Indigenous Australians and Violence – Some Answers

Australian indigenous leader Bess Nungarrayi Price has said, “We need to support those who tell the truth.” She has said this in respect to policy and programs relating to Aboriginal Australians. Dr Stephanie Jarrett, author of Liberating Aboriginal Australians from Violence, has long studied the ancient culture of Australia’s indigenous tribes. Her findings reveal a paternalism and violence which need to be faced as indigenous culture is modified with integration. Dr Gary Johns, former Labor MP and author of Aboriginal Self-Determination – The Whiteman’s Dream also supports indigenous policies that recognise any reform must accept an admission that behavioural problems must be confronted head-on. Stephanie Jarrett and Gary Johns addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 19 March 2013. 

ABORIGINAL POLICY – NOTES FOR AN INCOMING GOVERNMENT 

GARY JOHNS

 Tony Abbott’s address to The Sydney Institute on 15 March 2013 was devoted to Aboriginal policy. I applaud his intention to give Aboriginal policy priority in government. Tony will soon learn, however, that to give an area priority is to set high expectations of fulfillment.

Let us see if he is on the right path to fulfill those expectations.

Tony Abbott believes that Aborigines should receive an education and get a job, including a job not necessarily on “country”. Because of these beliefs, we can fairly and accurately label him an integrationist. Having chosen the path, what now matters is whether his policies can achieve the desired outcome.

He commenced by observing that, “From the very beginnings of British settlement, the health, education, employment and housing standards of Aboriginal people have fallen lamentably short of those of their fellow Australians.” He argued that, “This has been a constant through the eras of paternalism and exceptionalism, regardless of whether official policy was neglect, assimilation, integration or self-management.”

These observations fail to distinguish the fact that each policy has or had redeemable qualities, but that each failed or succeeded, or is failing because of the external conditions under which they operate.

For example, following European settlement new settlers were for generations hostile to, or neglectful of, but occasionally paternal towards Aborigines. These responses by the dominant society to Aborigines, at the time, were not exceptional. Given prevailing mores, they were about as a good a response to those who did not “fit in” as was possible.

The dominant settler society, however, was changing dramatically. In his recent book, The Better Angels of our Nature: a history of violence and humanity, Steven Pinker makes the point that Australian society (as part of the Western world) was becoming more civilised. It was becoming in so many ways, more tolerant of others and less tolerant of violence. The habits of people became less violent. Individuals exhibited greater self-control and were less tolerant of those who lacked self-control.

The opportunity for a better relationship between Aborigines and settlers came in the post WWII era. As the dominant society became more civilised and tolerant, it experimented with other paths for Aborigines. It was the perfect opportunity for Aboriginal integration. Indeed, many Aborigines did integrate, either by securing work and/or by marrying a non-Aborigine. By 1930, there were estimated to be fewer than 80,000 Aborigines in Australia. But there were many more who had married in, to identify as Aboriginal much later.These integrated Aborigines account for the majority. The dominant story of Aboriginal non-Aboriginal relations in Australia has, in fact, been one of integration.

Unfortunately, following WWII, in a post-colonial state-of-mind the prevailing policy fashion became exceptionalism or self-determination. These were applied to the minority of Aborigines, predominantly those living in remote Australia, and of course, full blood. As the exceptionalist policies – land rights, permits, land councils and welfare without obligation – started to fail, the rhetoric of encouraging “culture” became more strident. Culture became the sacred arena into which the Whiteman was forbidden to enter – the Hindmarsh Island secret-sacred women’s business comes to mind. Culture became the curtain behind which Aborigines did all manner of evil to Aborigines.

No fewer than five inquiries into Aboriginal child sexual abuse, conducted between 1999 and 2008, found considerable evidence of child sexual abuse by Aborigines and inappropriate sexual activity by Aboriginal children in remote communities. Each inquiry report recommended that Aborigines “re-engage” their culture. What an extraordinary outcome. Not only is it highly unlikely that any group can return to their culture, when the conditions which helped to create it have disappeared, in this case some thousands of years of isolation, but also because Aboriginal culture at its heart was the rule of old men over women. Women were regarded as chattels.

It would be repugnant, not to mention illegal, to return to Aboriginal culture. As I argued in my book, Aboriginal Self-Determination: the Whiteman’s dream, the prescription from these many inquiries was just plain wrong. But the issue is not only one of child sexual abuse. Hospitalisation and injury statistics make it clear that a very large proportion of Aborigines in remote communities live violent lives. The back-to-culture prescription ignores these horrible facts. The prescription persists because the policy elite has been too frightened to tell the truth: that to save children from violence, Aborigines have to integrate into the dominant society. Culture has been and remains the problem, not the solution.

The key issue is to determine policies by which Aborigines can find a way into the dominant society. This should not be difficult, because the largest number of Aborigines has already done so. They had the advantage, however, of knowing there was no way back. The dominant society was intolerant of difference, thereby in many respects, doing them a favour. By integrating, Aborigines changed. They became like the rest of the community, less violent, and less tolerant of violence.

Pinker makes the point that entire societies have learned self-restraint, have learned to pause before using violence. The creation of the nation state, and the Enlightenment and “gentle” commerce were keys to lessening violence, and these broad changes also changed individual behavior. Individuals learned self-restraint. They learned to conform to norms to be good.

In her book, Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence, my colleague Stephanie Jarrett, explored the conditions under which Aborigines could recover the virtue of self-control. Stephanie and I have concluded that the likelihood of people conforming to the norms to be good, and gaining the virtues of self-control are least likely on discrete Aboriginal communities. The so-called healing and pride effects of land rights and self-determination are weak medicine in the face of a badly behaving peer group.

Tony Abbott’s prescription

If Tony Abbott is to achieve his goal of Aboriginal integration, he must address the issue of bad behaviour and the circumstances under which the chances of changing such behaviour are maximised. After all, Noel Pearson’s Family Responsibilities Commission, in which he is, in effect, re-missionising his people, also aims to change behaviour. Pearson hopes to achieve his integration goal in situ. Tony Abbott refers to Noel Pearson’s concept of “orbits” where economic opportunity is not stymied by an Aboriginal person’s continuing attachment to traditional lands. I wish the Pearson experiment well. I also note that Aboriginal “traditional owners” in the Pilbara and Kimberley have left “country” for town and fly-in fly-out to the mines.

In this respect, Andrew Forrest and Warren Mundine have recently refined the Aboriginal employment strategies long operated by companies such as BHP and Rio Tinto by offering a guaranteed job placement to Aboriginal people ready to undergo six months training. Tony Abbott has promised to fund four trial sites to further test their model. This is well and good, but the Commonwealth will continue to build houses in the middle of nowhere. This policy provides a disincentive to leave for work. The Rio Tinto workers left their country to live in town. Housing, settlement and, by implication, education programs have to work with, not against the employment program. In addition, jobs within 26 designated northern townships through the $5 billion National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing program would not be necessary if the towns did not exist. In good conscience, there is no good reason these places exist other than they are historic remnants of the first contact and mission eras.

The question remains, where does the balance of incentives and effectiveness lie in staying or moving. In the race between waiting for the Whiteman to build a house and an economy for Aborigines, or getting out and chasing opportunity, surely getting out is more certain. Waiting for the Whiteman may well lead to generations of further disappointment. Moreover, it may well be impossible to change behaviour precisely because the Whiteman delivers the service. This, after all, has been occurring for three or more generations. While I respect the views of Helen Hughes at the CIS as to the importance of private property rights, the realpolitik is that Aborigines did not have well-defined areas, and to identify plots of land is not easy. Furthermore, Land Councils have, until very recently, done everything in their power to stop it. Most important, property in a worthless area is worthless. Many former farmers know this.

In his address Tony Abbott announced a number of other initiatives: 

• Indigenous affairs would be handled within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet;
• In addition to education in English, Aboriginal children would also receive after-normal-school-hours education in “high culture”;
• Acknowledgement of Aboriginal people in the Constitution;
• Give communities the capacity to use more-or-less-as-they-see-fit money from discontinued programs;
• Prime Minister and senior decision-makers to spend a week a year absorbed in the real life of Aboriginal people;
• On-the-spot fines, administered by truancy officers instead of, or in addition to, quarantining welfare payments as a way to enforce school attendance.

Each of these announcements must be subject to the simple question: will they cause people to change behavior for the better? If these changes are not in prospect, then forget it. Anything that does not lead to changing behaviour is a waste. “Engagement”, “empowerment”, and “collective decision-making” are weak substitutes for actual mechanisms of behaviour change. 

I wish Tony Abbott well in government. I ask him to remember that in Aboriginal policy, policy is the enemy. His remark that, “We will never be able fully to enjoy our nation’s wealth until it is more widely earnedby Aboriginal people too” is a good start. Almost reflexively, a Labor politician would have said, “shared” instead of “earned”.

But, unless policies address the behaviour issue, they are a mere shuffling of the deck of policy cards. Aborigines will be as successful as others when the same rules apply and the same constraints on bad behaviour apply: no job, no house, which means that houses should not be made available in areas where there is no economic base: compulsory school attendance in circumstances where the peer pressure to not attend can actually be overcome: enforcing mutual obligation, which is very difficult in remote communities: and, the full application of the law.

Putting a cop in a town is at best a crude start to the long journey to change habits and to learn self-control. It is not likely to enforce the habits of the better angels.