LAUNCH OF THE NATIVE TITLE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTS
Speech by Mr Brian Butler, Commissioner ATSIC
Tandanya
Friday, July 19
The two reports launched in Adelaide today provide a scorecard on how Australian governments are meeting their obligations to ensure that Australia's Indigenous peoples can fully exercise their rights and interests.
As we have heard, both these reports show that, yet again, Australian governments are failing.
Poverty, low standards of education and high rates of unemployment remain endemic and at the same time the Aboriginal population is growing much faster than than the general Australian population.
In addition, the Aboriginal population of Australia is overwhelmingly young and this means that the lack of action by Governments in key areas is condemning yet another generation of our young Indigenous people to the scrapheap.
So-called 'practical' reconciliation is only one small part of a huge task which lies at the feet of this nation.
The Social Justice and Native Title Reports we are discussing today are a wake up call to Australia.
The Federal Government's failure to deal with reconciliation issues in good faith is alarming and deserves full scrutiny by the Parliament on behalf of Australians.
We have a national government which is unable to respond in a meaningful way to reconciliation and social justice agendas.
It will not allow native title rights and interests to be fully recognised and exercised.
And this is because it cannot accept our inherent rights as the first peoples of this continent.
But, let's put this into a State context.
The history of Native Title in SA has been far from happy.
The former Liberal State Government displayed a distinctly Jekyll and Hyde attitude to Native Title in this State.
In Parliament it argued for State legislative changes to further restrict the Native Title rights of Indigenous South Australians.
It took a very convenient, narrow, technical position in the whole Native Title debate and sought to pacify the mining and pastoral lobby groups while paying lip service to its moral and legal obligations to its own Aboriginal citizens.
Up until late last year the State Government was also asserting in the De Rose Hill court case that an Act of the English Parliament in 1834, the South Australia Act, had extinguished native title throughout the Colony of South Australia.
At the same time it was arguing its case in the courts for blanket extinguishment, the State Government was putting out press statements saying that litigation was not the way to go and that we should be looking at agreements!
But one consequence of the State taking its blanket extinguishment position in the De Rose Hill trial was that the State was not able to agree to the existence of Native Title as part of any Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) negotiations.
Early this year ATSIC was informed by the State Government that it had dropped its blanket extinguishment argument.
However, up until the election of the Rann Labor Government, the argument was still being put that South Australian Pastoral Leases have extinguished Native Title and replaced it with a right of access.
It is to be hoped that the new State Labor Government will put an end to this Jekll and Hyde approch to Native Title negotiations in SA.
The way is now clear for the State to agree to the existence of Native Title (although still perhaps not on pastoral leases) and I sincerely hope this will be the case.
But the battle will not end there.
Changes to Aboriginal Heritage protection laws and legislation loom as the next big battle for the rights of Indigenous citizens of this State.
Consultations and meetings are currently being held but I am concerned that Aboriginal people be given adequate time to consider the proposals being put forward so they can have meaningful input into any new legislation which may be put to Parliament.
Again, I am sure there will be plenty of consultation with mining and pastoral groups and I urge the Government to ensure there is an equity of process for Indigenous citizens right across the State.
Without the proper recognition of our culture and our inherent rights there can be no meaningful reconciliation.
ATSIC's position on these matters is quite clear.
After the Mabo decision was handed down, the then Federal Government (the Keating Government) responded with three major policy initiatives.
They were:
- The introduction of legislation to establish a National Aboriginal and Islander Land Fund and;
- The creation an Indigenous Land Corporation to acquire and manage land for dispossessed Indigenous groups.
At the same time, it committed itself to further social justice measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and sought policy responses from ATSIC and other major Indigenous organisations.
As a result ATSIC produced a threshold report, Recognition, Rights and Reform.
Its release followed exhaustive consultation with Indigenous communities.
The report set out draft principles for Indigenous social justice to guide all future relationships between the Commonwealth and other spheres of Government and Indigenous peoples and clear benchmarks.
Acceptance of these principles, it said, would guide the major structural changes recommended in the report.
These included:
- Constitutional recognition,
- Regional autonomy,
- The negotiation of a Treaty or comparable document,
- Compensation,
- Improved service delivery,
- Recognition of the social and cultural diversity of Indigenous peoples,
- Protection of rights, and
- Opportunities for economic development.
It called for institutional, structural, collaborative, cooperative reform.
To quote from the report:
"It is about a fundamental shift from welfare to basic rights, from dependence to autonomy, from government assistance to power."
Central to the social justice agenda is self-determination.
The report makes interesting reading in the context of today's mainstream media debate on Indigenous Affairs over the alleged failure of the policies of self-determination, particularly in relation to family violence and substance abuse.
The reality is self determination has never been properly embraced by most governments.
The report talked of the need to achieve full social justice by 2001.
It was fully endorsed by the Board of Commissioners when released in the mid-nineties but was never adopted by Government as the third tier response to Mabo.
Given the huge unmet need amongst our people we obviously feel that this is an appropriate time to revisit Recognition, Rights and Reform.
Recognition, Rights and Reform is now in need of updating but the headline agenda it set out has not changed.
But it's hard to generate a rights debate in a sea of 'info-tainment.'
For instance, there is little discussion of an agreement, or treaty, between us and I want to go on record as saying that I am a strong supporter of the need for Treaty.
In closing I would like to make some observations about the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
After 339 recommendations, $400 million allocated to implementing them, and the passage of 11 years, the deaths continue.
In the 10 year-period examined by the Royal Commission, 99 Indigenous people died in prison or police custody.
In the 10 years after the Commission, 115 Indigenous people died in custody, and a further 30 Indigenous people died during police operations, many of them young people in high-speed car chases.
Eighty-one per cent of these people died in jails.
Aboriginal people die in custody in high numbers because they are in custody in high numbers.
This was a key finding of the Royal Commission and has been repeated constantly since.
Bringing down the numbers of people dying in custody requires doing something about the incarceration rate of Aboriginal people.
I was, therefore, profoundly dissapointed that the first Rann State budget released last week included a multi- million dollar estimate to provide more beds in prisons.
At the same time there were press statements that the Government would implement the Royal Commission recommendations in SA.
So what are we talking about here - more beds, more culturally appropriate prisons or are we talking about a wholistic approach to confront the real reasons which lie behind why so many of our people end up behind bars.
The Nunga Court in SA is a start in the right direction but so much more remains to be done.
In the face of this Indigenous Australians can only keep speaking the truth about what is done, and what is not done; and assess rhetoric against action and outcomes.
We must hold governments accountable; and keep saying these failures are not right - they are not good for our people, and they are not good for our country.
Thankyou.
Last updated 26 July 2002
