Emma Murphy
On April 16, the day following Prime Minister John Howard's death blow to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), Rupert Murdoch's Australian reported that "Australia's 14-year experiment with Indigenous self-government is over".
On the surface, that certainly seems to be the case, with the government announcing that it would not replace ATSIC with any alternative bodies. But, how real was Indigenous self-government under ATSIC anyway?
If ATSIC really was the practical manifestation of Indigenous self-government, why are there still so many problems? Why is the imprisonment rate so high and the life-expectancy so low in Indigenous communities? Was Howard right in claiming that "separate representation, elected representation, for Indigenous people has been a failure"?
Turning to the so-called federal opposition for alternatives to Howard's racism is superfluous. On March 30, before Howard had even made his announcement, federal ALP leader Mark Latham told ABC's Radio National: "ATSIC is no longer capable of addressing endemic problems in Indigenous communities." Latham indicated that, if it won government, Labor would abolish ATSIC.
Neither Latham nor Howard have been explicit in detailing what these "endemic problems" are, but the Packer and Murdoch press have been doing that for at least a couple of years now. Ask any readers of the corporate press what the key issues facing Indigenous Australia are, and the list will invariably include poor health, substance abuse, high unemployment and low educational outcomes.
Review after review, coronial inquiry after coronial inquiry have — often in graphic detail — outlined just how serious these issues are. The facts are undisputed.
ATSIC's role
However, what has been missing from the bipartisan attacks on ATSIC and justifications for its scrapping was pointed out by ATSIC acting chairperson Lionel Quartermaine, when he spoke to ABC Radio National's PM program on March 30: "Look at what ATSIC is responsible for, and what they're not responsible for. We're not responsible for health and education... We're not responsible for employment."
Indeed, the much cited 2003 review of ATSIC found that the health crisis in the Indigenous population has worsened immensely since Indigenous health was removed from ATSIC's jurisdiction and handed back to the federal government in the mid-1990s.
This was hardly reported at the time of the review though. Nor was the review's finding that ATSIC is often wrongly held accountable for things over which it has no control. Instead, politicians and mainstream media enthusiastically pointed to ATSIC's highlighting of the domestic violence and health crises as a reason to cut ATSIC's funding and to abolish it altogether.
This campaign to discredit ATSIC was made all the easier by the corporate media's frenzied drive to give us a detailed, day-to-day soap opera featuring ATSIC chairperson Geoff Clark and the sexual assaults he was alleged to have committed decades ago.
However, while many of the areas identified as "endemic problems" fall outside ATSIC's jurisdiction, the preservation of ATSIC in its current form is also not a solution to them.
The continuing problems both within ATSIC and within Indigenous communities are not an indication that "self-government" doesn't work, but rather that the real empowerment of Indigenous Australians to manage their own affairs isn't something that is going to come from the top down through a serious of grants and concessions made to Indigenous people by state and federal governments.
Established by a federal Labor government in response to the failed outcome of "mainstreaming" of services to Indigenous Australians, ATSIC was a recognition that a nation-wide, elected Indigenous body representing and advocating for Indigenous people was a much needed step forward in the struggle to overcome two centuries of racial oppression in this country.
However, the body that eventuated out of this decision has been systematically attacked and stripped back of both its funding and its responsibilities since its establishment. Forced to be on the defensive since day one, blamed by the establishment media for every malaise in its constituency (regardless of whether or not it has any funding or responsibility for the particular issue) and coinciding with the demise of a strong grassroots Aboriginal rights movement in the 1970s and 80s, is not at all surprising that in its 14 years ATSIC has not been able to make significant improvements to the lives of the big majority of Indigenous Australians.
Campaigning organisation needed
To do this, what is needed is a national body made up of elected representatives of Indigenous Australians which doesn't simply advise and lobby the government. This is, in practice, what ATSIC's role was reduced to following the 2003 review and subsequent establishment of ATSIS (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services).
Rather, such a representative body needs to be based upon grassroots community organisations and aim to encourage grassroots mobilisations and local Indigenous communities to take control over their own affairs.
The political consciousness-raising aspect to any such national Indigenous organisation is vital if self-management is going to be real and effective. In the context of a decade-long decline of the Aboriginal rights movement and increasing attacks from both state and federal governments, demoralisation and under-confidence in Aboriginal communities can only be overcome by these communities' involvement in, and responsibility for, the services affecting people's daily lives.
Despite what the mainstream media would have us believe, it's not all bad news in Aboriginal communities. Government-commissioned reviews, as well as anecdotal evidence from people on the ground, show that programs initiated and controlled within the communities are the most successful.
Some of these types of programs are so small and peculiar to a particular situation that they appear too insignificant to report. For example, language revival projects or a community based petrol sniffing program.
These may only directly affect a few hundred people, but they can have immensely positive effects. They can provide training and employment and — in the case of cultural or linguistic projects — re-introduce the idea of a cultural identity and sense of pride and worth.
Admittedly, these are small initiatives, and taken in isolation it can't be claimed that they are advancing any form of national movement. But given that we know that it is these local, grassroots initiatives that are the most successful, why couldn't these sorts of experiences be extended to Indigenous communities across Australia?
Rather than grand schemes being decided at a federal level then used as fodder for the anti-self-determination argument when they fail, a real, effective national Indigenous organisation — constituted by and accountable to elected delegates from elected local Indigenous community councils — could establish priorities in terms of funding and policy areas, then assist local Indigenous community and land councils to establish programs most appropriate for their areas
This would be quite different to Latham's proposal to establish regional bodies in lieu of ATSIC. There are issues which concern Indigenous people across the country — land rights, anti-discrimination legislation, employment, etc. — and there is a need for a strong, unified voice speaking up for black rights and building networks and solidarity among the various campaigns. But if self-government means what it implies — that Indigenous Australians have the means and the right to control their affairs — then national structures must be able to support and incorporate regional differences.
While the Redfern Aboriginal community, for example, recently demanded that the NSW Police stay out of their neighbourhood because of the abhorrent racist police violence Redfern Aborigines experience, Aboriginal women in remote rural communities claim that the lack of police presence in their lands increases the risk of domestic violence.
Fighting racism
The issues facing Indigenous Australians today are vast and complex. But when we consider that they are similar to problems faced by other indigenous peoples who have been invaded, dispossessed of their land, segregated onto reservations and systematically discriminated against in employment, education, health care provision, etc., we must conclude that they are inter-related. The health and education crises, the high unemployment and imprisonment rates, the low self-esteem and high suicide rates among Indigenous Australians are the manifestations of systematic racial discrimination — racist oppression.
Indigenous Australians need a national organisation established and funded to lead communities in the struggle against racist oppression. To be strong and effective, such a struggle needs to link up with other struggles against other forms of oppression — above all the struggles of the working class as a whole against the economic oppression of the capitalist private-profit system.
Racism isn't the only issue facing Indigenous Australians. Indigenous Australians are also workers, students, women and parents suffering under the neo-liberal attacks of federal and state governments, both Labor and Liberal.
It is hard to imagine a capitalist government, whether Labor or Liberal, funding an organisation that aims to build a mass movement that is critical of that government and its pro-big business policies. But the problems facing Indigenous people won't be solved without recognising that two centuries of government-endorsed racism have created these problems.
While funding for programs is desperately needed to alleviate poverty and suffering, only fundamental change to an economic system which creates racist oppression will effect any generalised, lasting changes in Indigenous peoples' lives. So any national body charged with empowering Indigenous people and eradicating the oppression they experience must have as its central project the building of a movement which would bring about such radical social change.
[Until recently, Emma Murphy lived and worked in the Irrunytju community on the SA-NT-WA border. She is a member of the Adelaide branch of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 19, 2004.
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