Tampa in Tasmania... and the devil we know

We know why this is so. The Indigenous vote was not going to decide this election outcome.

Despite a decade of uninterrupted rising national prosperity, the original Australians continue to suffer woeful disadvantages on every socio-economic measure. On some health indicators, like longevity, they are going backwards compared with the rest of society. The disturbing apartheid in health outcomes is demonstrated by the statistics: Life expectancy for Indigenous males is 56, compared with 77 for the rest; it is 63 and 83 respectively for women. Indigenous babies are four times more likely to die before their first birthday. Suicide rates are nearly three times non-Indigenous levels.

Apart from the obligatory mention of Indigenous programmes, neither side is offering a credible plan to deal with the huge problems facing Indigenous Australians in infant mortality and diseases ranging from blindness to cardiovascular conditions, diabetes and sexually transmitted disease. Yet neither Latham nor John Howard felt it necessary to announce personally their parties’ Indigenous policies.

The chaos in Indigenous leadership that triggered the demise of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission has produced an advocacy vacuum in this campaign. That neither side of politics is prepared to give priority to this health crisis is explicable in political terms, but not in terms of rational decency, financial priorities, or ignorance.

The Australian Council of Social Service says there is no shortage of evidence, including reviews by the Productivity Commission and the Commonwealth Grants Commission, pointing to the failure of mainstream services to protect Indigenous health and wellbeing. The National Health and Medical Research Council has made the study of Indigenous health a priority, and numerous medical organisations and authorities, not least the 2003 Australian of the Year, Fiona Stanley, have crusaded on Indigenous infant illness.

We now import 1,000 doctors a year to ensure ready medical attention for the majority, but cannot produce a better health service for our sickest citizens.

Much of this has to do with what is being called the politics of entitlement, that is those who have the voter clout get the cash. Do most really believe that spending $1 billion more on handouts and increased services to older Australians, or spending $3 billion to give them first dibs on already strained hospital services, comes ahead of a credible national campaign to lift the longevity of 400,000 Australians? As a nation we should feel entitled to something better.

Hear Hear.

Let’s face it, the political vacuum in the Indigenous leadership suits the leadership group in both major political parties and mainstream articles such as the one written by Metherell are few and far between. Let’s not forget it was Latham who sought credit in the run up to the campaign for announcing the abolition of ATSIC before Howard. Curiously there was no consultation with Aboriginal people yet the Labor Party’s policy pledged to replace it with another elected body based upon a consultative process with the very people ignored in the formulation of the policy.

It displayed a stunning ignorance of Aboriginal Affairs and simply gave Howard the opportunity to move on his long-held desire to wind back self determination and destroy ATSIC, ignoring the expert advice from his own Government appointed review into the organisation and top level advice from within the federal bureaucracy. The electoral cost for Latham’s Labor on ATSIC was always going to be worse than for Howard.

Ditto jobs v forests, again cynically and skillfully manipulated by Howard. It is now odds on the ATSIC kill bill will be one of the first pieces of legislation to be run up the flagpole in the new Senate, if not before. I suspect we will have not have to wait too long to see Howard’s hand picked National Indigenous Council being publicly announced. They have been selected and, for obvious reasons, an announcement withheld until the end of the campaign.

Governments throughout the world have grappled with the disastrous consequences of colonialism for the Indigenous peoples, particularly the catastrophic impact on health and welfare. All have tried a suite of policies from benign neglect to forced assimilation and limited self determination. Evidence-based research from around the world, including Australia, clearly shows sustained improvements are only recorded when Aboriginal people are able to control their own affairs.

Howard has now secured a special place in Australian political history but has done so after 8 ½ years of disengagement from Aboriginal Australia. He now has a chance to re-engage. One would hope he might see this term as the time to do it.

Labor ought to do the same.