Taking liberties with Indigenous civil liberties

Whilst ATSIC, the successor to the NAC, wasn’t perfect at least it was a democratic assembly and Indigenous people, as well as the ATSIC Parliamentary Review Committee, endorsed the elected model of representation as the preferred model.

We now have an imposed model, the National Indigenous Council, where 14 selected Indigenous people will advise the Government on the future direction of policies and programs that will impact on every facet of Indigenous people’s lives. Can any of the members, besides Michael White (the only ATSIC elected member), honestly say they would win a regional council seat if they contested an ATSIC election tomorrow in the community where they currently live?

Will Howard follow the authoritarian lead of Queensland’s Premier, Peter Beattie, who wasn’t happy with the advice he was receiving from his selected State Indigenous Advisory Committee and summarily dismissed them, in pursuit of his ideal response to the escalating “black” problems?

John Howard viewed the recent offer of a new approach to Indigenous Australians, mutual obligation, as outlined by Noel Pearson and Patrick Dodson, with optimism and caution.

An editorial in The Courier-Mail, December 6, 2004, observed, “With the agreement between these two impressive Indigenous leaders, the Howard Government now has an opportunity unmatched in recent history”.

Once again there are mixed messages going out to the Indigenous community on which group of Indigenous advisors are going to shape our future and who has the ear of the Prime Minister. Will Magistrate Sue Gordon, Chairperson of the National Indigenous Council, Noel Pearson, Patrick Dodson or even Michael Long, all highly respected Indigenous leaders, be called upon by the Prime Minister to address the plethora of Indigenous problems?

We’re off to a promising start.

Magistrate Sue Gordon said complaints by Pearson and Mick Dodson have missed the point of the NIC. “We’re not supposed to be representative,” Ms Gordon told ABC radio’s AM program. “We are there as individual Aboriginal people to give individual advice to the minister.”

The NIC chairwoman went on to challenge the council’s critics to prove their authority to speak on behalf of Indigenous Australians. “They’re self-appointed; they’re not elected, they’re not representative,” Ms Gordon said.

And then we have comments made on December 7, 2004 by council-member and federal Labor’s Junior Vice President, Warren Mundine, about making changes to land rights, which drew a stinging response from former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, Mick Dodson.

Mundine said the concept of communal ownership of land was hampering economic development and sustainability in Indigenous communities. “Where you cannot use land for economic benefit, that you’ve got it locked away, then what it’s doing is we’ve been asset rich, but cash poor - not putting any food or any clothes, any money in our pockets,” Mundine told the ABC.

“I think he has no comprehension of what land means to people or how it’s held,” Dodson responded. “Perhaps he ought to get out and learn about it, and it’s a little frightening that he’s saying things like this if he’s going to be a member of this new appointed organisation.”