Marion Scrymgour — the highest ranking Aboriginal member of any government in Australia — quit the Northern Territory Labor Party over its Aboriginal policy on June 4. As an independent, she now holds the balance of power.
The former Indigenous affairs minister quit the party due to disagreements on the proposed "outstations" policy, which would provide priority infrastructure funding to only 20 of the roughly 600 remote Aboriginal homeland communities.
She opposed the policy, saying it was not what the ALP had taken to the August 2008 election. "I feel strongly because we have lied to Aboriginal people", she told the ABC's 7.30 Report on June 1.
"We have said we would go back and talk to them before we made that policy … I think denying those homelands … the recognition of the contribution that they play to the Northern Territory, to the NT economy, is insulting.
"You're allowing a vibrant movement in those homelands to wither and to just be left out there with no government support. There is this fear that, you know, we're going to just totally walk away from homelands, not put any extra funding in that they need, but to allow them to be abandoned and they have no choice out of necessity to move back to the main community."
Aboriginal homelands represent some of the earliest forms of native title recognised by Australian law. Their beginnings date back to the Gurindji strike in 1966, when Aboriginal workers fought and won the right to return to their traditional homelands and build communities.
This right was granted in 1975 and today about 10,000 Aboriginal people in the NT live on their ancestral lands. Forty-three of these communities are in Scrymgour's seat of Arafura.
The proposed policy gives $160 million in development funds for roads, schools and health services to 20 proposed "growth towns", while providing only $36 million to the other 580 communities.
Despite these communities being so small and under-resourced, health studies have shown Aboriginal people living on homelands often have better health outcomes than in larger centres.
Scrymgour was not alone in calling for a rethink on the policy. Pat Dodson, for example, told ABC Online on June 2:
"Australia has not learned anything from the history of destabilising Indigenous people if this policy is allowed to stand and homelands people are forced to co-locate in these major towns against their wishes."
Leading up to, and as a consequence of, her decision to resign, Scrymgour had been under extreme pressure from the mainstream media. In February, she resigned as deputy chief minister — and from her other portfolios — due to health reasons. This has been used by the media to suggest she was unstable when she confronted the ALP caucus over its announcement of the policy, a principled stand that within days had led to her resigning from the party.
Following Scrymgour's criticisms, the caucus announced a compromise agreement on June 3. Not content to simply report Scrymgour's position on the policy, an NT News article that day said that she "walked into caucus, burst into tears and apologised to her Labor colleagues for threatening to leave the party".
Scrymgour quit the next day, saying in a statement on June 4: "I can no longer rely on all caucus colleagues to implement the concessions that I won in the caucus meeting yesterday."
The media attacks on Scrymgour have hidden the principled nature of her stand. Her defence of the homelands movement is important: it represents both her immediate constituents and the 30% of Territorians who are Aboriginal and feel betrayed by the ALP.
The ALP relies on Aboriginal votes to be elected but has also promoted law and order attacks on Aboriginal rights in cities and attacked Aboriginal land rights in remote areas. By standing up to Labor's record on Aboriginal policy, Scrymgour has opened a crack in NT politics.
As federal Labor continues many racist policies of the previous government, it has rebadged them as "closing the gap".
Scrymgour was very critical of the NT intervention, introduced by the Howard Coalition government in 2007. The policy has largely been retained by Labor. It seems there may be more dissent within the ALP, too. The Australian Council of Trade Unions, which has a significant input into ALP policy, passed a motion criticising the intervention at its conference on June 4.
In 2007, in her speech to the Charlie Perkins memorial lecture, Scrymgour questioned the need for more studies in Aboriginal disadvantage. "They will tell us that — for generations — Aboriginal Territorians have endured poor housing; poor health; low educational outcomes; and few job prospects", she said.
"While not necessarily directly causal in relationship, these social factors, which the Commonwealth has known about for 30 years; and which the current Federal Government has presided over for 11 years; have undoubted impact on the incidence and severity of community and family violence, sexual abuse and substance abuse.
"The Northern Territory — and the 30 per cent of its population that is Aboriginal — will remain impoverished so long as the Commonwealth refuses to undertake, or finds itself incapable of, 'nation building exercises' such as resourcing infrastructure for Aboriginal communities in the north. And it is that impoverishment, not land tenure systems such as that which exists under the Land Rights Act, that has led to the crisis from Mutitjulu to Milikapiti."
Like the previous government, the current Labor government is refusing to take the necessary action to really address Aboriginal disadvantage.
"Closing the gap" will require tackling racism and empowering Aboriginal communities, not continuing the disempowering, racist policies now favoured by federal and territory governments.
As National Indigenous Times editor Chris Graham wrote on Crikey.com on June 5: "Marion Scrymgour just changed black politics forever. In politics you can justify almost anything. But being an Aboriginal member of the Labor or Liberal Party is no longer one of them."