7
After a relaxing (and much needed) break away from work and away from computers and netstuffs, I'm back. To start the year off I'm posting an article written by George Megalogenis for The Age. I'm not one for posting other peoples pieces in place of my own, but I felt this article was well worth it.
No more mistakes on reconciliation
THERE are 20,000 more indigenous Australians than there are Tasmanians - 480,000 v 460,000. The last federal election reminded us which voters have the greater pull.
Just as intriguing is the headcount between first citizen and immigrant. Indigenous Australians outnumber all but one of our overseas-born groups, namely those from the UK. Our Aboriginal ranks are double those of the Italian-born Australian, triple those of the Greek-born Australian and about 100,000 more prevalent than those of the New Zealand-born Australian.
These comparisons are worth bearing in mind as John Howard embarks on his third attempt in six years to secure what he once termed "true reconciliation". They illustrate the role that politics and the public have played in neglecting our first citizens. The way to appreciate this is through the window of wogdom.
Australians once saw immigrants as men viewed their wives: someone to cook for them. But as each foreign wave over-achieved and was accepted by the community, the definition of what it meant to be an Australian changed along with the menu. Yet we have never paid indigenous Australians the same compliment of helping to shape the national character.
The only level that white is prepared to engage with black is through art. We don't eat their food or learn their language. We certainly don't know them or what it means to be an indigenous person in the way that we live alongside and understand what it means to be continental or Asian. It might seem a trite observation, but it goes to the heart of the paradox of Australia - a nation open to all comers, except those who were here all along. Even the most recent Muslim arrivals - the once-demonised Afghan and Iraqi refugees detained on Nauru and Manus Island and now resettled in the bush - happen to feel more welcome here than many of our first citizens.
The Prime Minister is at the apex of his powers, with a government majority in the Senate from July1 next year, and has nominated reconciliation as a priority for his fourth term. Hopefully, he will have learned a lesson or two from the last time he had effective control of the Senate, from August 1996 to May 1999. Back then, Howard valued the voters from the nation's smallest state above all others - black or white, poor or rich.
"We were afraid Tasmania was going to sink under the weight of all those dollars," one government insider said this week as he recalled the days when Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine held the balance of power in the Senate.
Howard understood Harradine's hip pocket. But Harradine found Howard harder to motivate on matters on race.
A reminder of how the Howard-Harradine Senate operated was the contrast between the part sale of Telstra in 1996 and the Wik native title debate in 1998. Harradine voted for privatisation in exchange for, among other things, a $250 million telecommunications fund. The theory behind this pot of money was to give the bush a leg-up to the information age with phone towers and internet connections. In practice, it was one of the greatest examples of pork barrelling of the 1990s. Tasmania contained 2.5 per cent of the national population and 3.9 per cent of all Australians living outside capital cities. But it pocketed 23 per cent of the so-called Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. NSW, meanwhile, had 35 per cent of the nation's bush dwellers but received only 15 per cent of the dough. Perhaps this might explain why the National Party's last two leaders, Tim Fischer and John Anderson, couldn't get a mobile phone signal at their respective properties in southern and northern NSW until recently.
The punchline of this period is what happened when the topic switched from satellite dishes to native title: Harradine suddenly lost his potency. He wanted more for indigenous Australians out of the Wik legislation. But Howard would not bend. So it was Harradine who blinked. In explaining his reasons for passing the compromise bill, the Tasmanian senator made what remains one of the most telling put-downs of Howard's first term in office: "We were heading headlong into a divisive double-dissolution election which would have torn the fabric of our society and set race relations back 40 or 50 years."
A race-based election, which Howard risked losing, was avoided in favour of a GST-based election, which he won.
Howard now cites the Wik debate as one of his great regrets because he let the argument drag on too long. "I should have spent less time on it," he told Paul Kelly this month. This does not quite match his apology for his anti-Asian immigration comments of 1988, but it is a start.
What it does reinforce, though, is the double standard at the heart of Australian politics. Our system deals with disadvantage via the low road of the lifestyle subsidy. Fine, in the short run, if you are a Tasmanian logger or a Queensland sugar farmer. The cash tends to exceed your immediate need when marginal seats are at stake. Not so good if you are a white single mother with minimal job prospects, because welfare cements your place at the bottom of the income ladder.
And if you happen to be living and dying in Third World conditions or even if you are comfortably off but still want something else for your people - say, an apology for their past mistreatment - forget about it.
All politics has had to offer black Australia is a taxpayer-funded ticket to exclusion. Unlike the handouts that go to white Australia, the black cash has not carried the pretence of empathy or willingness to engage. At best it has been charity, at worst guilt money.
Yet white Australia could confront this contradiction only after indigenous leaders began their campaign to end welfarism. By any definition, this is a pox on white Australia. It marks a failure of vision, not just from Howard but also from Labor and the media, the last continuing to traffic in just two black stereotypes - the petrol sniffer and the sporting hero.
Consider the big economic story of the past two decades. It was the politicians, assisted by an informed press gallery, who made the case for removing most of white Australia from the teat of tariff protection. The system didn't wait for the last blue-collar worker to lose their job before acting.
But on reconciliation Howard seems to equate leadership with waiting for his opponents to give up. Imagine playing this game of chicken with any of the established immigrant lobbies.
This is not to discount Howard's genuine commitment to reconciliation. The worry is that he, like most white Australians, still can't grasp the idea that we should treat black Australia as an equal as a first step to improving the national dialogue. One simple way of showing his commitment would be to go on a listening tour of indigenous Australians at every level, from the remote communities to the cities.
Howard knows he must devote significantly more time in this term than he did in the past to building a consensus for reconciliation.
The mistake the reform aficionados are making at the moment is to see the Government's Senate numbers as Howard's chance to get cracking at policies from industrial relations to media ownership. These jobs do not require 24/7 micro-managing from Howard. The debates are largely over and can surely be delegated to the relevant ministers.
Howard has a rare opportunity to operate beyond the short attention span of the media and electoral cycles. He should use this historic moment to connect the one piece missing in our national fabric - our first citizens.
© The Australian 24.12.04
I also recommend checking out Destiny Deacon's exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, Walk and don't look black. More to come later.
No more mistakes on reconciliation
THERE are 20,000 more indigenous Australians than there are Tasmanians - 480,000 v 460,000. The last federal election reminded us which voters have the greater pull.
Just as intriguing is the headcount between first citizen and immigrant. Indigenous Australians outnumber all but one of our overseas-born groups, namely those from the UK. Our Aboriginal ranks are double those of the Italian-born Australian, triple those of the Greek-born Australian and about 100,000 more prevalent than those of the New Zealand-born Australian.
These comparisons are worth bearing in mind as John Howard embarks on his third attempt in six years to secure what he once termed "true reconciliation". They illustrate the role that politics and the public have played in neglecting our first citizens. The way to appreciate this is through the window of wogdom.
Australians once saw immigrants as men viewed their wives: someone to cook for them. But as each foreign wave over-achieved and was accepted by the community, the definition of what it meant to be an Australian changed along with the menu. Yet we have never paid indigenous Australians the same compliment of helping to shape the national character.
The only level that white is prepared to engage with black is through art. We don't eat their food or learn their language. We certainly don't know them or what it means to be an indigenous person in the way that we live alongside and understand what it means to be continental or Asian. It might seem a trite observation, but it goes to the heart of the paradox of Australia - a nation open to all comers, except those who were here all along. Even the most recent Muslim arrivals - the once-demonised Afghan and Iraqi refugees detained on Nauru and Manus Island and now resettled in the bush - happen to feel more welcome here than many of our first citizens.
The Prime Minister is at the apex of his powers, with a government majority in the Senate from July1 next year, and has nominated reconciliation as a priority for his fourth term. Hopefully, he will have learned a lesson or two from the last time he had effective control of the Senate, from August 1996 to May 1999. Back then, Howard valued the voters from the nation's smallest state above all others - black or white, poor or rich.
"We were afraid Tasmania was going to sink under the weight of all those dollars," one government insider said this week as he recalled the days when Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine held the balance of power in the Senate.
Howard understood Harradine's hip pocket. But Harradine found Howard harder to motivate on matters on race.
A reminder of how the Howard-Harradine Senate operated was the contrast between the part sale of Telstra in 1996 and the Wik native title debate in 1998. Harradine voted for privatisation in exchange for, among other things, a $250 million telecommunications fund. The theory behind this pot of money was to give the bush a leg-up to the information age with phone towers and internet connections. In practice, it was one of the greatest examples of pork barrelling of the 1990s. Tasmania contained 2.5 per cent of the national population and 3.9 per cent of all Australians living outside capital cities. But it pocketed 23 per cent of the so-called Regional Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. NSW, meanwhile, had 35 per cent of the nation's bush dwellers but received only 15 per cent of the dough. Perhaps this might explain why the National Party's last two leaders, Tim Fischer and John Anderson, couldn't get a mobile phone signal at their respective properties in southern and northern NSW until recently.
The punchline of this period is what happened when the topic switched from satellite dishes to native title: Harradine suddenly lost his potency. He wanted more for indigenous Australians out of the Wik legislation. But Howard would not bend. So it was Harradine who blinked. In explaining his reasons for passing the compromise bill, the Tasmanian senator made what remains one of the most telling put-downs of Howard's first term in office: "We were heading headlong into a divisive double-dissolution election which would have torn the fabric of our society and set race relations back 40 or 50 years."
A race-based election, which Howard risked losing, was avoided in favour of a GST-based election, which he won.
Howard now cites the Wik debate as one of his great regrets because he let the argument drag on too long. "I should have spent less time on it," he told Paul Kelly this month. This does not quite match his apology for his anti-Asian immigration comments of 1988, but it is a start.
What it does reinforce, though, is the double standard at the heart of Australian politics. Our system deals with disadvantage via the low road of the lifestyle subsidy. Fine, in the short run, if you are a Tasmanian logger or a Queensland sugar farmer. The cash tends to exceed your immediate need when marginal seats are at stake. Not so good if you are a white single mother with minimal job prospects, because welfare cements your place at the bottom of the income ladder.
And if you happen to be living and dying in Third World conditions or even if you are comfortably off but still want something else for your people - say, an apology for their past mistreatment - forget about it.
All politics has had to offer black Australia is a taxpayer-funded ticket to exclusion. Unlike the handouts that go to white Australia, the black cash has not carried the pretence of empathy or willingness to engage. At best it has been charity, at worst guilt money.
Yet white Australia could confront this contradiction only after indigenous leaders began their campaign to end welfarism. By any definition, this is a pox on white Australia. It marks a failure of vision, not just from Howard but also from Labor and the media, the last continuing to traffic in just two black stereotypes - the petrol sniffer and the sporting hero.
Consider the big economic story of the past two decades. It was the politicians, assisted by an informed press gallery, who made the case for removing most of white Australia from the teat of tariff protection. The system didn't wait for the last blue-collar worker to lose their job before acting.
But on reconciliation Howard seems to equate leadership with waiting for his opponents to give up. Imagine playing this game of chicken with any of the established immigrant lobbies.
This is not to discount Howard's genuine commitment to reconciliation. The worry is that he, like most white Australians, still can't grasp the idea that we should treat black Australia as an equal as a first step to improving the national dialogue. One simple way of showing his commitment would be to go on a listening tour of indigenous Australians at every level, from the remote communities to the cities.
Howard knows he must devote significantly more time in this term than he did in the past to building a consensus for reconciliation.
The mistake the reform aficionados are making at the moment is to see the Government's Senate numbers as Howard's chance to get cracking at policies from industrial relations to media ownership. These jobs do not require 24/7 micro-managing from Howard. The debates are largely over and can surely be delegated to the relevant ministers.
Howard has a rare opportunity to operate beyond the short attention span of the media and electoral cycles. He should use this historic moment to connect the one piece missing in our national fabric - our first citizens.
© The Australian 24.12.04
I also recommend checking out Destiny Deacon's exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, Walk and don't look black. More to come later.
posted by dreamonblackgirl at 12:12 PM
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