The Australian’s Australian of the Year: Straight shooter targets critical change

Straight-talking Pat Turner brokered a deal between Indigenous organisations and government that intends to smash the top-down bureaucracy of Indigenous affairs.

Australian of the Year nominee Pat Turner ‘has successfully argued for Aboriginal agency in their own lives’. Picture: Sean Davey

Straight-talking Pat Turner has brokered a deal between Indigenous organisations and government that intends to smash the top-down bureaucracy of Indigenous affairs.

A Gudanji-Arrernte woman from Alice Springs, Ms Turner understood how the machinery of government failed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people because she had been a public servant for decades.

“Self-determination has been a policy of the commonwealth since 1971 but we have never been given agency to exercise it to the fullest ­extent,” Ms Turner told The Australian last July.

“(That is) because there’s been so much government neglect of programs and the way they’ve implemented programs, and their lack of accountability for the poor outcomes that leaves us in the desperate situation we’re in today.”

Ms Turner began her working life as a switchboard operator. She taught Australian studies at Georgetown University in the US and later established Indigenous television channel NITV.

Fraser government Aboriginal affairs minister Fred Chaney describes Ms Turner as a leader with enormous drive and focus. Mr Chaney, who continues to work with Indigenous organisations in the non-government and charitable sector, says Ms Turner led a “vitally important campaign” to change the approach to Closing the Gap by having Indigenous people as essential partners instead of being the subjects of top-down government interventions.

“She has successfully argued for Aboriginal agency in their own lives. Enlisting the Prime Minister’s support in December 2018 led to all governments in Australia signing up the principle of partnership,” he said.

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For her work as an architect of this new approach to reducing disadvantage, Ms Turner is nominated as The Australian newspaper’s Australian of the Year.

The new Closing the Gap deal commits all levels of government and 50 peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations across Australia. For the first time, states and territories will be held to account for successes and failures as will the Indigenous organisations that have signed up.

Under the agreement, community-controlled Indigenous organisations will deliver services where government departments once did. This is underpinned by a belief those Indigenous organisations are closest to the people they serve and have the potential to make the biggest difference.

They also employ many more Indigenous people.

The agreement was signed in July 2020. Its success will be measured against 16 new targets that replace the old Closing the Gap agreement from 2008, which is widely considered to have failed. Just two of seven Closing the Gap targets — early childhood education and Year 12 attainment — were achieved.

Ms Turner and Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt are working to transform a deal into operating reality.

We encourage our readers to put in a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, which was first won in 1971 by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the coupon above, or sending an email to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Thursday, January 21.