Victory for islanders
p. 30 · Read in the full issue
A CENTURY after their relatives were kidnapped, coerced or en ticed from their home islands to work on Australian sugar plantations the descendants of the first Pacific islanders to live in Australia have won formal recognition of their plight from the Australian government.
A Human Rights and Equal Oppor
tunity Commission (HREOC) report
published last year showed South Sea islanders (as the descendants, of inden tured labourers are called to distinguish them from more recent Pacific island migrants) were among the poorest groups in the country.
The HREOC report showed they had suffered racial discrimination from gov ernments and the private sector. It found the unemployment rate among South Sea islanders to be 28.5 per cent two and-a-half times the national average.
Home ownership rates, a good measure of overall wealth, were lower
even than newly arrived migrant groups such as Vietnamese or other Pacific islanders. The official recognition and the announcement of a programme to redress past injustices is part of the government’s official response to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report. It has involved five government ministers and had the personal support of Prime Minister Paul Keating. The cornerstone of the government’s programme is the inclusion of South Sea islanders as a target group in the government’s Access and
Equity strategy.
The strategy is designed to ensure all Australians, who may suffer discrimination because of their language, culture, race or religion, get a fair share of government resources and an opportunity to be a part of the decision making process.
It does this by monitoring all federal government departments and programmes on behalf of its target groups and negotiating changes where programmes fail to live up to the strategies aims. It gained extra muscle recently when the prime minister appointed a minister of state especially to look after the strategy. Other initiatives in the government’s response to the HREOC report include I a $300,000 project to write the South Sea islander’s story into the school history curriculum; ■ a photographic exhibition which will tour the eastern states and, it is hoped, will also be seen in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu; I a cultural award scheme which will help South Sea Islanders to re-establish links with the Pacific Island countries from which their relatives came; ■ a $50,000 cross-portfolio research project to gather data that will help government service delivery agencies meet the
community’s needs;
■ funding for two community liaison officers to assist government agencies tailor their programmes to the needs of the South Sea islander community.
The fact that the Australian government has finally acknowledged the sorry history of blackbirding from the Pacific and in the process come up with a package that will genuinely start to redress those wrongs is an enormous victory for women like Faith Handler, Patricia Corowa and Nasuven Enares who have been leading the islanders’ fight for justice.
It is just four years since they renewed their demands for
recognition.
To have won these gains in such a short time must have
set a new record for government action. While the government’s package has deservedly won ap plause from the islander commun ity it has not met all their demands, or even all the recommendations of the Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission.
In particular, it has not given South Sea islanders access to the more generous benefits available under programmes for Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders. Much of the new move for recognition of South Sea islanders is a result of the fact that islanders have been pushed off Aboriginal benefits. The gap created by the loss of those benefits can be seen in statistics on education.
The HREOC report found two third’s of today’s 19-year-olds re ceived money from the Aboriginal Education scheme Abstudy during
their school years. Since Abstudy was introduced in the mid- Seventies the number of South Sea islanders dropping out of school for economic reasons has dropped from a massive 80 per cent to a still far too high 55 per cent.
Islanders still see some difficulties in the implementation of the package. So far there has been very little consultation with the community itself and, at this stage, there is no money specifically earmarked to for supporting islander organis ations.
With islanders so poor and living in very geographically dispersed areas, money is essential if they are to maintain the sort of national organisation necessary to have a credible voice in Canberra.
For Patricia Corowa, secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Australian South Sea Islanders United Council (ASSIUC), consultation and responsiveness to islander perspectives is the key to success of government programmes.
And she has a vision which could make islander programmes a model for other cultures where extended family living is still strong.
In Billynudgil, in northern New South Wales for instance, she would like to see the NSW housing department build a village designed to islander specifications rather than provide isolated houses as they become available.
Where islanders have succeeded it has often been as a result of the strength of their family network.
Ms Corowa believes a village would not only strengthen those family ties but provide a basis for enterprise and small business initiatives which would start to put islanders on a par with other Australians. Some of those business initiatives, such as fishing and tropical farming, are already being pursued.
Other islanders own land which government assistance would help maintain or- make productive. That, in turn, would provide employment for young people who, at the moment, must either move away or reconcile themselves to the fact that it is highly unlikely they will get a job.
While there are many obstacles to be overcome before such a vision becomes a reality, not the least Housing department rules which frown on ethnic specific developments, it is within the realm of the possible. All it needs is continuing enthusiasm and flexibility from Canberra and a bit more effort from the state government. □