ATSIC councillors face election
By Karen Fredericks
The second ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission) Regional Council elections will be held around Australia on Saturday, December 4. The election comes at a time when criticism of the role of the commission, and particularly of its government-appointed personnel, has become trenchant and widespread among many Aboriginal and Islander people at the grassroots.
ATSIC was established by the Hawke government in 1990 to take over the roles of the old Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the Aboriginal and Islander Development Corporation. The body employs more than 1500 people, 40% of whom are Aboriginal, and had a budget of $951.4 million in 1993-4, 14.2% of which will be spent on administration and the remainder predominantly on employment, housing and health programs.
The federal government maintains that the commission was established to "empower Aboriginal and Islander people to manage their own affairs", and that real power rests with the 36 "grassroots" Regional Councils, which are grouped into 17 zones from which the commissioners are elected, by their fellow councillors, to the central board of ATSIC.
Two commissioners do not face election but are appointed directly by the government. One of these appointed positions is the powerful chairperson position, currently filled by Lois O'Donoghue. O'Donoghue has been the public face of the commission since she began her three-year term as its first chairperson. Her term has now been extended by the government to an unspecified date, although there are rumours that she may stand down next year.
One of ATSIC's most scorching critics, Charles Perkins, (a former head of the old Department of Aboriginal Affairs) is running a ticket in the regional election in Alice Springs.
Noel Pearson of the Cape York Land Council has called for the implementation of recommendation 189 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody — the only recommendation the federal government has yet to endorse — that ATSIC be reconstituted as an entity separate from the public service.
Michael Mansell, of the Aboriginal Legal Centre in Tasmania and the Aboriginal Provisional Government, has accused ATSIC of using its "enormous power through grant funding to reduce [independent] Aboriginal organisations to more or less subsidiaries."
At the inaugural ATSIC regional elections in 1990, less than a third of people eligible to vote did so.