I write this week from Cairns, in Queensland, Australia, where one could witness more visible presence of Australia’s Aborigines. On Friday (Aug. 1), the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott publicly launched a report that addresses the income and welfare gaps between Aborigines and other Australians. The far-reaching report, authored by West Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest, has been described as Tony Abbott’s “first real test to become the prime minister for Aboriginal affairs he pledged to be.”
Addressing the historical injustices that First Australians faced since European settlers came here over 200 years ago has been a concern for Australian governments and a preoccupation of Aboriginal communities for a long time. The Forrest report presents a comprehensive approach, instead of piecemeal remedies that have marked previous attempts, including those by the Abbott government. It addresses the employment, education and welfare challenges faced by Aborigines and calls for substantial changes, including the introduction of a national “healthy welfare” card for all, a significant reduction in the number of income support payments and bans on young people accessing welfare unless they are training or in work. Indigenous businesses would be given tax-free status and parents would lose family payments if their children did not attend school.
Abbott has called for “revolutionizing” indigenous strategy and to construct new policies around the Forrest recommendations. A new task force will go through the report’s 27 recommendations and determine which can be rolled out immediately and in the mid-term.
On Friday, Abbott said the implementation feasibility task force “will be reporting swiftly.” He added that, “There is a whole-of-government approach to this…. We are working urgently on this visionary report, on this watershed report, to try to ensure that as much of it as we can is implemented as quickly as we can.”
The Forrest report will be subjected to a six-week consultation process that will end just as the prime minister marks the first anniversary of his swearing-in by spending a week (starting Sept. 15) in northeast Arnhem Land, hosted by Aboriginal (Gumatj) leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu. Abbott will stay in the community with other officials, fulfilling a promise he has made to spend a week in a community every year.
While Aboriginal leaders appreciate the new government’s attention to their community’s problems, they are waiting to see real change in its approach. They are naturally skeptical, demanding to have more say in how Aboriginal issues are decided, especially when it comes to land management.
Australia prides itself on the harmonious relations it has cultivated between its many ethnic and religious communities. With a nominal GDP estimated at $1.4 trillion, Australia is the 12th richest country in the world. With fewer than 24 million inhabitants, it has a very high per capita income level, a low level of poverty and a generous welfare system. Its land area is nearly 7.7 million sq. km (three and a half times the area of Saudi Arabia) and endowed with natural resources enough to support many times its current population.
With such rich land and thriving economy, Australia could afford to keep all of its communities prosperous and content, you would think.
However, the Aborigines have not fared as well as other communities. They were forcibly dispossessed en masse upon the arrival of British colonists in the 18th century. Tribal lands were appropriated as terra nullius, land belonging to no one, because the Aborigines did not have the same system of land ownership as England.
Aborigines were discriminated against through most of Australia’s history. In extreme cases, they were exterminated or forcibly driven away from their land. In other cases, Aboriginal children were taken from their families and placed with white families.
It took Australia nearly two centuries to begin to address Aborigines’ plight, and longer to apologize for the injustices visited upon them. After many protests and court cases, laws were passed in the 1970s to return land owned by the federal, state or territory governments to indigenous tribes.
There are different types of land rights laws in Australia, allowing for the return of land ownership to Aboriginals. Land rights schemes are in place in South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and Northern Territory. The land titles may recognize traditional interest in the land and are normally held by tribes, communities or organizations, not individuals. There are usually some restrictions on selling the land, in order to keep it in the hands of the particular community for future generations.
The Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 established legal basis for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory to claim rights to tribal lands. The statute, the first of the Aboriginal land rights acts, was significant in that it allowed a claim of title if petitioners could provide evidence of their traditional association with land. Based on that law, four land councils were established in the Northern Territory, where the law established a procedure that transferred almost 50 percent of its area (around 600,000 sq. km) to Indigenous ownership.
In 1995, the Federal Government established the Indigenous Land Corporation to assist Indigenous Australians to acquire some of their traditional lands and manage them in a manner meant to provide cultural, social, economic and environmental benefits. The corporation is funded by investment returns of an account managed by the government on Aborigines’ behalf.
In addition to restoring some Aboriginal land to its rightful owners, the government has enhanced education and welfare systems aimed at helping Aborigines bridge the income and skills gaps that exist between them and other Australians, but those programs have failed to bridge those gaps, as a visitor could see.
Aborigines believe that the land councils and the government management of their affairs are now outdated and that they need to take charge of their own affairs, including management of their lands.
In response to the release of the Forrest report on Friday, indigenous leaders reaffirmed their belief that their communities need to take authority over their traditional lands. On Saturday (Aug. 2), Galarrwuy Yunupingu, a senior Yolngu leader, said his people wanted the law changed to hand decision-making powers from land councils to the tribe. Gumatj leader, Djawa Yunupingu, a senior Gumatj leader, said it was time to allow communities to regain the authority for their own land.
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