Australia’s Aborigines not served by reckless claims of racism

In recent times, the definition of racism has become, as the academics like to say, “problematic”, increasingly fluid and contested, a charge to be dreaded by anyone who wants to hold his or her head up in polite society.

Two recent cases encapsulate this: the subjection of the cartoonist Bill Leak to a complaint, now withdrawn, to the Human Rights Commission for an allegedly racist cartoon, and the prominent indigenous leader Noel Pearson’s fierce denunciation of “the country’s miserable, racist, national broadcaster”. According to Pearson, the ABC was “a spittoon’s worth of perverse people willing the wretched to fail”.

Is it possible that those who ­delight in signalling their anti-­racist virtue might be guilty of ­racism themselves? And how have we arrived at this problematic point?

To clarify matters let’s start with a proposition pertinent to the debate around the Leak cartoon that all genuine anti-racists can surely agree on:

An Aboriginal child has every bit as much right to a decent start in life as any other child. The same right to be protected from serious harms like violence, sexual predation and exposure to substance abuse. The same right to a healthy and sanitary environment, good nutrition and decent educational opportunities. And the same right to be protected from influences that would draw them inexorably into a nasty, brutish and short life of crime.

We can all agree on that much then? In theory, certainly. But what about in practice?

This is where things get complicated, as the anti-racist imperative to give people equal treatment and protection collides with the ideology of identity politics. What is more important: to bluntly draw attention to social pathologies that are destroying lives so they can be remedied, or to avoid any risk of negatively stereotyping a culture that, according to the ideological zeitgeist, must be seen as entirely virtuous and blameless?

This issue was brought into stark focus by a powerful presentation on the violence problem by three indigenous women — Jacinta Price, Marcia Langton and Josephine Cashman — to the National Press Club the week before last. ­Jacinta Price began the proceedings with this observation based on her own lived experience:

“Traditional culture is shrouded in secrecy, which allows perpetrators to control their victims. Culture is used as a tool by perpetrators as a defence of their violent crimes, or as an excuse or reason to perpetrate. It is not acceptable that any human being have their rights violated, denied and utterly disregarded in the name of culture.”

Such a take on traditional culture is anathema to the ideologists of identity politics and the academic scribblers who support them. Their viewpoint is typified by the following citation from the article on identity politics in the authoritative Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

“Indigenous governance systems embody distinctive political values, radically different from those of the mainstream. Western notions of domination (human and natural) are noticeably absent; in their place we find harmony, autonomy, and respect … renewal of respect for traditional values is the only lasting solution to the political, economic, and social problems that beset our people.”

This idyllic version of pre-colonial life is just ideological fantasising. Whatever the virtues of traditional indigenous culture, to suggest that “notions of domination” were absent and all was harmony, autonomy and respect is nonsense, as Jacinta Price makes clear above.

And what happens when ideological fantasy becomes the premise of policy? The impact of the change in indigenous policy since the revolution brought about since the late 1960s under the influence of former Reserve Bank chairman HC Coombs provides a tragic case study.

I had not realised the magnitude of this disaster until I read Peter Sutton’s book The Politics of Suffering, published in 2009. This is an extraordinarily important book that did not receive anything like the attention it deserved when published (I only heard of it quite recently).

Sutton has had a close association with indigenous communities extending over 30 years. He was a key advocate and researcher supporting the Aboriginal position in some of the most important ­native title cases. No one can challenge Sutton’s bona fides as a committed friend of the Aboriginal people and advocate of their causes, and as an outstanding scholar of Aboriginal culture.

The book paints a horrific picture of what has happened over the past few decades. It describes how communities that 40 years ago were poor but liveable have become disaster zones of violent conflict, rape, child and elder ­assault, with what he terms Fourth World health conditions.

Sutton is extremely distressed and angry about this, and derisive of the use of anodyne terms like “Aboriginal disadvantage” that are typically used to describe it. He prefers to talk of the “levels of sheer suffering” of indigenous people today.

That this should have happened despite one well-intentioned policy initiative after another, the granting of land rights, the setting up of autonomous Aboriginal governance and service delivery structures, and the spending of billions of dollars annually on both mainstream and indigenous-specific programs, is especially perplexing.

Sutton argues that the deterioration has occurred not just ­despite the policy shift but was in large part caused by it. His argument is complex and subtle but can be summed up by what he terms the Coombsian contradiction — a policy framework “built on a willingness to publicly ignore the profound incompatibility between modernisation and cultural traditionalism in a situation where tradition was, originally at least, as far from modernisation as it was possible to be”.

The disaster of health service delivery exemplifies how this contradiction can affect things on the ground. In 1995, as a member of federal cabinet’s expenditure review committee, I recall getting a flood of emails from remote Aboriginal communities pleading for health services to be transferred from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission back to the federal health department — a desperate plea for honest and competent administration from communities suffering desperately.

Here is what Sutton has to say about the relationship between violence and traditional culture, with obvious relevance to the Leak controversy:

“My unqualified position is that a number of the serious problems indigenous people face in Australia today arise from a complex joining together of recent, that is post-conquest, historical factors of external impact, with a substantial number of ancient, pre-existent social and cultural factors that have continued, transformed or intact, into the lives of people living today. The main way these factors are continued is through child-rearing. This issue is particularly important, and controversial, in the area of violent conflict.”

How “racist” of Sutton to say that cultural practices, especially those related to child-rearing, contribute significantly to the violent pathologies that afflict Aboriginal communities! Doesn’t he realise how this could reinforce negative stereotypes?

At least, that would be the charge directed at Sutton if his credentials to speak on this issue were any less impeccable. No such latitude for Bill Leak highlighting the same points using the satirical instrument of a cartoon rather than a scholarly book.

Defenders of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act will reply that Sutton was an informed scholar making a good faith contribution to an important public debate — the defence provided in section 18D of the act.

The problem with this is that it is very difficult for someone making this sort of vital contribution to “cut through” and make an ­impact on the wider public debate. The predominant response from supporters of the policy status quo was to ignore Sutton’s work, since they could not refute his account.

This is where cartoonists, satirists and other popularisers have a vital role to play. A well-crafted and provocative cartoon can have a greater impact on the wider public debate than a dozen academic papers. A robust debate needs a range of contributions, from academic treatises to cartoons and other works of satire.

Sutton refers to a blanket of silence “promoted and policed by the Left and a number of indigenous activists” that has constrained honest debate on these matters from the 1970s until relatively recently.

But increasingly indigenous people such as the three women who addressed the National Press Club are prepared to speak out and acknowledge difficult realities. Former ALP president Warren Mundine has defended Leak’s cartoon thus: “I think what he was saying is that a lot of people are ignoring or avoiding the bleeding obvious in this space.”

Those, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, who challenge the identity politics worldview and its fantasy version of indigenous culture can expect to be targeted in a variety of ways from social media ostracism to the death threats directed at Jacinta Price and her mother, the Central Australian activist and politician Bess Price.

Then there is the prospect of being brought before the Human Rights Commission and the Federal Court, where ultimate dismissal of a claim is little compensation for potentially years of stress and the prospect of crippling legal expenses. Nor will it undo the taint that those subject to an HRC investigation suffer, like the Queensland University of Technology student who has seen his aspiration to teach in remote communities destroyed because of an utterly spurious allegation of racism.

On hearing that the complaint against him had been dropped, Bill Leak referred to the “month or so of incredible stress” he had suffered and the huge legal cost had he not had News Corp backing.

A charge of racism is the modern equivalent of the old Aboriginal practice of “pointing the bone”, a ritual intended to cause the death of the victim. The modern version is intended to cause, if not literal, social and professional death.

The effect of all this is to shut down honest debate of the matters at issue. Sutton sums it up this way:

“My objection is to the corrosive effect of ideological politics, or even merely white post-imperial guilt politics, on our ability to respond realistically and truthfully to the enduring crisis state so many indigenous individuals continue to suffer.”

What happens when debate on contentious matters becomes a ­realism and truth free zone? Key lessons are not learned. Policy errors are not corrected — indeed they are perpetuated. People continue to suffer.

Here is an example. I read recently an edited version of a speech given by Michael Lavarch, a former ministerial colleague and attorney-general in the Keating government, headed “Australia must act now to prevent a new stolen generation tragedy” in which he called for the halving of out-of-home placements of Aboriginal children by 2025.

Lavarch’s call was prompted by statistics showing that the rate of indigenous child removals to out-of-home care has been steadily increasing and that, if trends continue, will approach levels before the stolen generations report that Lavarch himself commissioned in 1995.

A serious omission from Lavarch’s speech, at least the edited version that appeared in The Guardian, is any discussion of the reasons for this increasing trend. His case relies entirely on statistical disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous child removal rates and statistical trends.

Surely he should ask: Why is this happening, despite increased awareness of the issue and the measures taken in response to the stolen generations report including the Aboriginal child placement policy? There has been no suggestion, as far as I am aware, of any racist motivation, of anything like the attempts to “breed out the colour” as in the bad old days.

Supposing, just supposing, that the increase has something to do with the deterioration in living conditions, including the growth of endemic violence and substance abuse, so meticulously documented by Sutton?

If this is the case, then the increasing trend may simply be the result of officials doing their jobs properly, a possibility Lavarch seemed to concede in an SBS television interview in which he said “it may be that child protection is failing, but then again it might also be working very well as our kids are safe”. In these circumstances, adopting the kind of quantitative target Lavarch proposes could have tragic results.

So, to return to the question with which I began this article: Who are the real racists in this debate?

Are the racists those who recognise the extremity of suffering in Aboriginal communities today and are willing to bluntly expose the problem and demand effective action even at the cost of offending cultural sensibilities? Or are the real racists those who, for ideological reasons, insist on denying reality, with the practical result that Aboriginal children are denied equal protection from serious harm?

Actually, I think it is better to stay right out of this finger-pointing game, as trading accusations of racism is a distraction from what really matters. Governments must drop the ideological baggage and develop a relentlessly hard-headed focus on ensuring that policies actually deliver the intended result: improved life chances for Aboriginal people.

Successive governments, including the one I was part of, have failed dismally in this respect right up to the present day. In its latest report on Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage, the Productivity Commission notes a lack of accountability that “beggars belief” in the $6 billion spent on indigenous programs. This, and the additional human suffering entailed, is the real scandal.

And most important of all, the imperative of free and open public debate of sensitive and difficult topics must be robustly affirmed in an age when terms like “race” and “racism” have been weaponised as instruments of ideological warfare.

Peter Baldwin was a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments