Aboriginal Leaders in Australia angered by Conservative Government's approach to Indigenous Affairs by Indigenous Australians 11:51am 17th Apr, 2004   17th April, 2004    Aboriginal leaders have thumbed their noses at the Australian Government's proposal to appoint an advisory body of eminent indigenous Australians to replace the planned demise of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).    ATSIC was established in 1990 to allow Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to take part in decision-making processes on matters that affected them.    During its eight years in Government, the Liberal Conservative Government in Australia has fallen out with three successive ATSIC chairs - Lowitja O'Donoghue, Gatjil Djerrkura and Geoff Clark. Prime Minister John Howard has steadfastly refused to apologise to the "stolen generations" or offer any compensation for their sufferings. His government has consistently opposed Indigenous Land Rights and has sought to undermine the Reconciliation Movement.    Australian Democrats Senator Aiden Ridgeway said he would not encourage indigenous leaders to join the proposed advisory body "because clearly the Government's decision is one that's designed to divide indigenous people"... "Separate measures for indigenous Australians is not about apartheid, it is about recognising the scale of indigenous disadvantage and poverty and providing the extra resources to deal with that. " It's about building bridges to allow engagement on equal terms with the rest of Australia".    The Federal Government will have great difficulty finding anyone to join its planned new panel of Aboriginal leaders to replace the ATSIC board because advisory boards are "a waste of space," Patrick Dodson, the "father of reconciliation", has predicted.    "Some people will find the old trick of being rubbed on the head and 10 cents in the hand and roll the eyes for the master on an advisory body attractive," he said yesterday. "Most of the senior people who have had a long track record of doing business with governments as well as departments and trying to handle the rights of indigenous people in this country won't go anywhere near an advisory body."    Kimberley activist Peter Yu and Melbourne academic Marcia Langton are also opposed to the Howard style. Cape York leader Noel Pearson, who Mr Howard praised yesterday, has described the planned new Aboriginal affairs regime as "tokenistic" and is unlikely to participate.    The Human Rights Commission's indigenous social justice commissioner, Bill Jonas, said an appointed advisory board would ensure "that the government only has to talk to select indigenous people when it chooses to and only on issues that it wishes to engage."    The Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) says there will be a vacuum in Indigenous services after ATSIC is abolished. ACOSS president Andrew McCallum says without ATSIC, Indigenous people are left without a political voice. Mr McCallum says the Government should have waited until the review of ATSIC was finished before making the decision to axe the commission. Mr McCallum also says he does not want to see Indigenous affairs becoming a political football in the lead up to the election. "It isn't about governments or political leaders making political mileage out of Indigenous affairs," he said. "This is about Indigenous people having some self-determination about what their future should look like and we're not allowing that to happen the way things are going - I mean this Government is riding roughshod over Indigenous affairs."    The Uniting Church is concerned the abolition of ATSIC will be a big step backwards for Indigenous people. The national administrator of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Congress, Shayne Blackman, says the church is very disappointed by the Government's refusal to establish an alternative body. Reverend Blackman say countries with formal structures of Indigenous self-determination are achieving results. "The Indigenous Australians' median age of death is 53 years, with no improvement in this figure over the period of the Howard Government, which compares with 77 years for other Australians," he said. "The median age of death for Indigenous populations in nations where there is self-determining structures is higher and has improved. For instance, in New Zealand it's 59, Canada 65 and in the United States 63."    ATSIC leaders said those joining the body would be seen as Government lackeys and "Jackie Jackies". Inaugural ATSIC chairwoman Lowitja O'Donoghue, was stunned by Mr Howard's announcement to abolish ATSIC. "That is devastating," she said. "I know that ATSIC's been in a dire situation for a long time . . . but I would have preferred he in fact responded to the recommendations of the review rather than come down with a drastic decision like this. Ms O'Donoghue fears a return to the protest days of the '60s and '70s. "This will drive us back to the streets," she said. "It will drive Aboriginal people back to the days when they felt that was the only way to have their voice heard."    The Australian Labor Party's indigenous affairs spokesman Kerry O'Brien said the planned abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission had created a lot of concern in indigenous communities.    Historian Jackie Huggins - part of the three-person review of ATSIC that sparked the Government decision - said the axing of ATSIC "was contrary to our view"... "In no way would our review team be aligned with the abolition of ATSIC. It was not our intention," Ms Huggins said. "I didn't expect such a drastic situation might occur, with ATSIC being annihilated and abolished." Ms Huggins said that while opposing the scrapping of ATSIC her review had believed major reforms were needed.    The only Aboriginal member of Western Australia's Parliament, Carol Martin, said the decision to dismantle ATSIC took Australia back 30 years.    ATSIC's acting chairman Lionel Quartermaine accused the Howard Government of trying to "make ATSIC the scapegoat in a bid to win over the support of former One Nation voters".    "To believe that to abolish ATSIC is going to make every Aboriginal person in Australia get a better education, get a better health, and to have better housing, and a better standard of living won't happen". Mr Quartermaine said it was time Mr Howard and Opposition Leader Mark Latham came up with a bipartisan agreement on indigenous issues. "Until that happens, until true leadership (comes) from those two people we will always have these issues.Until they sit down at a table and say, `look we have to address health, education of indigenous people',...until that happens they can no longer blame and they should not blame other people for what's happening.    Alison Anderson, one of the board's most respected commissioners and its only woman, warned that the loss of an elected indigenous voice would herald a return to those violent days. "I'm not one to incite violence, but I think that there's a lot of people, Indigenous people that have been cornered. I mean, there's a lot of people in the streets, in the cities and in towns, people living in the creeks, people living without water, without electricity. And these people are being cornered, and these people will come out. And they'll come out in the only way that they know, and that's violence".    " I supported Labor's move to abolish the national body as long as it was replaced with something else that was democratic. ATSIC's name has been muddied so much by this government it's like a dog with fleas"..."This is a racist government that has just indicated how poorly it feels about indigenous people."    "Let's not forget that apartheid was invented in Australia, and this is a classic manoeuvre out of the book. Let's shut out the only recognised and democratically elected national and international voice. The aim of this Government is to knock ATSIC out so that we don't go and talk about the Aboriginal disadvantage in the UN and highlight the problems, the racist attitudes that a lot of non-Indigenous people have, and governments have towards Indigenous people in this country".    Prominent Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson says the Howard Government is making a terrible mistake by abolishing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and mainstreaming its functions. Mr Pearson says Prime Minister John Howard is taking Indigenous affairs back to an era which clearly failed. "This is complete folly. ATSIC was started up in 1990, the 20-years prior to that mainstreaming was the way in which services were delivered to Indigenous people and that produced failure," he said. Referring to the Advisory Body concept Mr Pearson said "What we need is in fact indigenous leaders, competent talented people, to take up responsibility for these problems, not be shunted sideways and made into token advisers to the government," Mr Pearson said.    Darren Godwell, chief executive of Queensland's Lumbu Foundation. "To go away from what was a democratically elected organisation back 30 years to when a non-indigenous minister or prime minister hand-picks a couple of happy, smiley faces, I think would be a step backwards."
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