Manipulating Mabo
The New Right has trundled out its old warhorses — Western Mining managing director Hugh Morgan and academic Geoffrey Blainey — once again, signalling the start of yet another reactionary campaign. In speeches to the centenary conference of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Morgan and Blainey launched a new scare around possible Aboriginal land rights claims arising from the High Court's June 1992 Mabo decision.
Blainey said that the mining industry has to vigorously defend itself against the concerns raised by Aboriginal and environment groups, lest these groups succeed in "stopping mining", "lowering the standard of living for all Australians, including the Aborigines" and plunging Australia deeper into debt. And Morgan warned that the Keating government was jeopardising prosperity by promoting policies of separatism and "black suffering, white guilt", implicit — in his opinion — in the Mabo decision.
Their attack tries to exploit an irrational fear, based on ignorance, that Aboriginal land rights may threaten the homes and livelihood of the majority of Australians. A recent Time survey showed that 69% of Australians haven't heard of the Mabo decision, let alone understood what it was. This indicates fertile ground for scare campaigns.
Too few people realise that while the High Court finally dismissed the legal fiction of terra nullius in the Mabo case and recognised pre-existing "native title", it also ruled that such title is extinguished by the granting of freehold, leasehold or even the reservation of Crown lands for other purposes. Further, a majority of the judges ruled that extinguishing of native title did not give rise to any right to compensation.
There will be some legal consequences from the Mabo decision, but the Keating government, the opposition and even the mining industry know that a significant extension of Aboriginal rights will not flow automatically. Australian Mining Industry Council assistant director Geoffrey Ewing has declared he does not expect the Mabo decision to have a dramatic effect on the mining industry.
However, the mining lobby has never let the facts stand in the way of propaganda. Early in the life of the Hawke Labor government, a mining lobby campaign (run along the lines of Morgan and Blainey's latest outburst) blocked national land rights legislation.
The Keating government too has an interest in manipulating public perceptions of the Mabo decision. It wants to hide the essentially bipartisan response to Mabo, which — as deputy opposition leader William Wooldridge has admitted — is to minimise its practical implications by new legislation, if necessary. It wants to use Mabo to string along Aboriginal people and their sympathisers in a dragged out and probably fruitless "reconciliation process". Finally, it wants to deliver to big business its promise to fast-track major resource projects by overriding environmental concerns and