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The white-anting of ATSIC has been brought about by the usual suspects

By Brian Johnstone - posted Thursday, 22 April 2004


The fact that ATSIC now finds its neck on the political chopping block is not all that surprising, or even all that horrifying. Even so, its end draws near for all the wrong reasons thanks to the usual suspects.

The Benelong Society asked Commonwealth and Northern Territory public servant Bob Beadman to share his thoughts with its members on the state of Aboriginal affairs.

Beadman's initial inclination was to politely decline.

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He figured he had recently retired and "hardly needed the aggravation".

He was talked into doing the gig by former conservative Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Peter Howson, one of the Bennelong Society's leading lights.

If Beadman had any conviction on matters he had written extensively about while in office, Howson argued, then he had a duty to continue to prosecute them and help "bring about change".

Beadman duly delivered a paper on the desperate need for new thinking on Indigenous policy.

Those acquainted with my history and that of Mr Beadman's will not be surprised to learn that I disagreed with a fair proportion of the points he made.

I was interested, though, to read a recent postscript in which Beadman pointed out that readers of his paper may have wondered why he had not focused on ATSIC, "given the media attention that it gets".

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"The reason is that ATSIC is basically irrelevant to the measures needed to turn around the human tragedy before us," he continued.

New thinking is needed in health, education, justice, and particularly welfare policy and ATSIC does not manage such programs. It has only ever been a "supplementary funder" to bridge the gap between the backlog of need, and general government programs.

ATSIC has been pounding this message home since its inception, as have many other Aboriginal organisations, too numerous to name.

But it has never been acknowledged by mainstream media.

Not even when conservative bureaucrats, like Mr Beadman, tell conservative "think" tanks that mainstreaming has failed.

Prejudice is blind.

The Beadman paper and postcript came to mind in the past fortnight as Mark Latham announced a federal Labor government would abolish ATSIC and ATSIS in favour of a new form of self-determination.

Prime Minister Howard announced he'd mainstream the lot, having, of course, all but already done so.

The mainstream debate in mainstream media was, as you'd expect, drenched in disinformation. All the usual suspects lined up.

All trotted out their familiar lines about ATSIC's failure, lack of leadership, millions of dollars not hitting the ground ... yadda yadda yadda.

The truth was, as usual, relegated to the slipstream.

We have all become accustomed to the radio ravings of Jones, Laws and their fellow squawkback brigade and the lineup of loonies who parade as the august commentariat in mainstream newspapers but things are getting seriously weird when seasoned journalists swallow the anti-ATSIC tommyrot.

Let's look at both ends of the spectrum - the "doyen" of the Canberra Press Gallery Michelle Grattan, The Australian's Editor-at Large, Paul Kelly, and Alan Jones, enfant terrible of any debate on Aboriginal affairs.

Jones was jibbering after Latham's announcement.

He told his 2GB listeners on April 2 there would be few "fair dinkum Australians who would disagree," with Latham's announcement that ATSIC would be no more.

"But the one thing some would like to remind critics about, is that when Pauline Hanson said she'd get rid of ATSIC she was branded a racist."

Not true. She was branded a coward.

She called for the abolition of ATSIC and a Royal Commission to uncover the "corruption" of the "black mafia".

When asked by personal letter to put up or shut up by then ATSIC Chairman Gatjil Djerrkurra she did neither.

She just let her "allegations" hang, stinking in the air like a day-old battered sav.

Jones continues: "It is undeniable that ATSIC no longer serves the interests of Indigenous Australians."

It is totally deniable.

Jones again: "It's almost impossible to quantify how much money has gone to ATSIC in the last 15 years, but it would run upwards of $30 billion. Yet there are needy Aboriginal kids everywhere who should be provided for but aren't."

Forget cash for comment. This is trash for comment.

It is not "almost impossible" to quantify how much money has gone to ATSIC since 1990. It's all in the audited financial statements which can be found in the publicly available annual reports of the organisation.

If you really think it's $30 billion, Mr Jones, you are, fair dinkum, off with the fairies.

Truth is $10 billion or so of ATSIC dollars have hit the ground, luckily for its constituents and "needy Aboriginal kids" from Burnie to Broome and back.

I say lucky because they ensure essential services right around Australia are up and running.

Beadman was only half right. ATSIC was meant to be a funder of last resort.

Its programs were meant to supplement the provision of essential services to Aboriginal communities from commonwealth, state and territory governments.

But, as the Auditor General has found, it was being drawn more and more into becoming a replacement funder because those governments refused to accept their funding responsibilities to "needy Aboriginal kids everywhere" and the rest.

And while they happily shifted an ever-increasing burden to ATSIC they sat back and watched it take all the mainstream media flak from Jones et al for the lack of outcomes it was never established to address, nor given the unfettered power to fix.

Jones failed to mention ATSIS.

Let's move to the other end of the spectrum. On April 7 the raging debate about the ATSIC/ATSIS abolition saw the Melbourne Age roll out some comment from Grattan and The Australian with the thoughts of Mr Kelly.

Ms Grattan led her analysis with the accurate observation that the most radical divide had opened between the Coalition and Labor over how to handle Aboriginal affairs since the Hawke government proposed the creation of ATSIC in the late 80s.

But it all went downhill from there.

She claimed the present system is a "mess" and a "shambles" with the government using the opportunity to abandon "self-determination".

The second-last paragraph noted a plea the day before from the acting ATSIC Chairman for "ATSIC to be saved" but went on to inform readers in the final paragraph that "ATSIC has so trashed its own reputation that it has almost dealt itself out of a vitally important debate."

Pure pop.

The piece was memorable for one paragraph that came from a "short on specifics" Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Amanda Vanstone who promised: "We'll find a way to engage with Indigenous people in a much more meaningful fashion than ATSIC ever did...."

That's surely up there with no child will live in poverty. Pigs, Amanda.

Kelly's piece was worse.

His readers were told in his opening paragraph that Australia's 14-year-old "experience in Aboriginal self-determination has ended in failure, with both John Howard and Mark Latham agreed that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission must be abolished. This will happen only because ATSIC has lost the support of its constituency."

The ATSIC Board has "signed its own death warrant", it fought the "necessary reforms" by Ruddock, Howard is "turning back towards mainstreaming".

You get the drift.

Fact is ATSIC has never been allowed to put self-determination into practice.

It was never allowed to do so under the Hawke and Keating governments. It was never allowed to do so under Howard.

This is self-evident to anyone who looks beyond the spin and takes a close look at the history of the organisation.

ATSIC has not lost the support of its constituency. The mainstream media says it has. How can you claim it self-determines when all of its program budget is quarantined by government and the lion's share of what's left is soaked up by non-discretionary spending. Howard is turning back to nothing.

He mainstreamed ATSIC as much as he could without legislative change when he set up ATSIS last year. That was the final nail in the coffin of limited self-determination.

It saw the death of the collegiate ATSIC in which the elected and administrative arms of ATSIC worked together in much the same way as bureaucrats and ministers in the mainstream.

That's why smart ATSIC commissioners, the big land councils, such as the Northern and Central Land Councils and many people working in Aboriginal affairs, are happily endorsing Latham's new policy thrust.

They are happy to sacrifice ATSIC not because it has failed but because it was a model of limited self-determination which had much to offer, and did much good work, before Howard smashed it with the creation of ATSIS.

They would understand the sort of sentiments uttered by Bob Beadman at the beginning of this column.

They remember when ATSIC was able to deliver its programs and talk about a rights agenda. When, they ask, did you last see the word treaty in a mainstream media headline?

They remember life before ATSIS.

They happily concede ATSIC has been battered and bruised. Poisoned by perception.

The new debate frees them from defending an organisation that is a shadow of its former self. It allows them to concentrate upon building upon its successes.

They concede it has had its failures, like all government agencies. But it has not failed.

They know they can fashion a new organisation that builds on both those successes and those failures and the new debate may just deliver a better model of self-determination.

They know the debate offers them the opportunity to inform anyone who is prepared to listen about the true history and record of achievement of ATSIC... and the murky world of ATSIS.

It's a history few Australians know.

Fair dinkum.

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This article was first published in National Indigenous Times on 14 April 2004.



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About the Author

Brian Johnstone is a columnist for the National Indigenous Times. He was Director of Media and Marketing at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission between April 1998 and December 2002. Before taking up that position he was a senior advisor to former Federal Labor Minister, Senator Bob Collins, and a senior correspondent with Australian Associated Press.

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