Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Vanstone's 'No Idea' Committee

By Brian Johnstone - posted Thursday, 11 November 2004


On August 31 this year the President of the Senate Paul Calvert received two letters. The first, brief and formal, was from Labor Senator Trish Crossin, in her capacity as Chairperson of the Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs.

She wrote:
Pursuant to Standing Order 38 (7) I present an Interim Report of the Committee. On 16th June 2004 the Senate appointed the Selection Committee to inquire into and report by October 31, 2004 on the following matters:

  1. The provisions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Amendment Bill 2004
  2. The proposed administration of Indigenous programs and services by mainstream government departments and agencies
  3. Related matters. The committee has now received a total of one hundred and eighty nine submissions and has held the following public hearings:
Advertisement
  • Canberra 29 June
  • Alice Springs 20 July
  • Broome 22 July
  • Darwin 24 August
  • Gove 25 August
  • Thursday Island 26 August
  • Cairns 27 August

Due to the prorogation of the Parliament the Committee will not be able to complete its report as intended.

The second letter was from Territory Liberal Senator Nigel Scullion. It was dispatched on behalf of himself, and the other two Government senators on the committee - Bill Heffernan and David Johnston.

It was headed: Government Senators Dissenting Report. This is what he wrote:

The Government members of the Committee are pleased to present their interim report on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Amendment Bill 2004.

The Government members are disappointed that the majority interim report provides no information other than the number of submissions received and public hearings conducted.

Advertisement

The majority interim report does not mention that in the submissions received and hearings there has been little support expressed for ATSIC. The Chairman has already made this finding public through the media.

The Leader of the ALP has said that ATSIC should be abolished and therefore agrees with the Government position as outlined in the bill.

The bill does nothing more than abolish the ATSIC Board and provide a year of consultation to arrive at more acceptable representative arrangements to replace ATSIC at the regional level.

The Government members believe therefore that the bill should be returned to the Parliament as soon as possible.

The Committee could, it if chose, continue its deliberations on service delivery and replacement options on the basis that any further legislative or administrative options thought necessary could be left to an incoming government.

So there you have it.

After 185 public submissions, 7 public hearings from Canberra to Broome to Thursday Island and hundreds of pages of evidence, here are 2 perfunctory letters that clearly show the Government’s intent and indicate the Latham-led Labor Party is content to throw in the towel in the battle on the future of Aboriginal Affairs.

It’s certain the Howard Government will reintroduce the ATSIC Amendment Bill when the Parliament reconvenes.

Amanda Vanstone’s re-appointment to the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio will ensure the Government will be pushing to have ATSIC gone by Christmas. She’ll be peddling her familiar line that preservation of the ATSIC Board is a waste of taxpayer’s money. Latham supports its abolition and Labor is just being bloody-minded. This ignores the reality that the Government’s pursuit of ATSIC’s demise has cost a lot more than ATSIC Commissioners could consume in the new life of this Government.

The Howard Government’s real agenda is to kill off any prospect of a High Court legal challenge on this shabby affair. That prospect only continues to exist while the ATSIC Board remains a legal entity. The discovery of documents in that process would be highly embarrassing to this Government and they know it.

Vanstone’s statements, and that of the Government Senators outlined above, also ignore the key policy differences between Liberal and Labor. Labor is committed to replacing ATSIC with an elected representative body. The Government is not. So what will Labor do now?

I understand this was the subject of earnest discussion when Latham called the Caucus together for its first meeting since the disastrous election result.

I am reliably informed that Latham agreed his Senate team should ignore Vanstone’s bluster and seek to have the ATSIC “kill bill” referred to a re-invigorated Select Committee. No decision has yet been made on when the committee would report back to the Senate but some suggest it is likely to be June next year just before the new Senate takes its place. Given their public statements the Democrats and the Greens would support the bill’s further referral to a Committee.

It has been a matter of significant disappointment to me to see certain ATSIC Commissioners give some public credence to Vanstone’s wish to have ATSIC gone by Christmas. They’d do well to keep insisting on their legal right to be there. In my view they should be asking how she can claim a mandate and yet rob them of theirs.

They and Labor might also have a close look at the submission presented to the Senate Committee by the outgoing Social Justice Commissioner Doctor Bill Jonas. It puts the lie to the claim made by the Government senators in their letter to the President of the Senate that the bill “does nothing more than abolish the ATSIC Board”.

The doctor’s 26-page submission to the Select Committee provides a sober assessment of why a duly-elected national Indigenous commission should not be replaced with a hand-picked advisory body, the proposed National Indigenous Council (NIC).

I should mention at this point that the NIC, the membership of which is the subject of an imminent public announcement from Vanstone, is now referred to as the “No Idea” Committee in the circles in which I travel.

Let’s not forget that when he lodged that submission Doctor Jonas was the Howard Government’s most senior appointed Indigenous advisor. He said the ATSIC Bill 2004 would operate to disempower Indigenous peoples and the mainstreaming of Indigenous services and programmes is “not accompanied by adequate mechanisms for scrutiny of the government’s performance on Indigenous issues”. He said the abolition of the nationally elected representative Indigenous body “ensures that the Government will only have to deal with Indigenous peoples on its own terms and without any reference to the stated aspirations and goals of Indigenous peoples”. He then skillfully prosecuted the case for ATSIC’s reform, rather than abolition.

Dr Jonas expressed concern that, “Abolishing ATSIC will simply silence Indigenous people at the national level while the deeply entrenched crisis in Indigenous communities continues unabated”. This has already occurred due, in part, to the Government’s starving of resources to the ATSIC Board and the treacherous antics of a bunch of compliant public servants.

Dr Jonas also made the point that the Government had never substantiated the justifications used for seeking to abolish ATSIC and reminded all concerned that the final report of the Government initiated review of ATSIC in November 2003 did not “support the abolition of ATSIC but instead strengthened and revitalised its mandate and functions”.

A re-invigorated Senate Committee might ask why the Government forced ATSIC to spend more than $1.4 million on this review when it is now clear it never intended to take any notice of its advice after its intention to have Peter Reith appointed to it was successfully blocked.

The submission also pointed out the abolition of ATSIC and its replacement by the proposed advisory council “is also potentially in breach of Australia’s obligations under Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights. This provides that all peoples have the right of self-determination.

“By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development,” it continues. “The ability to do so is clearly constrained by replacing an elected body with a non elected one.”

He recommended the committee recognise that any national Indigenous body must be:

  • representative of, and accountable to Indigenous peoples and communities;
  • adequately resourced to facilitate the effective participation of Indigenous peoples in decision making processes;
  • equipped with legislative powers and functions that enable it to interact with government departments and agencies with legitimacy and leverage; and,
  • be able to reflect the aspirations and determine the priorities of Indigenous people and communities, rather than being constrained within the restrictions of government policy and programs.

He recommended the Committee oppose the ATSIC Bill on the basis “it does not comply with these principles and may be in breach of Australia’s human rights obligations”. The submission also said a national appointed advisory council would find it difficult to “influence the national agenda or to ensure that the national agenda is shaped by the views and desires of Indigenous peoples rather than the priorities of government”.

The submission then turned to the mainstreaming of government service delivery and noted a range of concerns with the Government’s much-vaunted COAG trial sites and a lack of performance monitoring. “As already noted,” the submission said, “anecdotal evidence and enthusiasm about the trials has been a significant factor in influencing the new proposed arrangements for mainstreaming service delivery. However the trials do not have a sufficiently rigorous performance monitoring system.”

The submission said this concern was reinforced by the failure, in recent years, of the Ministerial Council on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs to complete two significant evaluations on COAG’s behalf in a timely manner.

“The first is the review of progress by all levels of government in implementing the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report,” it continues, “The second is an audit of family violence programmes to guide the response of COAG to this crisis issue. Approximately three and a half years after these reviews were announced neither has been presented to COAG nor made public.”

Most importantly Dr Jonas called for the committee to continue beyond its current reference as a Standing Committee of the Senate, with ongoing responsibilities for monitoring the administration of Indigenous affairs by departments and agencies of Australian governments.

The committee, he says, should play an integral role in monitoring the progress of the Australian Government in addressing what remains one of the most severe human rights challenges facing Australia as a nation. Who could disagree? Especially with the Howard Government holding the balance of power in the Senate.

Seasoned political operatives will be casting a weather eye over the political landscape post-July next year when the new Senate takes it place and considering what steps can be put in place beforehand to ensure some checks and balances against a rampant Howard Government.

They could do worse than look to taking up the recommendation of Dr Jonas and ensuring such a Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs is put in place.

One thing is certain, given recent history, a Standing Committee will be a heck of a lot more useful to Aboriginal people in coming years than Ms Vanstone’s “No Idea Committee”.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. All

First published in the National Indigenous Times in October 2004.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

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.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Brian Johnstone
Related Links
Coalition's Indigenous Affairs Policy
National Indigenous Times
Photo of Brian Johnstone
Article Tools
Comment Comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy