s aboriginal peoples.

As for you, my Aboriginal compatriots, I put my trust in your renowned ancestral wisdom to accompany this process that I take the liberty of advocating here, in the spirit of “dadirri” which Miriam Rose describes in such admirable and reverent terms.