Why we'll be protesting at the Olympics
BY SIMON BUTLER
The 400,000-strong reconciliation march across the Sydney Harbour
Bridge on May 28 demonstrated to the federal Coalition government that
a healthy anti-racism sentiment still exists among Australians. Despite
this, the government responded with an intensification of attacks on Aborigines,
refugees and migrants.
The push to demonise Aboriginal welfare recipients as ungrateful “bludgers”
and asylum seekers fleeing persecution as “illegals” and “queue jumpers”
reflects a growing desperation on the part of the Australian ruling class.
The Coalition is desperate to harness the votes of disaffected supporters
of Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. It also needs to politically isolate
anti-racist protests at the Olympic Games in Sydney next month. And it
needs to manufacture and maintain scapegoats for public anger about its
GST, welfare spending cuts, privatisation program and attacks on job security.
Aboriginal oppression
As the Olympics
loom, governments and corporations are going into overdrive to portray
Australia as tourist friendly and egalitarian. Those people who are concerned
about social justice must reply with the truth about this government's
record.
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On July 26, a “compromise” was reached between Prime Minister
John Howard and Northern Territory Chief Minister Denis Burke on mandatory
sentencing. Mandatory sentencing has been condemned in Australia and internationally
for resulting in disproportionately severe sentences against Aboriginal
people in particular. The Howard-Burke deal, which was never more than
a public relations exercise, has left mandatory sentencing almost wholly
intact.
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A 1999 report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the
Australian Institute for Health and Welfare revealed that the federal government
continues to neglect Aboriginal health. Aborigines face a shockingly high
rate of infant mortality and have a life expectancy 15 years lower than
non-indigenous Australians.
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Ignoring recommendations in the 1997 Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission report Bringing Them Home, the federal government
has continued to refuse to address the injustices suffered by the stolen
generations. Instead of issuing a formal apology and providing compensation,
the government defended racism in court in the Lorna Cubillo and Peter
Gunner stolen children test case. Seizing on the ruling against Cubillo
and Gunner last week, Howard vigorously rejected new calls for a government
apology or a reparations tribunal.
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The federal and South Australian Coalition governments are pressing
ahead with a proposed nuclear waste dump in South Australia, against the
wishes of, among others, the Aboriginal traditional landowners, some of
whom suffered from the British nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga in the
1950s.
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In 1999, Abstudy, a program designed to assist Aboriginal people
to undertake secondary and tertiary education, was all but abolished, with
$18 million a year being cut from the program. This is despite only 29%
of indigenous students completing the final year of secondary school (non-indigenous
students have a 70% completion rate).
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The 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act in effect extinguished
native title and left the door wide open for the states and territories
to pass further anti-Aboriginal land rights legislation.
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The government has also made provisions to grant tax deductions
to mining corporations for expenditures incurred in court battles against
native title claims. The Aboriginal Legal Service, meanwhile, has been
forced to scale back its services due to lack of government funding.
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Most of the major recommendations of the 1988 Royal Commission
into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody have not been implemented. The number
of Aboriginal deaths in custody has continued to increase and indigenous
people are still incarcerated at a rate 14 times that of non-indigenous
people.
Repression of refugees
Another scapegoat for the Coalition has been refugees. Governments and
the mass media have been whipping up racist hysteria about an “invasion”
of “illegals” and “boat people”. Their offensive against asylum seekers
is intensifying.
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A few weeks ago, asylum seekers imprisoned in the Villawood
Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney were tear gassed, handcuffed and
forcibly taken to the Woomera Detention Centre in central South Australia.
The asylum seekers had been on a hunger strike to demand an end to the
inhumane conditions inside the camp and to speed up their applications
for refugee status. The hunger strike attracted solidarity protests outside
the centre. The asylum seekers were moved to Woomera to head off more protests.
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The government has sought revenge against some asylum seekers
involved in the mass break-out of refugees from the Curtin, Woomera and
Port Hedland Detention Centres in July. The authorities are prosecuting
the most active and forthright defenders of fellow refugees' human rights.
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The ideological offensive against refugees has been led by federal
immigration minister Philip Ruddock. Ruddock rails against the supposed
crimes committed by refugees who have been released from detention, including
“rorting” the welfare system, and freely spending on expensive accessories
such as mobile phones and inter-state travel. In fact, released refugees'
access to government welfare is extremely limited. Ruddock has publicly
urged private welfare agencies to turn away refugees.
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In a test of how successful the government's anti-refugee propaganda
has been, Ruddock raised the idea earlier this year that detained refugees
be forced to work as unwaged fruit pickers. This proposal amounts to state-sanctioned
slavery.
Silencing the critics
Those people prepared to criticise the Coalition's racist policies have
confronted either frenzied verbal attacks from government ministers or
funding cuts, or both.
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Several United Nations committees have loudly condemned the
Australian government's policies. Mandatory sentencing laws and the 1998
Native Title Act have been found to contravene the UN Covenant on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination. Australia's policy of mandatory detention of
asylum seekers is in breach of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The government's response has been not only to ignore these reports, but
to order a review of Australia's involvement in the international treaty
system.
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In 1997, the federal government reduced funding to the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission by 40%. HREOC has been a loud voice
in opposition to government racism. There are now plans to abolish the
position of human rights commissioner altogether.
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Funding to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission
has been slashed by $400 million as part of the government's aim of reducing
ATSIC's autonomy and accountability to grassroots Aboriginal organisations.
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Allies of the government can be found among the Aboriginal elite.
Conservatives like Noel Pearson and Lowita O'Donahue have consistently
parroted government platitudes. Pearson, who has become a darling of the
capitalist media, has said that the government payments and other assistance
available to indigenous people are corrupting influences that induce “welfare
dependency”. He has called on the government to instead concentrate on
enforcing law and order in Aboriginal communities.
The public disenchantment that flows from the closure of government services,
high unemployment and the increasing cost of living while real incomes
decline puts increasingly pressure on the government to find ways of distracting
public attention from its austerity policies and of sowing divisions between
working people.
Inciting racism does both. It must be actively resisted. The anti-racism
protests being planned to take advantage of the media attention that will
be on Sydney's Olympic Games are an important opportunity to do that (see
article on page 3).
