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The figures seem to confirm that practical reconciliation is not enough

By Jackie Huggins - posted Wednesday, 19 November 2003


It’s interesting how often people on all sides of the Indigenous affairs debate speak of “true reconciliation” as though some of us have signed up to versions of the movement which are somehow less than authentic than others. As though there might be one, particular end vision we can grasp onto which represents a state of being where everything will be right between us.

When Prime Minister John Howard was re-elected in October 1998, he pledged to commit himself “very genuinely to the cause of true reconciliation with the Aboriginal people of Australia by the centenary of Federation”.

In December of 2000, when public support for reconciliation had arguably reached a peak in profile, the Prime Minister gave a public lecture in which he made the point:

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If true reconciliation is manifest by a sense of pride and unity shared by all Australians – Indigenous and others – the Olympic Games proved beyond doubt that Australians have travelled a great distance towards this goal. There can be nothing more crucial than preserving and nurturing this mood of public support if we are to complete the journey towards reconciliation.

Some people have asserted that true reconciliation will only achieved when the date of Australia’s national day has been changed to be more inclusive of all citizens. Some have suggested it is dependent on us discarding the Union Jack as our national flag.

Perhaps, say others, we will only have true reconciliation when Indigenous Australians enjoy an equal status with non-Indigenous Australians in terms of employment, income, health and education.

Perhaps we will know we’re nearing the end of our journey when we have a Governor-General who is Indigenous or, better still, a Prime Minister.

Of course, it was former Governor-General Sir William Deane, a patron of Reconciliation Australia, who in 1996 attempted through his inaugural Vincent Lingiari Lecture to chart the course of our journey towards true reconciliation.

And the lecture still represents, I would argue, one of the most valuable roadmaps we have to work with in this area, incorporating practical and symbolic measures, and the demonstration of singular leadership in negotiating a lasting agreement for the benefit of all Australians.

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Fine words and positions are worth nothing if they aren’t backed up with action but at the same time we must accept that great wrongs of history are not easily made right. And that a concept like reconciliation will always be open to interpretation.

There is little doubt that the current government in Canberra would like to make an impact in Indigenous affairs, though its vision of a reconciled Australia would be very different to that of many of us here this evening. And there are strong indications that Ministers across a number of Commonwealth portfolios are becoming more open to looking at creative solutions to persistent problems.

But the bottom line for this Prime Minister and his government has always been the compartmentalising of reconciliation and Indigenous affairs into so-called practical and symbolic measures, the latter having been rejected as unacceptable to mainstream Australia.

In this way, the government has tried to “sell” reconciliation to Australians who are fearful of the concept. People who can get their heads around the idea of women and children needing to be protected from violence, but who can’t accept that present suffering has anything to do with past dispossession of land and culture.

Let alone accepting any notion of Australia’s first peoples needing and deserving a special place and special rights, officially recognised and enshrined in our nation’s laws and symbols.

In this highly controlled context, and after the emotional triumph of the bridge walks in 2000, it is true to say that many in the community have been left with the impression that the reconciliation agenda in Australia has run into the sand. Others have been basking in the mistaken belief that reconciliation has already arrived.

The truth is somewhere in between.

Significant as they were in a symbolic sense, the bridge walks masked the harsh reality of a lot of what we call “unfinished business” – issues tied in with reconciliation that have not been resolved and that Indigenous people have identified as being fundamental to the process.

Those of us involved in reconciliation and Indigenous affairs have had to make a choice about whether to keep beating our heads against a wall on those particular issues or whether we look to what can be achieved in the political context in which we find ourselves, and try to move forward.

And that is the choice we have made. We have a responsibility to keep the rest of the agenda alive but we also have a duty to engage and to continue to progress things that can be progressed.

This has posed a serious dilemma for many of us, as believers in the vision of a truly reconciled Australia. And so we find ourselves, in November 2003, at a kind of moral crossroads.

At the very least, I believe we have an obligation to hold the government accountable on the basis of its own rhetoric.

If practical reconciliation is the test, how are we performing?

Given that we have been operating now for seven years on the basis that we can address one level of reconciliation – the practical – without accepting the importance of the other – the symbolic – surely we have reached a point where we are entitled to start evaluating the effectiveness of this approach.

We’ve heard the statistics on Aboriginal disadvantage often enough. In fact they are glibly repeated to the point where most Australians no longer register their human significance.

  • Life expectancy at birth – 76% of other Australians.
  • Imprisonment – 16 times higher than other Australians.
  • Unemployment – almost four times higher.
  • Hospital admissions for women following violent acts – 24 times higher.
  • Median family income – 68% of other Australians.

And of the many things Australia hasn’t been good at in Indigenous affairs, one is the proper evaluation of policies and programs designed to improve the lives of Indigenous people.

We have tried this and tried that, each successive government asserting that its approach represents a better use of taxpayers’ dollars and is more likely to get results. But honest analysis of what works and what doesn’t has been virtually non-existent.

Which is why a recent paper on the success of practical reconciliation in improving the socio economic status of Indigenous Australians should be taken very seriously.

By analysing Australian Bureau of Statistics data over a 10-year period from 1991, Professor Jon Altman and Dr Boyd Hunter from the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University compared the impact of policies in the Hawke/Keating years with those introduced by the current government.

They maintain there is no statistical basis to suggest that practical reconciliation is delivering better outcomes in the employment, housing, education, health or income status of Indigenous Australians.

In fact, in four out of five indicators, their labour force status relative to the rest of the population appears to have declined<./p>

Their median income has fallen and there has been a significant decline in the ratio of Indigenous to non-Indigenous participation in tertiary education.

Life expectancy at birth remains much lower for Indigenous Australians – about 20 years less than the wider population.

In looking at the reason why more money and greater flexibility have not made any significant impact under this era of practical reconciliation, Altman and Hunter note:

Obviously, reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is not conditional on the achievement of equality of living standards across the two populations.

True reconciliation requires a dialogue between equals whereby each party comes to accept the diverse aspiration and beliefs of the others.

One of the major problems with the practical reconciliation agenda is that it fails to recognise that many of the practical outcomes highlighted are driven, directly and indirectly, by social, cultural and spiritual needs.

The reality is that progress on reconciliation must be judged against all measures. The practical and the symbolic sides are impossible to separate because a sense of who you are and how you feel about yourself is intrinsic to how you behave and how you address your own problems.

If you believe you’re an outsider, you are an outsider.

If you believe you’re beaten, then you’re beaten.

If you believe that the rest of Australia has no respect for you or your culture, then for all intents and purposes it doesn’t.

These things are self-fulfilling and we have to find the symbolic basis, as well as the practical basis, for living together and bringing out the best in one another.

And the evidence is there to see in countries that have found ways to formally recognise and honour the special place of dispossessed Aboriginal populations. Although New Zealand’s Maori population still experiences significant disadvantage, the discrepancy in life expectancy has narrowed and is now only seven years less (for men) than that of the total male population, compared with our 21-year discrepancy.

In the United States, life expectancy for the Indigenous Indian and Alaskan native population (women) is five years lower compared to 20 years for Aboriginal women in Australia.

These numbers show that symbolic aspects of reconciliation – the framework that has been developed around relationships in these countries – has a significant impact on reducing the enormous social damage caused by the displacement of Aboriginal peoples’ customs and economies.

To bring all this back to the notion of true reconciliation, my feeling is that we need to find a balance between operating as best we can within the context in which we find ourselves, and showing the context up for what it is.

For all of us it is a matter of negotiating a creative mix between different objectives without losing sight of our core values and responsibilities – a blend of realism and optimism which allows us to push out the boundaries of our social engagement in the community.

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This is an edited version of a speech to the Mensa Annual Gathering in Brisbane on 15 November.



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About the Author

Jackie Huggins is Deputy Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Unit at the University of Queensland and Co-chair of Reconciliation Australia.

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland
Reconciliation Australia
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