Recognise

Ok, so I really struggled this week to come up with a topic, so if this post seems a little convoluted, you can probably blame it on my exam-brain. In any case, it is incredibly tempting to focus entirely on topical, news-item discussions – especially given the current speed at which news items have been surfacing, then fading to irrelevance, before again re-surfacing etc. As such, I think it is often important to take a look more broadly at issues which tend to simmer under the surface and rarely gain much media traction, despite their objective importance. This is why today I’ve decided to concentrate primarily on the fight for constitutional recognition of Australia’s indigenous peoples.

Needless to say, Australia has had a long and turbulent history with regards to the recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in all respects. Prime examples include the failure to recognise indigenous voting rights up until the 1967 referendum and the failure to recognise native title rights until 1992 through the Mabo case. These policies of recognition finally made way to right the vast majority of the ship in the direction of reconciliation and broader recognition of indigenous Australia.  

In more recent times, you could single out our parliament’s failure to officially acknowledge and issue an apology for the Stolen Generations until as late as 2008. In contrast to the previous examples, this recognition was purely a no-strings-attached apology, designed as a purely symbolic admission of guilt for the mistakes of past government policy. I must further emphasise the point here that this recognition did not encompass the positive advancements in policy attained by earlier policies, but merely sought to apologise for the negative policy choices of past governments.

As this issue rose to contention in the mid-2000s, and prior to the apology being made by the newly elected government in 2008, then PM John Howard set out his reasons for not issuing an apology as:

1. Not wanting current generations to take responsibility of the actions of previous generations
2. Debate over the consistency of children removal and policy application
3. The apology is all symbolism and no substance, with it having little practical implications for the concerning gap between indigenous Australia and the rest of Australia.

Former PM John Howard citing his reasons for opposing The Apology

Say what you will about Howard and his policies, he definitely displayed courage of conviction in his positioning and reasoning. In spite of this, I would definitely take issue with the first two reasons he gives, particularly the first reason. I believe the “principle” of not showing accountability for past actions by previous generations is a backwards policy designed purely to shelve blame and ignore social responsibilities. Such a policy forgets the fact that the government is not just a collection of individuals governing, but a projection of Australia’s populous. Absolving the Australian Government of responsibility for the Stolen Generations would be akin to absolving the German Government of responsibility for the Holocaust, or the American Government for the Atomic Bombings etc. Maintaining sufficient accountability is a core tenet of a right and just system of government.

Despite this, I believe Howard’s third point holds a degree of validity. In secondary college, our school motto was Facta non Verba, which translates to Deeds not Words. Howard was contending that, without proper supportive action aimed at resolving major issues within indigenous communities, the issuance of an apology would be simply lip service and would hold little validity. Howard was committed in this respect, instituting “The Intervention” into the Northern Territory’s indigenous communities; a policy which has both been widely praised and widely condemned. In any case, as with any major shift in policy position, it illustrates the importance of supporting a position with strong and meaningful action, rather than just token gestures and piecemeal offerings.

Bringing this back to the constitutional recognition at hand, there have been many stalls in the process of pushing for a referendum to decide on indigenous recognition within the constitution. Interestingly (and somewhat surprisingly), the first push towards this recognition came from Howard himself in 1999, who suggested the implementation of a preamble at the start of the constitution recognising Australia’s first peoples. However, progress has stalled recently, with some likening the movement to being just a small “post-it note on the fridge” of the wider parliamentary agenda, indicating the lack of real concern or opinion either way over this issue.

Indeed, with the Abbott government recently reneging on their promise to take a referendum on recognition to the next election, it still remains to be seen if Australians will collectively ever care enough to push for this referendum, given the largely symbolic nature of it. While it is my opinion that it is a necessary step forward for reconciliation and community re-engagement with Australia’s first peoples, many still fail to recognise the importance of recognition, and much like in previous decades, deny accountability for the actions of others. This has to change in order for true progress to be made in Australian society.

For more information about the campaign for constitutional recognition, see www.recognise.org.au

#J.Nic#