Addressing Aboriginal disadvantage — that’s what I call a defining moment

Tony Abbott looks through exhibits after he launched Defining Moments in Australian History project at the National Museum in Canberra last week.

IF NSW Governor Marie Bashir is known for one thing, it is her ability to praise the good in everyone. Recently, she spoke at a service in Westminster Abbey to dedicate a stone in memory of Arthur Phillip as the “founder of modern Australia”. On many occasions, Bashir has publicly lamented the enduring legacy of the mistreatment of Aborigines since Phillip established the colony at Sydney Cove in 1788. Yet on this occasion she praised Phillip for his determination “to ensure the fair treatment of the Aboriginal people — he actively fostered harmonious relations with them”.

There is nothing inconsistent in the crown’s representative lamenting the mistreatment of Aborigines since the crown established the first colony in Australia, and praising the crown’s first representative for his determination to ensure their fair treatment. Both sentiments are appropriate responses to the historical relationship between the crown and the Aborigines since 1788.

The Westminster Abbey commemoration at which the NSW governor spoke was followed up last week by a commemoration in Canberra, when the Defining Moments in Australian History exhibition was opened at the National Museum of Australia. Tony Abbott said that Phillip’s action in establishing the colony at Sydney Cove was “the defining moment in the history of this continent” and “a moment that set the course for modern Australia” because “it was the moment this continent became part of the modern world”.

Warren Mundine, chairman of the Prime Minister’s indigenous advisory council, responded with the observation that “it was a defining moment, there’s no argument about that. It was also a disastrous defining moment for indigenous people.”

It is a hard truth about Australian history that defining moments in the development of the nation’s prosperity are also defining moments in the deterioration of the nation’s indigenous cultures. This is exemplified by Phillip’s defining moment.

Phillip’s determination to ensure the fair treatment of Abor­iginal people was not some personal idiosyncrasy. In 1787, he received formal instructions from King George III. They outlined the various things that Phillip was to do on the journey to Australia, then on establishing a colony in Australia.

Among other things, the king instructed Phillip: “You are to endeavour, by every possible means, to open an intercourse with the ­natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. And if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence. You will endeavour to procure an account of the numbers inhabiting the neighbourhood of the intended settlement, and report your opinion to one of our secretaries of state in what manner our intercourse with these people may be turned to the advantage of this colony.”

The instructions, although formally from the crown, were prepared by its advisers — the British ministers of the crown. So the situation that emerges is one in which the earliest advisers and representatives of the crown were acutely aware of the moral imperative to ensure the fair treatment of the Aboriginal people in Australia.

Alas, successive generations of the crown’s Australian representatives and advisers (on the assumption of responsible government in 1856) failed to ensure that this noble aspiration was realised and, as a consequence, ­indigenous people in ­Australia remain among the most disadvantaged people in the ­country.

In New Zealand, the situation is both similar and different.

New Zealand regards the Treaty of Waitangi, concluded between the representative of Queen Victoria and the Maori chiefs in 1848, as its founding document. There is no similar founding document in Australia. The treaty imposed certain obligations on the crown in terms of how the Maori were to be treated.

The unfortunate similarity with Australian history lies in the fact the crown failed to ­ensure that the Maori were treated fairly in New Zealand according to the treaty, just as it failed to ensure that Aborigines were fairly treated in Australia, in the way that the crown’s 1787 instructions to Phillip acknowledged they should be treated.

However, things have moved on in New Zealand.

In 1975, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up to investigate contemporary ­breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi by the crown. In 1985, the remit of the tribunal was expanded to include the investigation of historical breaches by the crown as well.

This has resulted in a process through which the crown enters into negotiations with the various Maori tribes after receiving the tribunal’s report into the crown’s treatment of the tribe. These negotiations conclude in a final settlement of the tribe’s historical grievances. The crown’s negotiator and the Maori tribe settle on an agreed statement of the history, including an acknowledgment of the acts and omissions of the crown’s advisers and representatives that resulted in mistreatment of the tribe according to the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi. The crown issues a formal written apology to the tribe and enters into a deed of settlement, stating how it will provide redress for the cultural and economic losses that the tribe has sustained.

In 1995, the first settlement between the crown and one of the Maori tribes was concluded. The Queen signed the apology and presented it to the ­Waikato-Tainui tribe during her tour of New Zealand that year.

The time has come for the crown to acknowledge to individual indigenous communities in Australia that, despite the lofty intentions of the instructions issued to its first representative, Phillip, and despite his best endeavours to realise these intentions, successive generations of the crown’s representatives and advisers in Australia failed to treat these communities fairly.

Part of the process of reconciliation and recognition of indigenous people must involve the crown entering into a new relationship with Australia’s indigenous communities, as it has with New Zealand’s indigenous communities. This needs to be a partnership in which the indigenous community is empowered to manage its own affairs.

What the New Zealand experience shows us is that this is only possible if the crown first acknow­ledges the specific failures of its representatives and advisers in the past, then proceeds to lay the foundations for a new partnership in the future. But this partnership also requires a package of constitutional and structural reforms that will transform this centuries-old dysfunctional relationship into a new functional one that enables governments to assist indigenous communities in becoming empowered and productive. It is not an either-or situation.

Earlier this year, in welcoming the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Parliament House, the Prime Minister said to them: “Many decades hence, when a currently unknowable Australian prime minister welcomes your son, King George VII, to this building, that will be a sign of the stability and the continuity in the life of our nation.”

So, too, we may hope that, many decades hence, when Australia’s various indigenous communities welcome the Queen’s great-grandson, that will be a sign of the evolution of the crown’s relationship with Australia’s indigenous communities: that welcome will embody the aspirations of her great-great-great-great-grandfather’s instructions to Phillip, acknowledgment of the failure of successive generations of the crown’s representatives and advisers to execute those instructions, the crown’s apology for the acts and omissions of its representatives and advisers, and the beginning of the process of healing and a new age of co-operation with Australia’s indigenous communities.

There is no doubt that Phillip’s establishment of a British colony in 1788 was a defining moment in Australian history.

Indeed, as Abbott said, it is ­arguable that it was the defining moment in Australian history — for better and for worse.

What matters is that we ­acknowledge the myriad reasons it is a defining moment for better and for worse. It is a defining moment that must be recognised in terms of its aspirations and failures, and its commemoration gives rise to a deep need for apologies, healing and co-operation, as well as celebration.

Abbott needs to confront Mundine’s point that indigenous people continue to bear the brunt of failures flowing from the defining moment in 1788 that set the course for modern Australia.

His package of reforms for constitutional recognition of indigenous people presents the opportunity for a new defining moment: when the Australian nation unites to acknowledge the past and to declare its aspirations for the future; a future that guarantees Australia’s indigenous people will have what George III instructed Phillip to secure for them in 1788, but that has proved elusive until now.

Damien Freeman lectures on ethics and aesthetics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney. He is also director of the Governor-General’s Prize for the Constitution Education Fund Australia.