Social Justice Report 1998 © 1999 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be directed to the Manager, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 1042. ISSN 1321-11 Contents Foreword 1 Introduction: A Handful of Soil 2 Chapter 1: The Aftermarth for Indigenous People 13 Chapter 2: Non-Indigenous Community Response 27 Chapter 3: Church Responses 48 Chapter 4: Government Responses to the Recommendations of Bringing Them Home 53 Appendix 1: Letters to the Editor 83 Appendix 2: Selected Inventory of Apologies and National Sorry Day Events 89 Appendix 3: Text of Sorry Day Statement 92 Appendix 4: Summary of Governments’ Responses to Recommendations 94 Foreword This report presents various responses to Bringing Them Home, the Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. This is not done to re-open the substance of the Inquiry, its findings or the basis of its recommendations. The objective is to record the diverse range of responses and the perspectives they illustrate. The publication of Bringing Them Home had a marked impact on the Australian community. The ensuing public debate was sustained and intense. It stimulated the expression of views reflecting contemporary attitudes and values which directly and indirectly affect the circumstances of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. These attitudes and values will critically affect our potential for reconciliation. We must attempt to understand the full range of opinion: if we cannot allow the sincerity of competing views, no matter how much we disagree with them, then we have very little prospect of constructive engagement. Our challenge is to bring a more balanced appreciation of our past and, importantly, a more cohesive view of our future. Considering the responses to Bringing Them Home provides us with an opportunity to understand how a genuine and just reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians may be advanced. 2 Introduction: A Handful of Soil The removal of the children from Wave Hill by MacRobertson Miller aircraft was accompanied by distressing scenes the like of which I wish never to experience again. The engines of the ‘plane are not stopped at Wave Hill and the noise combined with the strangeness of an aircraft only accentuated the grief and fear of the children, resulting in near-hysteria in two of them. I am convinced that the news of my action at Wave Hill preceded me to other stations, resulting in the children being taken away prior to my arrival. I endeavoured to assuage the grief of the mothers by taking photographs of each of the children prior to their departure and these have been distributed among them. Also a dress length was given (to) the five mothers. Gifts of sweets to the children helped to break down a lot of their fear and I feel that removal by vehicle would have been effected without any fuss. Report from Northern Territory Patrol Officer, 23 December 1949.1 Wave Hill Station was built on a pastoral lease granted over the land of the Gurindgji people. On 23 August 1966, about 17 years after the children were removed from Wave Hill, the Gurindji and others walked off the property in support of the payment of wages to Aboriginal stockmen: $25.00 a week. They established a settlement at Wattie Creek, known as Daguragu, and the strike grew to a claim for their traditional land within the Wave Hill Station lease. In 1966 Aboriginal people in Australia were deprived of many of the most basic rights. The doctrine of ‘terra nullius’ had clear-felled Aboriginal entitlement to their traditional estates throughout the country and the social Darwinian beliefs which underpinned that doctrine continued to shape official policy and the treatment of Aboriginal people. The policy was one of assimilation. The exercise and enjoyment of human rights by Indigenous Australians was effectively conditional on the removal or abandonment of their distinct culture and identity. At the beginning of 1966 the Cattle Station Industry (Northern Territory) Award of 1951 prescribed minimum conditions and terms of employment for employees on cattle stations in the Northern Territory. Aboriginal people were excluded from its operation. Aboriginal stockmen were treated as wards of the state under the ‘protection’ of the Crown. The terms and conditions of their employment were prescribed under the 1953 Wards’ Employment Ordinance. In 1966 the lowest ward’s wage was about one-fifth of the Award minimum for whites: it was less than half the unemployment benefit then payable to other Australians.2 In March 1966 the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission upheld an application to extend the protection of the Award to Aboriginal workers. The application was made by the Northern Australian Workers Union. No Aboriginal witnesses were called to give evidence. The Commission accepted the unchallenged evidence of pastoralists that ‘at least a significant proportion of the Aboriginals employed on cattle stations on the Northern Territory is retarded by tribal and cultural reasons from appreciating in full the concept of work’.3 The Commission further accepted that, if equal wages were granted to Aboriginal workers, many would lose their jobs, displaced by white workers. However, this consequential unemployment was not regarded as blatant racial discrimination. Rather it was seen as an advantage. It would further government policy by encouraging Aboriginal people to leave their traditional lands on cattle stations to enter government ‘settlements’ or church ‘missions’. 1 MacDonald, R., Between Two Worlds: The Commonwealth Government and the removal of children of part descent in the Northern Territory, IAD Press, 1995, p. 55. 2 Report of the Aboriginal Land Commissioner (Toohey J.) on the Land Claim to Daguragu Station, November 1981, par 31. 3 (1966) 113 C.A.R. 651, p. 663. 3 If, therefore, as a result of our decision substantial numbers of Aborigines moved to settlements or missions it is our view that the policy of assimilation and integration will be assisted rather than hindered. Those Aborigines who move will be those who are now having the greatest difficulty in understanding the concept of work and fitting into our economic community whilst those who remain will be the most advanced and therefore the easier to assimilate on the station properties.4 In the view of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission the exclusion of Aboriginal people from equal protection under the Award was contrary to ‘overwhelming industrial justice’. There can be little doubt that the Commission’s judgement was well intentioned and based on a determination to advance the interests of Aboriginal people. It was cast however within a framework of values that excluded the views of Aboriginal people themselves. The real impact of ‘dislocation ... to the Aborigines’ was simply not perceived, save in terms of their assimilation and what others thought was good for them. The Commission’s appreciation of the impact of its decision on pastoralists was not so remote. The extension of protection under the Award and the payment of equal wages was delayed by three years to ‘give the pastoralists an opportunity to consider the future of their Aboriginal employees and to make arrangements for their replacement by white labour if necessary’5. This episode in the story of the Gurindji people draws out many perennial issues concerning the values and the complex dynamics that shape the inter-relationship of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The events at Daguragu are located in a precise time, in a precise location, with particular actors: but these events also hold an emblematic quality. They embody general themes and forces which have permeated Australian history and which remain active today. The process, reasoning and application of the decision in the Equal Wage Case also reveals the potential distance between the perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The values and assumptions which shape laws, policies and practices directed at Aboriginal people bear no necessary relationship with the interests of Aboriginal people as they understand and experience them. No Aboriginal voice was heard in the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission’s proceedings. Indigenous interests were interpreted by others. Even the positive recognition of the right to equal wages was undercut by its practical application. The right to equal pay was not protected by a corresponding right to equality of employment. The collateral damage caused by the decision and the impact of consequential unemployment was viewed only from the vantagepoint of furthering government policy. While relieved from the specific paternalism of payment under the Wards’ Ordinance the wider effect of the decision was considered within a broader paternalism of what others thought to be in the best interests of Aboriginal people. The actual implementation of the decision was assessed primarily from the perspective of its impact on the interests of pastoralists. The exercise and enjoyment of the human rights of Indigenous Australians remained a sub-set of government policy and the vested interests of others. The story of Daguragu illustrates another factor which continues to exert a powerful influence over the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. There is a direct connection between past events and the present. Justice today requires specific redress for the continuing effects of past discriminatory treatment. This is not merely a point about divergent historical perspectives: what has been the experience of Indigenous people and what has been the experience of other Australians. An account of Australian history to include fully the reality of Indigenous experience is essential to a common understanding of the Australian story.