BY SIMON BUTLER
The recent escalation of racist rhetoric and policy from the Howard government naturally raises the question of whether the Labor opposition is an anti-racist alternative. The answer: not at all. The ALP and the Coalition government share a bipartisan indifference to the human rights of refugees and Aborigines.
The most recent evidence of this is the ALP's reversal of its position on native title at its national conference in August. Support for the right of native title holders to negotiate at the exploration stage of mineral projects and on the granting of pastoral leases was dropped without any discussion or open policy debate.
By doing this, the federal party was positioning itself to support legislation of the Queensland ALP government of Peter Beattie which deprives native title holders of the right to negotiate in the exploration stage of mineral projects.
On August 30, Beattie and federal leader Kim Beazley forged a "compromise" that removes the right to negotiate on exploration for "low impact" projects but allows negotiation for high impact exploration.
Daryl Melham, the ALP's Aboriginal affairs spokesperson, on August 31 resigned in protest over the deal. A brief factional battle ensued over which faction would avoid having to take on the vacant shadow Aboriginal Affairs portfolio!
The ABC quoted an unnamed senior frontbencher from Melham's "left" faction describing the portfolio "as like being a toilet cleaner on the Titanic".
Former WA premier Carmen Lawrence, elected to the vacant front bench position, could not be given the Aboriginal affairs job because, as premier, she introduced WA's mandatory sentencing laws and consistently opposed Aboriginal land claims in favour of mining corporations.
Kim Beazley pledged that Aboriginal affairs, finally given to the factionally unaligned Senator Bob McMullan, would become a cabinet portfolio if the ALP wins government. But he had little to say about the policies to be implemented from that position.
Mabo
Labor tries to pose as a defender of Aboriginal interests because of the Keating ALP government's Native title Act, passed in 1993. But that act was passed with the specific intention of restricting the outlined in the June 3, 1992, Mabo decision of the High Court.
That decision overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius, which pretended that Australia was unoccupied (and, therefore, all the land was unowned) at the time of the British invasion. The Mabo decision acknowledged that native title existed and opened the way for traditional owners to pursue claims through the courts.
Mining companies immediately insisted that, in the interests of "clarity", the priority of the government had to be to confirm their rights, to remove any duty to compensate Aborigines and, if possible, to introduce legislation that would reverse the Mabo decision.
In response, Keating chose to exploit the narrowest interpretation of the Mabo decision by discriminating between "traditional" and "non-traditional" Aborigines. Because previous governments had forcibly dispossessed and removed the great majority of Aborigines from their traditional lands, only a minority of Aborigines now qualified as native title holders.
The 1993 legislation did allow claimants to seek to establish their claims through the courts. But claims that concerned land already under another land-use title would be nullified.
The Native Title Act conceded to Aborigines the right to negotiate at both the exploration and development phases, but said these negotiations could be overridden by an independent arbitral body. The Keating government safeguarded mining interests by giving state Aboriginal affairs ministers the power to override any Aboriginal objections.
Greens Senator Christabel Chamarette attacked the bill at the time, saying, "This is not Mabo legislation. It is Mabo containment legislation."
Wik
The High Court's 1996 Wik decision presented a further challenge to the profits of the pastoral and mining industries. The court ruled that native title is not necessarily extinguished by a pastoral lease, and that the two can coexist.
The Howard government's response was to propose the "10-point plan" in the form of the Native Title Amendment Act. Of the 10 points, only one did not curtail existing or potential rights of Aboriginal people.
Despite a show of opposition in the Senate, eight of the 10 points were passed with ALP support.
The ALP even backed Howard's plan to validate retrospectively mining permits which had been granted without allowing native title claimants the right to negotiate and which were therefore unlawful under the Native Title Act.
Imprisonment
The Hawke and Keating governments both failed to implement the recommendations of the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. During the 13 years of ALP government, the number of Aboriginal deaths in custody increased dramatically.
Beazley has refused to demand that mandatory sentencing be abolished outright, calling only for children to be excluded.
Aboriginal people already constitute the most incarcerated people in the world. The Northern Territory and Western Australian branches of the ALP have unashamedly announced support for mandatory sentencing.
The ALP also has the distinction of being the initiator of the work for the dole scheme, having introduced it in a form which at first applied only to Aboriginal people.
Refugees
The Howard government has increasingly been condemned by human rights activists, refugee advocacy organisations and even the United Nations for its inhumane treatment of asylum seekers — particularly for the policy of mandatory detention of people seeking asylum without documentation. But as with work for the dole and mandatory sentencing, the Howard government is merely continuing ALP policy.
Mandatory detention was implemented by the ALP in 1994, making Australia the only country in the world with a legislated policy of locking up undocumented refugees.
Earlier, when asylum seekers who were unlawfully detained attempted to sue the federal government for compensation, the ALP minister for immigration, Senator Nick Bolkus, achieved bipartisan support for legislation that limited any compensation payments to a maximum of $1 a day.
Bolkus, a member of the ALP's "left" faction, defended mandatory detention in 1994 by arguing that without a tough stand on "illegals", there would be "boats by the bucket load".
If this hyperbolic rhetoric about refugees sounds familiar, it's because Bolkus has been plagiarised by the current federal immigration minister, Philip Ruddock.
In opposition the ALP has manoeuvred so as not (in the words of Labor Senator Chris Schacht) "to be trapped into looking like [we are] soft on illegal immigrants".
The ALP has been vocal about desiring to pose no opposition to the Howard government's racism. During the passage of the Border Protection Act in November 1999, Labor's Barney Cooper stated, "The opposition is happy to support [the act]. We only wish that, in the future, the minister would accept that we want a bipartisan policy on issues of immigration and refugees."
Earlier this year, Beazley even tried to outdo the Howard government on "toughness" towards asylum seekers with the promise that funding for the Coast Guard would be increased — in a bid to prevent them even reaching Australia — if the ALP is elected.
Like Howard, Beazley is intent on capturing the One Nation vote at the next election. And like Howard, Labor recognises that racism and wedge politics are ways to divert attention away from a government's failings.