Digital detritus and a five-star insult

Ironically, one of my primary reasons for building the site was to counter the disinformation that passed as news coverage in the Murdoch-controlled media by providing an alternative voice. The ATSIC site has been acclaimed at both home and abroad because it broke the mould. It was hailed by many in the Australian Public Service outside of ATSIC, was accorded a five-star rating by internet.au magazine when launched, and was featured in online journals around the globe (for example US online journal D-Lib magazine, March 2002).

It dealt with more traffic than the Sydney Harbour tunnel in peak hour, mostly from schools, which is why the NSW Board of Studies took it on. We did not care where it sat on the HSC curricula. We were happy it was there. Teachers and HSC students are directed to discrete areas on the site.

If you read the editorial in The Australian and are interested in checking its spurious “propaganda” claim, check out the ATSIC website and click on information for teachers. You will find, for instance, the issues section takes you to a number of interesting documents, including A Just and Sustainable Australia, a report from a partnership of six non-government organisations, including ATSIC. The report reviews key social, cultural and environmental issues facing the nation, now and into the future. These include: environmental degradation in its many forms; human needs such as jobs, health, housing and education; poverty and inequality; reconciliation and the rights of Indigenous peoples; multiculturalism; democracy; media diversity, freedom of speech and access to information; legal protection for human rights; the transformation of the economy to a sustainable economy; and international responsibility. There is also much to read on unmet need in housing and infrastructure in Aboriginal Australia.

Ironically, we always thought when we were building the site that the government would eventually abolish the organisation. The website, we hoped, would survive. Thankfully it has ... despite the best efforts of some in the Howard Government to nobble it.

One of my most enduring memories of the pain it caused the Howard Government came during the lead-up to its advocacy of the GST. ATSIC commissioned a number of independent studies on the possible impact of the GST on remote communities and published the findings on the website. A day or so later the senior advisor to the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs John Herron ordered the reports to be taken off the web. He claimed the Government had commissioned a treasury analysis which showed the ATSIC-commissioned analysis was flawed. We refused the request and offered to place the treasury analysis on the site. The offer was never taken up. To this day I doubt a treasury analysis ever existed.