Land rights and solidarity needed to defeat racist attacks
By Lara Pullin
Alongside the Howard government's attacks on public sector workers, we are witnessing their devastating and racist attack on indigenous Australians. This began during the election campaign when the shameful performances by rednecks such as Borbidge, Hanson and Katter were lapped up by the establishment media, notorious for their racist portrayals of Aboriginal people.
At the same time, there has been precious little public discussion about why Aborigines have the highest infant mortality of any sector of the Australian population, comparable with the worst health indicators of the Third World. Why is it that indigenous life expectancy is a decade behind non-indigenous Australians? And why is Aboriginal health care so poorly funded?
For years, with a tiny staff and budget, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was expected to oversee Aboriginal health policy. Now this job has been farmed out to Health and Family Services, which has 10 times the resources — though still not nearly enough. But where is this being discussed today?
Why is the spending on infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water and council services throughout remote Australia some $3 billion behind target, and for many Aboriginal communities non-existent? No wonder so many Aboriginal infants are repeatedly hospitalised for kidney disorders; the drinking water is full of minerals which cause kidney stones.
Contrast this with the government's more than generous spending on infrastructure for CRA, Century Zinc and BHP. Roads are built, machinery imported, electricity, water, health care and accommodation are laid on. While workers are exploited, their worst working conditions are better than those for most outback indigenous communities.
The Coalition's racist attacks on Aborigines are all to do with securing profits for the mining companies. At the moment, the widespread community acceptance of Aboriginal land rights and justice stands in the way.
The reason there's been hardly any discussion about the increase in deaths in custody over the past five years is that inevitably it would have point the finger at government and the states' failure to implement the royal commission's recommendations and the endemic racism in the police force.
To avoid a discussion about the causes of racism and poverty, the government has orchestrated an ideological campaign against Aboriginal organisations and community leaders which is designed to popularise racist stereotypes and undermine community support for Aboriginal rights.
Mabo
The Mabo decision was significant because it corrected the myth that Australia was uninhabited at the time of invasion; it removed from common law the lie of terra nullius. The Native Title Act, passed later, was designed to govern the processes by which communities could claim native title. It also established the Native Title Tribunal.
The former Labor government ensured that a couple of major business deals got through unscathed before the act was passed. Contrary to the big business propaganda, it certainly wasn't about handing back the land, or paying the rent. Both Mabo and the Native Title Act are ambiguous on the question of whether pastoral leases extinguish native title, and this is what mining companies and pastoralists want to rectify.
While the Native Title Act was projected as a big step forward for land rights and self-determination, it was really more about relieving the enormous pressure for land rights which had built up over the three decades since the 1967 referendum to grant suffrage/citizenship to Aborigines.
Even though Mabo and the Native Title Act don't actually grant land rights, big business doesn't want to cop even minimal restrictions on its monopolisation and exploitation of natural resources for private profit.
A recent issue of the Koori Mail contained hundreds of advertisements notifying of the WA government's decision to issue mining, exploration and general purpose leases which would involve thousands of hectares of land. There were only seven native title claims advertised, and five of these were under the "non-claimant native title claim" category.
Not only is it very hard for those communities covered by the Native Title Act to meet its requirements, but it does nothing for the majority of Aboriginal people whose ancestors were dispossessed generations ago. In the eyes of the current law, being forced off one's land means a severing of the cultural links. Yet the government is continuing to issue leases for thousands of hectares of land to be mined and desecrated.
The Howard government's so-called review of the Native Title Act is not about making the outcome better for Aboriginal people. It is all about making the legislation more workable for big business and ensuring land rights for Aboriginal people remain, for all practical purposes, unattainable.
Cape York
In April a historic agreement was reached between the Cape York Land Council, the ATSIC Peninsula Regional Council, the Australian Conservation Council, the Wilderness Society and the Cattlemen's Union. The agreement recognised that Aboriginal ownership of the land could co-exist with the existing pastoral leases.
However, the Cape York agreement was seen as a dangerous precedent by business. The Borbidge government wants to declare it invalid and has lodged a High Court appeal arguing that pastoral leases automatically extinguish native title.
Howard wants the Native Title Act review to be put on hold until after the High Court brings down its findings on the Wik case. This has caused a furore among Coalition backbenchers who, representing their business constituents, want Howard to move immediately to legislate that native title is automatically extinguished by pastoral leases.
Howard has been reluctant to move quickly because he is worried about the likely compensation claims that would result if the High Court appeal is lost.
National Party Senator Bill O'Chee, among others, has been whipping up opposition to native title by arguing that the Gunggari claim for 30,000 hectares in south-east Queensland will allow Aborigines to hold Brisbane to ransom because the land in question is required for the installation of a major gas pipeline.
Over the past few weeks, as Aboriginal leaders have gone into damage control and have been lobbying Howard to dampen down the racist fires being fanned by Senator Herron, discussion among indigenous activists has turned towards the need to get back to grassroots campaigning and the need to start building solidarity with broader sections of Australian society.
Political solutions
Aboriginal people have been developing political solutions since the European invasion. For instance, to end the Tasmanian resistance war, Aboriginal leaders sent a petition to the Queen of England arguing for a political solution. For its time this wasn't a bad solution, especially given that a number of Aboriginal warriors had learned the invaders' language and studied their customs in order to relate to and wage battle with them.
Today demands include community self-government and self-policing by expanding democratically elected community organisations and councils with funds allocated directly to these councils for the delivery of health, housing, education, employment and legal services.
Land rights is the basis for self-government. Without the restoration of land to communities and adequate compensation for dispossession, community leaders agree that the adequate provision of services will not be possible.
Indigenous people make up only a very small percentage of the Australian population and therefore have very little bargaining power. For any real gains to be made, we must have solidarity from the organised working class. The Community and Public Sector Union's recent pickets in Brisbane and Cairns against the Liberals' racist attacks and in defence of the local indigenous representatives were a good start. However, such acts of solidarity have to extend much further.
The Coalition's attacks on workers are hitting indigenous people hard. The partial privatisation of Telstra, the biggest single employer of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, will have a devastating impact.
The government's attacks on other sectors of the population — women, migrants and the disabled — are following the same formula as its attacks on Aborigines. It's about dividing society and diverting attention from the real causes of racism, sexism, poverty and oppression.
In order to defend the hard-won rights of working people, women, Aborigines and others, we not only have to recall, but more importantly, we have to revive the strong traditions of working-class solidarity and internationalism of May Day.
[This is the edited text of a speech given to a Green Left Weekly May Day dinner in Canberra. Lara Pullin is an organiser with the Community and Public Sector Union and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]