Reconciliation requires justice

June 4, 1997
Issue 

Reconciliation requires justice

@box text intro = Prime Minister John Howard's offensive performance at last week's Reconciliation Convention in Melbourne made it abundantly clear, if it wasn't already, that his government is determined to continue to cultivate racism in order to push through other parts of its reactionary neo-liberal agenda.

According to one commentator, Howard's defensive outburst over his plan to dismember native title by stealth — the 10-point plan — was stage-managed to reassure so-called "middle Australia" that the government was not pandering to "special interest groups".

Malcolm McGregor, in the May 28 Financial Review, notes that US President Bill Clinton used the same tactic when speaking to an audience of Jesse Jackson supporters. Howard's attack on his immediate audience, whom he would never have brought on-side anyway, was designed to garner more support for his racist agenda among his main target audience — those white Australians who have been attracted to Pauline Hanson's racist propaganda.

With Hanson gaining more support in Liberal and National heartlands, Howard has had to step up his own racist campaign. In a direct appeal to the racist right, Howard argues that this generation should not be "blamed", nor made to "feel guilty" for what happened in the past — a message that he will protect privileges based on racism.

Aside from this outburst, Howard gave a carefully worded speech to the convention. Taken at face value, his emphasis on tackling chronic problems among Aboriginal communities, such as health and education, and not becoming too caught up in the past could have sounded reasonable enough.

However, Howard's refusal to make an official apology or provide compensation fits in with his refusal to acknowledge the legacy of European colonisation. This rules out the possibility that the government will ever tackle these intractable social problems.

It's not a question of guilt; it's a question of addressing the unequal rights and opportunities. Under the guise of anti-"political correctness", the Coalition has run an ideological offensive to scapegoat Aborigines and Asians for the growing unemployment, inequality and insecurity. Pauline Hanson's bigoted ravings have helped the Coalition government to carry out its own anti-social and racist agenda.

Howard is seeking to destroy what's left of affirmative action programs for oppressed minorities. His argument against such programs is couched in simplistic appeals for "equality" and government "for all of us".

At the same time the government is pushing the line that social welfare is a matter of charity and not compensation for the failures of Australian governments to meet everyone's basic social needs.

He says Aborigines should get the same entitlements as non-Aborigines in health, education and welfare. But he ignores the fact that Aborigines are the most disadvantaged group in Australian society — a result of successive governments' racist policies.

The Aboriginal infant mortality rate is more than five times than that for non-Aboriginal children; only 33% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children finish school, compared with the national average of 77%; the official unemployment rate of Aborigines is 38%, compared with 8.7% of the general population; and indigenous people are 17.3 times more likely to be imprisoned and 16.5% times more likely to die in custody than white Australians.

To correct this requires affirmative action, not "equal treatment".

Unless it is acknowledged that Aborigines are the most disadvantaged group in Australia (as Howard himself said at the convention) as a direct result of more than 200 years of racist policies, they will continue to suffer Third World living conditions and be used as scapegoats to further divide the working class.

A national commemorative place of memory, or day of mourning, are symbolic first steps along the road to reconciliation. But they are meaningless without a total about-face in government policy for indigenous people, which would entail, at the very least, a massive injection of funds into Aboriginal health, education, welfare and infrastructure, a pledge to protect native title and compensation for past injustices.

Words are cheap. For there to be any reconciliation, there has to be positive discrimination and compensation — first.

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