Howard completely out of his depth on Aboriginal Issues

Without a major change of heart. Prime Minister John Howard now looks set to go down in history as the leader who failed, most catastrophically, to grapple with one of the most important issues of his time: justice for Aboriginal people.

So bad is the situation that Australia has become the first Western nation to be hauled up before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) while, at home.

Aboriginal leaders have described themselves as ‘distraught’ over comments made by key government Ministers.

Mandatory sentencing, is the first of a raft of issues that have been causing trouble for John Howard, and it is this issue that saw immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock appear before CERD, in Geneva, where he got a flaying.

In its final report CERD expressed ‘grave concern’ about mandatory sentencing because of the way it falls disproportionately on Aborigines and made it clear John Howard has the power to overturn the legislation, despite his refusal to do so.

Mandatory sentencing legislation insists on compulsory jail terms for property crimes without regard to social circumstances. Aboriginal people fall into the lowest socio-economic group and their chances of ending up in jail are 21 times higher than that of other Australians. In the Northern Territory, recently, a 15-year old boy sentenced under the legislation for stealing some colouring pens and paints, committed suicide while serving his term. This is just one of a host of cases that has caused a storm of protest in Australia.

CERD, also expressed its continuing concern about the Howard

government’s Native Title legislation.

Rather than being chagrinned by this unprecedented criticism by a UN body responsible for upholding ideals Australia endorses and promotes for others, the Howard government squealed like a dictator, claiming CERD had launched ‘an unbalanced and wide-ranging attack that intrudes unreasonably into Australia’s domestic affairs’.

Unfortunately, for John Howard there is likely to be more such criticism over the coming months as the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on the Right’s of the Child make their investigations.

At home, too, the issue is not dead. Many of Howard’s own backbench agree with the UN criticism and were only prevented from crossing the floor of the house to support a bill to overturn the NT an WA legislation after Howard read them the riot act and brokered a compromise with the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Denis Burke.

For all but those backbench members, the compromise was

laughable. It resulted in the definition of adult under NT law being changed from 17 years to 18 years and provided Ass million for diversionary programs for young offenders. Other than that the original legislation, the brainchild of one of Howard’s key political allies, remained untouched. Even worse than Howard’s stand on mandatory sentencing, however, has been his handling of the stolen generation debate.

Between 1910 and 1970 thousands of Aboriginal children were taken away from their families and forced to live in children’s homes where the conditions were appalling and abuse common. Often children were taken with no warning, and in many cases welfare authorities deliberately prevented any further contact between the children and their parents. A Human Rights Commission Inquiry found almost every Aboriginal family in the country had been touched by the separations and outlined in heart-rending detail the emotional repercussions of the policy right up to the present day.

Although every State parliament has formally apologised for this tragic and misguided chapter in Australia’s history, Howard has refused to do the same on behalf of the Australian government.

Last month he added insult to injury when a submission by his Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron told a Senate committee “there was never a” generation of stolen children.

“The proportion of separated Aboriginal children was no more than 10 per cent including those who were not forcibly separated and those who were separated for good reason.” In the deluge of criticism that followed, John Herron was compared with those who deny the holocaust. Historians pointed out that Australians who served in World War I made up less than 10 per cent of the population but that didn’t prevent them being referred to as the “lost generation” and being memorialised in every town across the country.

Aboriginal leaders were hurt and disgusted, so much so, that two; actor Justine Saunders and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Commissioner (ATSIC), Charles Perkins (both of whom were taken from their families), said they would hand back their Order of Australia medals. ATSIC Chairman, Geoff Clark, said the government’s attitude ‘smells like a campaign that is going to take them into the next election. It’s a bit like the One Nation cry’.

While John Howard was eventually forced to apologise for any hurt the document may have caused, he did not resile from its contents, or withdraw, or change it as an expression of the government’s view.

Reconciliation is now the next test on John Howard’s agenda. After 10 years of work on a document of reconciliation, the Reconciliation Council (a group of eminent people both black and white), is due to hand over their manifesto to the people of Australia at ‘Coroboree 2000’ in Sydney, later this month.

That our Prime Minister will be unable to put his handprint to the document as originally planned, is almost certain.

Whenever any debate on Aboriginal issues arises he likes to talk about his efforts towards ‘practical reconciliation’, improving the appalling statistics in Aboriginal health, housing, education and employment. What he fails to see is that those measures, without any apology or symbolic recognition of history, are simply not enough. ■

Jemima Garrett