Prime Minister Keating's New Visions for Australia speech at the Evatt Foundation annual dinner on April 28 has been hailed as a historic milestone in Australia's political development. Others say Keating has sucked the content from the so-called "republican debate" by restricting its terms to his own "minimalist" position. KAREN FREDERICKS canvassed a group of left and community activists for their views.
Just hours before his speech at the Evatt Foundation dinner, Paul Keating addressed a special meeting of the Australian Mining Industry Council, the Australian Petroleum Exporters Association and the National Farmers Federation accompanied by far less fanfare.
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald the following morning, the industry reps left the meeting "satisfied that the Government will not adopt any radical anti-industry solutions to the question raised by the Mabo case [on Aboriginal land rights]".
Keating indicated to the representatives of big business that the federal government is willing to cooperate with the states to introduce legislation which will secure their property titles, including leaseholds and mining rights, against Mabo-style land rights claims, and to protect them against claims for financial compensation by Aboriginal traditional owners — which may be possible under a combination of the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act and the Mabo case.
Later in the evening Keating received several enthusiastic rounds of applause from the predominantly Labor left audience, for a rather more poetic approach to the subject of land rights for Aboriginal people.
"A primary goal of the government in the 1990s will be to remove the stain of dispossession and social injustice which attaches to the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians", he said sombrely. "Not merely our [international] reputation, but our self-esteem
depends on our finding answers to the prejudice, injustice and despair which Aboriginal Australians continue to face.
"Mabo presents us with a substantial and binding basis for reconciliation — a legal and historical basis which goes well beyond those pious and well-meaning sentiments whose history is just as long as the prejudice and dispossession they seek to correct", he continued. " We now have a chance to do something real. Because land goes to the core of the dispossession, Mabo may have the potential to work the miracle. The High Court has declared that a native title exists in common law — a declaration which has profound consequences not just for land management, but for contemporary issues of social justice and for the process of reconciliation."
Wadjalurbinna, a land rights activist and one of the traditional owners of the land around Lawn Hill in Queensland's north-west gulf country upon which mining giant CRA wants to develop its Century deposit (full story page 3), sees the PM's words as far less significant than they have been billed.
"All the grand speeches in the world cannot bring about reconciliation", she says. "There must be recognition before there can be reconciliation."
Wadjalurbinna sees the entire question of a republic as unimportant when compared with the massive injustice perpetrated against her people.
"In my view becoming a republic will not make any difference to the lives of the indigenous people of this country. We will remain oppressed while ever we are governed by a foreign regime", she told Green Left. "We know we have the right to maintain our unique identity in our own land, but we have simply been denied this right. Much more is needed before we can possibly hope to 'set the record straight'."
Wadjalur cites the current experience of her own people as evidence of the two faces of the Keating government. "The governments at both federal and state levels are fast-tracking and supporting the CRA
mining company at the Century mine on Lawn Hill Station", she says. "All this land is traditional native land. The Gungalidda people were taken from this land by force and placed on the Doomadgee Aboriginal Reserve. My people don't understand why their land has been taken from them when there is a Reconciliation Council in place to bring all Australians together. To us the Reconciliation Council is a farce."
Keating's "New Visions for Australia" speech contained many grand words but only one very modest proposal — the formation of a committee of 10 "eminent" people and ex-politicians to "prepare an options paper which describes the minimum constitutional changes necessary to achieve a viable Federal Republic of Australia, without examining options which would otherwise change our way of government". Like Wadjalur, Bill Ethel, the Western Australian state secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Workers' Union, sees little of relevance here for the people he represents.
"The union movement has more important issues to address than whether we have a president in a funny hat or a queen in a funny hat", he says.
Amongst these issues is the introduction of what Keating, in his speech, called "a new charter for industrial relations" and "the sort of industrial relations system which will give us the flexibility, productivity and capacity that we must have ... to keep Australia in the front ranks of the democracies of the world".
Ethel sees danger in Keating's new industrial order. "I think the abolition of the awards system and the move toward enterprise bargaining will lead to a more fragmented work force that becomes even more disillusioned with the parliamentary politics of the major parties today", he says. "Workers are now being abandoned to the dictates of the market, and it's going to cause enormous problems. It suits Keating's short-term political objectives because it is what the Business Council wants him to do, but the long-term effects on the labour movement are going to be catastrophic."
While Ethel is far from being a royalist, he does not believe that changing the flag on the governor's Rolls Royce (or Ford Fairlane) will do anything to address these problems. On the contrary, he sees that dire consequences could arise from the combination of minimalist republicanism and Labor's current move toward enterprise bargaining.
"It's possible that the present minimalist approach to the republican debate will sow the seeds for the Australian version of Pinochet or Somoza in 20 or 30 years' time, when the working class has been fragmented to such an extent that it is incapable of defending itself against a major move by the extreme right", he warns.
"We should have enshrined in a constitution which can be enforced by the High Court the rights of working people to organise collectively to pursue their interests."
Ethel does not believe Keating is deliberately using the republic debate to obscure substantive issues such as Labor's industrial relations policy.
"I don't think Keating has a global view of the issues that he raises", he says. "I think he's just determined to retain power for as long as possible because he enjoys the privileges, status and power of being prime minister in a very similar way that Menzies enjoyed it.
"He will do whatever is necessary to entrench his power base with the sole objective of keeping him in power, including creating an historical myth that he was a necessary and important part of Australia's political development. Unfortunately, a large section of the labour movement will go along with him because they, too, are seduced by the trappings of power."
Zanny Begg, a green activist and spokesperson for the Environmental Youth Alliance, says she finds it ironic that in the same week Keating announced the establishment of the committee of republicans he also confirmed the abolition of the federal government's Sustainable Development Committee.
"Australia is far from being an ecologically
sustainable society", says Begg. "What's the point of becoming a republic if we're not going to be an ecologically sustainable republic? It's not enough to look just at our figurehead. There are profound changes needed in all aspects of Australian society if we are to achieve sustainability. We can't afford to sideline the environmental question, and we can't afford to be nationalistic."
Begg points out that it will be young people who will inherit the political system left behind by Keating's generation. "Young people are more and more seeing themselves first as inhabitants of the earth and only second as 'Australians' or any other nationality. The ecological and political interrelatedness of our planet should be reflected in any new political structures. Fair enough, get rid of the outdated English monarchy, but why spend so much time and money on it that we forget the really desperate state of the earth's environment?"
Nick Southall of the Wollongong Out of Workers Union believes the issue of the republic is being used strategically by Keating and the Labor Party to obscure the real issues for ordinary people.
"I'm concerned", he says, "and I believe that unemployed people, in general, are concerned that the government's concentration on the republican issue since the election is disguising or diverting attention from the central issue of the day — unemployment. We are concerned that the government will attempt to use this issue, for some time, to do just that."
At the Evatt Foundation dinner, Keating acknowledged that high-sounding phrases "ring hollow when more than 10% of the work force is unemployed".
"The principle aim of this government", he said, "will be to reduce the number of unemployed Australians. And so long as there is a pool of unemployed, of whatever dimension, the aim must be to decrease the amount of time people are spending in it."
Southall dismisses this as platitude. "I think Keating's words are empty", he says. "I'm sure
that the unemployed of this country do not believe a word that comes out of Mr Keating's mouth about job creation. Mr Hawke was elected in the early 1980s on a policy of Jobs Jobs Jobs!
"They've had 10 years to implement that policy and, in fact, things have got worse. The unemployed have absolutely no reason to believe them at all and every reason to believe that what they're saying is just expedient lies for political purposes. Whether the question of the republic is symbolic or not, I certainly believe it allows Keating and the government to put up a smokescreen to hide the tragedy of unemployment and the growing tragedy of the working poor."
The Wollongong Out of Workers do not see enterprise bargaining as any solution to unemployment.
"We believe that job shedding and job destruction will continue under enterprise bargaining and that wage rates will be pushed lower and lower. The permanent pool of unemployed will be kept there by government and big business policy to enable employers and governments to force wages down even further. We see enterprise bargaining as being not about creating jobs but rather about forcing wages down."
Unemployment is also the main issue facing Australia's migrant communities, especially women and people from non-English speaking backgrounds says Paula Abood, employment training project officer with the Immigrant Women's Speakout Association.
"There are very high levels of unemployment in many of our communities, she told Green Left. "Unemployment is still one of the biggest barriers to equal and active participation in this society.
"We see a lot of discrimination in the labour market. Most women from non-English speaking backgrounds who come to see me complain that they feel they have been discriminated against, on the basis of race, sex, age or all three. Employers tell people they have no local experience, or say 'Why should we employ you if local women can't find work?'"
Abood believes the debate on an Australian republic
could have progressive outcomes if it took up the real issues for a culturally diverse society.
"Non-English speaking background people have always played a very large role in the economic, cultural and social life of this country, but we have been pretty much excluded from the political process and the decision making, and this applies doubly to women in our communities. This debate can be about who is Australian, looking at our history and at the participation of immigrants."
But, she warns, debates on such issues have had a tendency to become racist attacks in the past, especially when the platitudes are over with and the issues becomes more concrete, such as particular federal immigration policies.
"Whenever a debate about immigration takes place, there is always an element of racism that goes with it", she says. "It's usually about non-English speaking background and Asian immigration. It's not usually about immigration policy as such."
The choice of the Evatt Foundation function for Keating's nation-building speech has interesting overtones. Clearly both the tone of the speech and the political history of the venue were attempts to claim a mantle of social justice, democracy and kinder, gentler values for Keating, for the Labor Party and for the Federal Republic of Australia.
Socialist activist Pat Brewer, of the Democratic Socialist Party, says that by announcing the new committee at an Evatt Foundation function Keating was "presenting himself as prime minister of a united Labor Party, with the support of such people as Tom Uren, who has in the past been very vocal on the left on a whole range of social issues, including opposition to Australian involvement in both the Vietnam War and the Gulf War.
"Keating is now trying to say the Labor Party are united behind my leadership", says Brewer. "He is big on symbolism."
Brewer believes socialists and progressive activists should take part in the debate, and not permit its
terms to be dictated by Keating, the ALP or the mass media.
"I think the debate over Australia becoming a republic is important, as long as it has some content, but it is not the most important debate in Australian politics today. There are many economic, political and social questions which are of far greater importance. If we are just talking about the symbols of republicanism, with no social content, with no discussion of the type of society we have and the way it's structured, then it's not important.
"The debate at present is pretty top-down. It involves mainly 'eminent persons' and politicians. But I think it touches a chord amongst ordinary working people. I think the left should take the opportunity to participate in this debate and to put the real content across".
The newly appointed leader of the Australian Democrats, Senator Cheryl Kernot, is critical of Keating's "minimalist" position on the republic, calling it a "cop-out". She believes that the debate around the republic is an opportunity for a broader discussion of changes to the constitution and to the Australian political system, especially the question of prior occupation of the country by indigenous people.
"We should take the opportunity of the republican debate to at least talk about these things", says Kernot. "If we come back to the minimalist position because that's all we can cope with, then I'll be disappointed but I'll accept that."
Kernot is particularly concerned that the constitutional provisions by which Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam Labor government in 1975 should be changed.
"I support a republic", she said, "and I don't want 1975 to ever happen again".