Period of shifting priorities in Indigenous affairs

The Howard government co-opted state and territory governments into a national Indigenous health strategy for the first time in 2003.

Indigenous affairs minister Philip Ruddock speaks to elders at Napranum Aboriginal Community, near Weipa, in 2003. Picture: Bruce Long

The Howard government co-opted state and territory governments into a national Indigenous health strategy for the first time as it moved to a policy of shared responsibilities in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs, cabinet documents show.

Mr Howard and his cabinet agreed to support a new national approach to Indigenous health in February 2003 while a review was underway into the future of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. At the time, ATSIC controlled almost half of the commonwealth’s Indigenous-specific spending of $2.5bn annually. The decentralised body, based on 35 regional councils with elected members, was held up as an example of self determination.

However, by its 13th year of operation, ATSIC had lost the confidence of many of its constituents and self-determination was not a favoured concept inside the federal government. The Howard government would restructure ATSIC in 2003, then abolish it with bipartisan support the following year.

The 2003 cabinet documents released by the National Archives of Australia on Monday reveal a period of shifting priorities in Indigenous affairs. Self determination was out. Mutual responsibility was in.

It was the year Indigenous affairs minister Philip Ruddock sought to shape a draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples so as to avoid the use of the term “self-determination”. And when cabinet met in June of that year to consider a new national strategy in Indigenous health, it was pitched as a departure from self determination and a “relevant contemporary approach”.