Jemima Garrett

the australian

New political voice for Oz-Islanders

THE descendents of South Sea Islanders brought to Australia last century to work as virtual slave labour on sugar and cotton plantations are finding a new political voice.

They are demanding recognition for their contribution to the sugar industry and the same government benefits available to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, apart from land rights.

According to Island leaders the move was precipitated by the formation of the new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).

That body offers Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders more control over government resources than ever before but it has also, according to island leaders, resulted in South Sea Islanders loosing crucial government assistance they had been accustomed to receiving.

There are estimated to be between 15,000 and 20,000 South Sea Islanders descended from indentured labourers living in communities dotted up and down the Queensland and New South Wales coast.

Their forebears had often been kidnapped from their home islands in what is now Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu or New Caledonia.

A recent report commissioned by the Sydney-based Evatt Foundation showed the South Sea Islanders (a group which does not include the tens of thousands of more recent Pacific Island migrants) have suffered and continue to suffer the same discrimination as Aborigines.

Those who did not return home with the imposition of the white Australia policy early this century, were denied work by a racist union movement. They were not eligible for full citizenship nor recognised as Australians.

In many areas the South Sea Islanders teamed up with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The communities melded together.

Right up to the present time, South Sea Islanders have often played a crucial role in struggles for Aboriginal rights.

Although the government’s special benefits for Aborigines, once they were introduced, were only ever supposed to go to Australia’s indigenous population South Sea Islanders, by being perceived as part of that community, have in many areas received the same assistance.

According to Island leaders, the advent of ATSIC put a stop to that.

Nasuven Enares, the author of the Evatt Foundation report, says it has created a crisis in her community.

Enares claims loss of jobs in positions identified for Aborigines or Torres Strait Islanders and training places on special employment programs has created serious hardship, and pushed South Sea Islander unemployment above even the chronically high levels experienced by Aborigines.

Because of poverty, she says, South Sea Island children as young as 12 and 13, no longer able to obtain Abstudy benefits, are having to drop out of school, only to begin a

cycle of enemployment and trouble with the law.

The story is the same in the area of housing. South Sea Islanders who lose their rented accommodation are in many places no longer able to apply for Aboriginal housing grants.

South Sea Islanders admit that, not being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island descent, they do not meet the criteria for special benefits but they are angry because in a number of cases the loss of benefits has resulted from their being dobbed in by Aborigines or Torres Strait Islanders.

“I can’t understand why people who sat side by side with one another as brothers and sisters are actually doing this to our people,” says Nasuven Enares.

“It is disgraceful, there is no other word for it.

Faith Handler, a South Sea Islander who played a prominent role in the campaign to win citizenship and the right to vote for Aborigines, is also angry.

She says that as the government tightens its financial belt, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are turning on South Sea Islanders.

Under ATSIC’s charter control over government programs, instead of resting with a faceless government bureaucracy, has now been placed in the hands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait communities, who are being pressed for a high level of fiscal accountability.

While ATSIC itself does not control many of the benefits in dispute, the combination of the recession and the push for greater accountability has, according to South Sea Islanders, changed the political climate.

So over Easter they met to establish a new political voice of their own.

Delegates representing 10 branches from Canberra to Townsville came together to form the Australian South Sea Islander United Council (ASSIUC).

The new national organisation mov ed quickly to call for formal recognition of the plight of the descendants of indentured labourers, for the same rights as Aborigines (other than land rights) and asked that their special benefits be administered by the Office of Multi-cultural Affairs in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

It is a solution which is likely to suit everyone except the financial mandarins in Canberra who would have to find the funding.

Many members of the Aboriginal community have been horrified by the intercommunity bickering.

ATSIC itselfis likely to support the South Sea islanders demands as is the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Robert Tickner.

The South Sea Islander United Council has asked that top priority be given to benefits in education, employment and housing.

Political moves are not the only positive steps to come out of the current difficulties. Islanders are also moving to reclaim their culture.

The Townsville meeting put the wheels in motion for a link-up program which would help people to find relatives in the Pacific Island nations.

ASSIUC also plans to set up a South Sea Islander’s Museum in Townsville and to take up the offer of a Ni- Vanuatu woman to teach Australian Islanders traditional handicraft skills.

Nasuven Enares says the first meeting of ASSUIC has given Islanders a new sense of pride and identity but most importantly, South Sea Islanders no longer feel the need to pretend to be Aborigines. □