Kim Bullimore
Two weeks before the April 15 announcement by federal cabinet that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was to be scrapped on July 1, an editorial in Rupert Murdoch's Australian proclaimed that ATSIC had lost the "final plank of its political support" and that "the organisation is now history".
The previous day — March 30 — ALP leader Mark Latham had announced that, if elected federally, Labor intended to abolish ATSIC and replace it with regionally elected councils, which would advise the government on Indigenous policy.
Latham's policy, much praised by the Australian, gazumped the Coalition's plans to overhaul ATSIC and gave PM John Howard the green light to do what he had always wanted — abolish ATSIC and dismantle self-determination for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Since 1996, Howard and his government have viciously attacked Indigenous people, attempting to dismantle the gains of hundreds of years' struggle for equality.
Howard's attacks have been both practical — cutting funding from Indigenous organisations and projects, tearing native title into little bits — and ideological — attacking the "black armband" view of history, refusing to apologise for the stolen generations, ridiculing the need for a treaty and blaming Aboriginal people for the poverty and drug use that dominates many communities.
In 1996, straight after he was elected, Howard cut ATSIC's funding by 30-50%. He accompanied it with a propagandistic campaign to discredit the body that has continued unabated for the last eight years. ATSIC has been called corrupt, incompetent and, most unfairly, been blamed for the situation of disadvantage facing Indigenous people.
In 2003, Howard took ATSIC's control over funding of Indigenous programs away.
Finally, Howard used the allegations of sexual assault against elected ATSIC chairperson Geoff Clark to play every racist stereotype in order to convince voters that ATSIC was a den of dangerous and frightening black people using taxpayers' money to line their own pockets.
In the face of this concerted campaign, the ALP could have gone in to bat for Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs. After all, ATSIC was a Labor initiative, designed to provide a bureaucracy capable of being co-opted into giving ALP governments some black-wash.
Instead, Latham chose to cut ATSIC loose, and in the process gave Howard the scope to dismantle what vestiges of Indigenous self-determination still exist.
While Latham has criticised the Coalition's plan because it does not propose replacing ATSIC with another elected body, he has also been quick to take credit for it, commenting that Labor has "once again shown the way on policy". NSW ALP Premier Bob Carr gloated in the April 15 Sydney Morning Herald that "the prime minister is following [Latham's] lead and content once again".
Howard claims he is abolishing ATSIC because it has "become too preoccupied with what might loosely be called 'symbolic issues' and too little concerned with delivering real outcomes for Indigenous peoples".
But as acting ATSIC chair Lionel Quartermaine and other Indigenous leaders have pointed out, the key areas of Indigenous health and education have long been controlled by the government.
The low education rates for young Indigenous Australians, the low life expectancy for Aboriginal people, the existence of Third World diseases in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, are not the fault of ATSIC but the successive federal governments that have offered no solutions.
Numerous federal government institutions have pointed out that "mainstreaming" of Indigenous service provision does not work.
In 2001, the Commonwealth Grants Commission reported that Indigenous Australians access mainstream services at a much lower rate than non-Indigenous people. It added that mainstream programs do not adequately meet the needs of Indigenous people, and therefore relying on them compounds Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage. In 2003, the Productivity Commission, which advises the government on micro-economic reform, made a similar assessment.
Howard's decision to mainstream Indigenous services — and to appoint an advisory board of "distinguished" Indigenous leaders to replace the elected ATSIC is paternalistic and racist. Similar advisory boards existed under the Whitlam and Fraser governments and were mere "talk shops" that had little power.
Aboriginal people need an elected, democratic organisation that has real power to organise and mobilise Aboriginal people to get a better deal. ATSIC, with its bureaucracy and lack of democratic input, was not brilliant but was far better than either the "advisory" boards proposed by Howard and Latham. No surprise that is has been condemned by Indigenous leaders from Noel Pearson to Michael Mansell.
As Pat Dodson has pointed out, far from advancing Indigenous health, education, employment and rights, the decision to abolish ATSIC takes Aboriginal affairs "back to the day when Aborigines should be seen but not heard, and preferably not seen at all".
[Kim Bullimore is an Aboriginal rights activist and a member of the Socialist Alliance and the Democratic Socialist Perspective.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
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