The most serious, and by far the most depressing, aspect of the final report of Victoria’s Yoorrook “truth-telling” royal commission is that anyone would take it seriously.
To say that is not to dismiss the sincerity of the many Indigenous witnesses the commission interviewed. Nor is it to deny that the encounter between European settlers and the continent’s Indigenous people was tragic, in the deepest sense of the word, as even the many administrators and settlers who were full of good will lacked the means and the understanding to mitigate its consequences.
But a commitment to “truth-telling” imposes weighty responsibilities, made all the weightier by the commission’s official status. For if there is a fact of life it is that the truth is hard to find, and once found, may be easily lost. Moreover, no truth is more elusive than that about the distant past, where the “what” and the “how” are frequently uncertain, while the “why” is shrouded in the complex interaction of intentions, constraints and contingencies.
It is for that reason that ever since Hecataeus of Miletus – who, in the 6th century BC, prefaced his work by saying that the pre-existing “accounts of the Greeks”, which he aimed to supersede with a more accurate analysis, “were many and ridiculous” – the hallmark of Western historiography has been its incessant focus on historical method.
Fundamental to that method, as it developed over the centuries, is an abiding scepticism about relying on individual memory, which is an account of the past constructed in the present. It is, by its very nature, subjective; it may also be irrational, inconsistent, deceptive and self-serving.
It must therefore be tested, as must all the material on which the historian relies. And the historian’s duty is not just to rigorously test the evidence. It is also to scrupulously present any authoritative material that tells against the conclusion that is eventually reached.
It is those principles that differentiate “history” from a “story”. Both set out coherent accounts; however, only “history” can, in Leopold von Ranke’s famous phrase, credibly claim to present the past “wie es eigentlich gewesen”, as it had really been.
But centuries of Western historiography are treated by the commission as if they had never existed. Cavalierly dismissing conventional evidentiary standards, it replaces them by what it calls “a profound assertion of First Peoples’ ongoing sovereignty over their stories, knowledge and futures”.
In its proceedings, it frankly states, “truth-telling was not about debate” – and indeed there was none. Nor was there any testing of evidence, presentation of contrary views or attempt to engage with critics. Comfortably ensconced in the realm of naked assertion, the commission found the truth because it knew it.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in its “finding” of “genocide”. Not once, in its 230-page report, does it define the term or specify exactly what was allegedly involved. Rather, its discussion bears out with unusual force Alexis de Tocqueville’s dictum that “an abstract word is like a box with a false bottom; you may put in what ideas you please, and take them out again without being observed”.
Thus, it refers at one point to a “cultural genocide”; at another to “linguicide”. In both cases it blithely assumes, without a shred of evidence, that had the European settlers somehow acted “better”, Indigenous languages and cultures would have resisted the pressures of acculturation. In reality, everything suggests they would have disappeared far more quickly and comprehensively had there been less discrimination and segregation than there was.
To make things worse, the commission’s report is, if not plainly dishonest, less than candid. To take but one example, the commission cites historians who have examined the contention that there was a genocide. What it never discloses is that they largely dispute, often with considerable asperity, the conclusion it so starkly states. And it therefore never explains why greater credence should be placed on its conclusion than on those of others.
That is not history; it is tarted up propaganda. Having rejected the ancient Roman axiom of justice, “Audi alteram partem” (hear the other side), the commission assumes its claims are true, or at least useful to its cause, and on that basis attempts to clothe them in as rhetorically effective a form as possible.
Why, then, would anyone take its report seriously? There is surely a patronising element of condescension at work, as if we should not hold Indigenous Australians to the standards we would demand of anyone else. That is not just unfortunate; it is completely counter-productive.
To begin with, it incites the unvarnished arrogance that pervades this report. Why did the proposed voice to parliament fail? Because “beneath the rhetoric of reconciliation” most Australians “did not want to hear the truth”. The possibility that the proposal was ill-conceived is never contemplated, much less examined.
Even more important, the condescension encourages demands that are increasingly extreme and increasingly poorly founded. Why have the enormous, ongoing transfers – of land, of royalties, of public subsidies – failed to alleviate entrenched disadvantage? According to the report, because they just weren’t enormous enough.
The possibility that, like all forms of crony capitalism – which flourishes where political insiders control resources and allocate them to their relatives, friends, and supporters – the transfers enrich a privileged elite while condemning entire communities to hope-destroying social pathologies is, again, conveniently ignored.
Nor does the commission consider the risk that being gifted valuable mines, forests and fisheries will discourage, rather than promote, the ingenuity and effort that underpins enduring wealth creation and human flourishing. Transferring wealth is simple; what is difficult – and this is what the commission studiously avoids addressing – is making it possible for people to do anything without trapping them in a life of doing nothing.
It would, however, be wrong to blame the commission alone. It is the faithful mirror of a fatuous political culture that has for decades amply rewarded those absurdities: not because it cares too much but because it cares too little. After all, as Montesquieu caustically observed about “the class of superior people”, it is “a thousand times easier, and more pleasing, to seem good than to do good”. Yes, keeping up appearances is costly; but what is public spending for, if not to paper over society’s cracks?
The Yoorrook commission’s work is now over. As the Victorian government prepares to introduce a voice to parliament and negotiate a treaty, it will undoubtedly be followed by others.
But for so long as hard realities are not faced, rather than erased, Indigenous policy will continue its rush on the road to nowhere. The savage pity of it is that so much needless misery will be inflicted on the truly disadvantaged along the way.
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