Today’s Opposition Organ reports that the eminent indigenous academic, Professor Marcia Langton, believes that the Indigenous 2020 Summit Stream, consisting of people selected by the Federal Government, was uninformed and unrepresentative, and failed to adequately address policies to secure the learning, health and economic future of indigenous children.
However, Professor Langton’s views are reported in a way which implies that she is also opposed to the creation of an elected indigenous representative body to advise on policies.
As Mark mentioned a few days ago, the establishment of such a body is also opposed by Warren Mundine and Wesley Aird. Yet Mr. Aird was also highly critical of the Summit Stream, suggesting that its outcomes would be as “predictable as a Zimbabwean election”.
Continue reading ‘Marcia Langton says whitefella government’s handpicked advisers got it wrong’
She has to “wrangle”, to use Virginia Trioli’s term in a Lateline interview with the co-chair of the Indigenous 2020 summit stream, 100 delegates who include some with very deeply felt and opposed views.
Such as Warren Mundine, most of whose public interventions are couched in particularly aggressive language. Take, for instance, this story about his call for Indigenous children to be taught better English skills. It’s hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with this, though I stand to be corrected. But it’s a “demand” that he’s making and it’s something he’s going to “insist” on. All very Pearson-esque.
Mundine - along with Brendan Nelson - who’s attending the summit to “listen” despite characterising it as a “stunt” - vociferously opposes the creation of a new representative body for Indigenous leaders. So does Wesley Aird, who was one of John Howard’s handpicked advisors on Indigenous affairs. Yet it’s ALP policy.
Whatever the faults of ATSIC, that commitment exists. Continue reading ‘Spare a thought for Jackie Huggins’
The Oz carries this intriguing report about the upcoming Federal Budget which suggests the previous government did not have any funding allocated for the NT Intervention beyond 1 July this year.
Which reason do you think best explains why Howard and Brough didn’t organise any forward estimates from Treasury?
- Hubris - They assumed that a problem which took decades to develop could be sorted out by the boys in khaki in about 6 months.
- Incompetence - They just forgot.
- Laziness - Couldn’t be bothered. After all, it’s only public money.
- Rashness - Everything was arranged too hastily to make a proper plan (Eek! it’s been under our noses for years! Quick, no time to waste, it’s an emergency!)
- Cynicism -The plan was conceived after the Budget, so we’ll let Treasury doze and draw up some estimates once we’ve counted how many votes this brings in.
- Complacency - They assumed they’d win the election and could write it into this year’s Budget themselves?
- Disingenuousness - They assumed they’d lose the ‘07 election and left it as a Budget landmine for the incoming ALP? (Which it most certainly is - a $600 million landmine according to the report.)
So after all the posturing and bluster, after all the accusations from blowhards that anybody who questioned the Intervention is a supporter of child-rape, we learn that the “architects” of the “plan” didn’t set aside the provisions to actually carry it out.
What great economic managers. What great defenders of the little children. They fully deserved to lose their seats. As will Macklin and co. if they cock this one up.
That’s today’s big story in the SMH: the growing trend over the last decade, in NSW especially, whereby white parents choose not to send their kids to the local public school, particularly for high school education, meaning the public schools have become predominated by indigenous and immigrant children of Middle Eastern descent. The trend has also started to affect selective public high schools on Sydney’s North Shore with large numbers of Asian children. School principals are expressing grave concerns for the implications this trend holds for social cohesion.
One principal also made the point that it’s not only private schools that are contributing to the segregation of children:
Social cohesion was under threat, Dr Reid said, from increasing segregation in education according to race, class and academic achievement.
Public schools were becoming increasingly selective on the basis of academic achievement, sporting and artistic ability.
“We have increased segregation inside public schools into the smart and the dumb, the sports capable and the creative. It’s that crude,” Dr Reid said. “It has implications for social cohesion. What do we do if kids are no longer growing up together?”
I grew up attending several schools because my dad had a public service job that meant we moved around. My favourite school was in Newcastle, in an area of high immigrant population, where I was surrounded by a bunch of non-Anglo-Celtic Europeans, considered at the time to be very non-U. Certainly I found that those schools were better both academically and socially than several others I attended which were virtually wall-to-wall WASPs, largely because the kids came from so many different backgrounds that ethnicity became a very low-level concern: we pretty much just rubbed along. I have very little reason to believe that things would be that much different these days, even though the ethnicity of the immigrants considered most non-U has certainly changed. So why the changed perception, especially in Sydney, that if one doesn’t private educate one’s kids one mustn’t really care for their future advancement, and certainly not for their current safety?
Continue reading ‘White flight’
Griffith University anthropologist and historian and Director of the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas Professor Anna Haebich recently launched her new book Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970 at the Museum of Brisbane. This post is an edited version of the talk she gave at the launch.
You know that feeling when you’re writing and you get to the point where you think why am I doing this? Surely everyone knows all this already?
Well it was a relief to me to find out since my new book Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970 hit the road last week that quite a lot of people know very little about the history of assimilation. For most it’s an old policy for migrants and Aborigines. But of course assimilation is more complex than this and far more important for all Australians.
Assimilation is woven into the fabric of our nation and will always be with us. It goes in and out of favour and takes different forms but is always lurking somewhere.
Most people aren’t aware of this – it’s the people on the margins who have to assimilate. I was at a conference in 2000 with academics splitting hairs over when assimilation started and ended. Finally a frustrated Aboriginal voice called out ‘it started when you wetjalas first set foot here’.
Assimilation is so ingrained that we can be living it without even realising it. Present governments reject any connection – it has become a dirty word. Yet for the past decade we have been living a dream of retro-assimilation where nostalgia for the past is mixed with current visions of nationhood using today’s spin to create an imagined world of equality and shared values. Global fears and anxieties leave us susceptible to this phoney dream.
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Anna Haebich: Spinning the assimilation dream’
The Australian has called for a “new civility” in public discourse. After making the point made by every single culture warrior (most recently Janet Albrechtsen who seems to want more rudeness all round - to help Indigenous people, of course) that the culture wars must continue because it’s all about reasoned debate and constructive ideas (oh, and the war bit was all the fault of teh left, anyway) - in another display of that sturdy independent mindedness so beloved of the conservative commentariat conga line, they go on to claim Rudd for the right, and then make a mea culpa:
Lastly, while the internet has democratised access to the public arena, it has also coarsened debate. We admit we have not been above the odd ad hominem attack ourselves. It’s time for a little more elegance, a return to the debating conventions of earlier times, to the rules obeyed by men and women of letters.
I won’t stop to parse this leader. Gary Sauer-Thompson’s already done an admirable job. Oh, and there’s more from Clive Hamilton in Crikey. Let’s instead, see how they’re doing.
Continue reading ‘“The new civility”’
While some prominent pundits continue to fume over the apology to the Stolen Generations, and corners of the blogosphere seem less than willing to head The Australian’s call for a “New Civility”, it would seem that public opinion on the issue has indeed coalesced:
More than two-thirds of Australians support the apology, says a poll taken at the weekend. In total, 68 per cent voiced their approval, up sharply from the 55 per cent who backed the apology two weeks ago.
The Galaxy Research poll, commissioned by the GetUp political action organisation, also showed that the number who disagreed fell just as sharply - down from 36 per cent to 22 per cent.
Rod Cameron made the point on Lateline the other night that there had been a real shift in public opinion on Indigenous issues, and Kevin Rudd has taken it and run with it, in spectacular style. The evidence of this shift gathering further momentum is in, and it demonstrates that political leadership - in this case from the PM - is a powerful instrument in forming public perceptions. But what of compensation?
Continue reading ‘The case for compensation’
…It’s not all about you.
Brendan Nelson says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has not apologised for the actions of Labor staffers who turned their backs on the Federal Opposition Leader as he delivered his response at yesterday’s apology to the Stolen Generations.
Perhaps Rudd should apologise to him… in eleven years’ time.
Elsewhere: James Farrell at Troppo on Nelson’s “apology”.
Update: Possum on Nelson.
To a standing ovation Kevin Rudd has said “sorry” to the stolen generations and for the treatment of Aboriginal people since white settlement. He did this as a person, as Prime Minister on behalf of the Government and on behalf of the Parliament.
His speech was sensitive to the past and present, but looking forward with hope.
Brendan Nelson started well, but as one Aboriginal representative said, fell in a hole when he said he felt no guilt for the past. On the radio I heard hand clapping and apparently many turned their backs, saying “Get him off”.
That is a matter for later analysis. I think it better at this time that ignore the critics and gainsayers while we listen to the Aboriginal people. This is a time for healing and for hope.
Update: [by MB] If you missed the PM’s speech, or would like to see it again, it can be found in full on this YouTube channel. Many news outlets only carry portions of the speech.
Further update: [by MB] The transcript of Kevin Rudd’s speech has been posted by Peter Martin at his blog.
As a follow up to the recent thread on Keith Windschuttle’s Stolen Generations denialism, we’re very happy to be able to republish this piece from today’s Crikey with permission.
Dr Naomi Parry, author of “Such a longing: Black and white welfare in NSW and Tasmania, 1880-1940″, writes:
The Weekend Australian of 9-10 February brought news that the intrepid history warrior, Keith Windschuttle, bane of leftist historians, now has “the facts” about the stolen generations.
Like most conservative commentators, and the previous government, Windschuttle argues that the policies that led to children being separated from their families were benign in intent. Using the example of NSW, he says children weren’t stolen from their parents but apprenticed as adolescents, to give them “the opportunity to get on-the-job training, just like their white peers in the same age groups.”
This is another instance of Windschuttle taking information and skewing it to fit his particular political and cultural agenda, although he is kind of half correct when he says the focus of the NSW Aborigines Protection Board was apprenticeship. Where he’s wrong is in asserting that he’s discovered this fact; that it was a benign policy, or was in any sense equivalent to white children’s experience.
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Naomi Parry: Debunking Windschuttle’
I’m not going to get into the standard of Keith Windschuttle’s scholarship in his latest intervention in the history/culture wars. I’ll leave that to the historians. Given Windschuttle’s usual schtick of doing no original historical research with an open mind, but rather attempting to subvert others’ scholarship through terminological quibbling and general legalistic nitpicking in the best small minded tradition of John Howard, and always with a political aim, I’d be very surprised indeed if Peter Read isn’t on the money with his rejection of Windschuttle’s claims.
I’m much more interested in the timing.
The second volume of Windschuttle’s tome, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, has been a long time coming. No doubt he was distracted by his many government board responsibilities. But it’s more than a little too cute by half that he finally comes out with some of his findings on the weekend before the national apology to the Stolen Generations. His degree of moral seriousness is evident in his risible call for there to be a $50 billion compensation fund - for something he either denies happened, or thinks was a good thing.
This is an absolute disgrace. Continue reading ‘Windschuttle should be ashamed’
Further evidence that the Tories have completely lost the plot:
Coalition MPs insist they are united in their support for the apology, which was given in-principle support at yesterday’s party room meeting. But some, including Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson, have reservations about the word “stolen”. Liberal backbencher Dr Denis Jensen is among the doubters. “I think separated is probably a better word than stolen personally,” he said.
So Nelson wants an “apology” that, by refusing to use the term that the group being apologised to has chosen to refer themselves as, denies their interpretation of events that require the apology. Aside from the actual mean-spiritedness this demonstrates, don’t they realize that this quibbling isn’t going to be enough to keep the hardcore history warriors happy, and will further reinforce the view of small-l liberals that the party remains wedded to the Howard past on cultural issues?
Elsewhere: Andrew Bartlett, eloquent as ever.
Tony “people skills” Abbott was on Fran Kelly’s show this morning - and all over the shop about the Indigenous apology. The only bit that made sense (kinda) was his recitation of his leader’s line - we can’t decide whether to agree with an apology until we’ve seen the wording. It’s obvious to everyone apart from Liberal MPs that this attempt to straddle the fence and paper over the huge cracks in their own ranks has its very obvious limitations - Kevin Rudd is going to let them know some time this week.
John Quiggin:
As it is, he will end up being forced through every possible position from outright opposition to conditional support to the final stage when he’ll be forced to deal with the hardline rejectionists in his own ranks.
Nelson’s problem is that denouncing the Stolen Generation is a cause celebre for the hardliners who gave him the job and for the culture war dinosaurs (Quadrant, the Bennelong Group and so on) who cheered them on for years. In this sector of their parallel universe, the treatment of Aboriginal Australians was a successful exercise in Christian philanthropy until leftist do-gooders took over in the 1960s. They won’t let Nelson, who is basically a decent person, do the right thing, at least not without a fight.
Nelson’s other problem is that this farce has been played out so publicly at the very time people are probably paying attention to politics again that he’s in the worst of three possible political worlds - he’s not avoiding any political fallout by making it a bipartisan gesture, he’s not getting any political traction from the diminishing crew of anti-apologists because he’s not sticking to that position, and he’s shooting himself in the foot by displaying weak and inconsistent leadership for all to see.
Cross-posted at PollieGraph.
I’m finding the comments of the chair of the NT Intervention Taskforce just a bit rich.
Dr Gordon said she would ask Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, who meets the entire Territory Indigenous Intervention Taskforce for the first time on Thursday, to spell out how the takeover would proceed in the critical areas of health and employment.
“What we want to know is the direction the Government is taking,” Dr Gordon said.
“As the chairperson of the taskforce, I want to know: Do they have a plan for this next six months? Do we continue as we are? Do they have any new ideas?
“Everyone wants to know what is happening following the health checks; what is the next phase? That is what the Government will have to be looking at. There’s not much point doing health checks and then no follow-up.”
Indeed, there isn’t. And since the previous government provide funding for the first twelve months, presumably the absence of a plan is down to Mal Brough. And weren’t we told that the health checks were to detect child abuse? The point has been made repeatedly - by medicos on the ground - that no money was allocated for additional health services, and that the cost of the intrusive bureaucracy involved in income management and what not could easily provide some. The whole thing seems still to be characterised by confusion about its objectives, and a lack of clarity about what exactly is to be achieved. That’s hardly surprising, since it seems to have been characterised by mountains of rhetoric and policy ad-hocery right from the start.
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