by John Howard
I did not have a politically correct approach to Aboriginal issues. I did not believe in separate development for the Indigenous people of Australia. It remains my opinion that the best way of helping Indigenous Australians is to include them within the mainstream of the Australian community and endeavour, as far as possible, to ensure that they share the bounty of our prosperous nation. They were the most disadvantaged group within our society, had suffered discrimination and prejudice in the past and were entitled to far greater opportunities in the fields of health, education, employment and housing than they had previously received.
I had always resisted the notion of a treaty. Whatever the legal niceties may have been, the concept of a treaty being made by different groups of people within the same nation seemed quite alien to me. The One Australia concept which I had articulated as part of the Future Directions manifesto of 1988 saw Aboriginal and other Australians as being together citizens of one nation. The idea that one section of the Australian community should, in any way, be governed by different laws than those that applied to the rest of the community was unacceptable.
The High Court’s decision in the Mabo case, in 1992, had been a landmark change in the law affecting Indigenous people, because it found that native title, or continuing Aboriginal ownership of land, could exist where the land in question had never been included in a crown grant. As most property in urban areas of Australia was freehold title and therefore the subject of an original crown grant, Mabo was of largely academic interest to city dwellers. It was different in the country, where there were many leasehold titles; numerous pastoralists and miners were unsettled by the Mabo decision.
The Keating Government, with Democrat support, had secured passage of the Native Title Act in 1993, which sought to clarify aspects of the law enunciated by the High Court, as well as establishing a procedure to handle the claims which would inevitably arise as a result of the court’s finding that native title could exist. The Coalition had voted against the Native Title Bill because it did not adequately protect the position of pastoralists and miners.
The concerns of pastoralists and miners were mollified to some degree by a recital to the Native Title Act which asserted that the grant of a pastoral lease had extinguished native title. This did not have the force of law, but was an operating principle for almost three years until the surprise decision of the High Court of Australia in the Wik case, late in 1996.
ATSIC, the elected Indigenous body, had been established during my first tenure as Opposition leader. The Coalition had then voted against ATSIC, believing that control of Aboriginal affairs should remain within an ordinary department of government. Speaking in the House of Representatives on 11 April 1989, I said of the ATSIC proposal, ‘The ATSIC legislation strikes at the heart of the unity of the Australian people. In the name of righting the wrongs done against Aboriginal people, the legislation adopts the misguided notion of believing that if one creates a parliament within the Australian community for Aboriginal people, one will solve and meet all of those problems.’ ATSIC proved a failure and in 2004, under Mark Latham’s leadership, the Labor Party supported my Government’s abolition of ATSIC.
Before he was elected prime minister, Bob Hawke had promised to introduce national land rights legislation. Partly under pressure from Brian Burke, the Labor Premier of Western Australia, Hawke moved away from this commitment. Hawke had also, by this time as PM, promised in June 1988 to ‘reach a proper and lasting reconciliation through a pact or treaty’.1 As Opposition leader, I said that the Coalition would never support a treaty. In its place, and with opposition support, Hawke established the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation under the chairmanship of Pat Dodson. The remit of this body was to embark on a program of consultation in the broader Australian community, with a view to agreeing on a basis for lasting reconciliation between Indigenous and other Australians by the centenary of Federation in January 2001.
It was a lofty goal, and very difficult to attain because of the fundamental chasm between the rights agenda of most of the Indigenous leadership and the Labor Party on the one hand and, on the other, those like myself who saw the path ahead as one which brought Indigenous people into the mainstream of the Australian community. The council nonetheless realised a good deal and helped embed the notion of reconciliation within the psyche of many Australians. I would constantly talk of practical reconciliation, a concept which embraced the totality of policies in individual areas designed to help Indigenous people.
The former Labor Government, late in its time in office, established the inquiry led by the former High Court Judge Sir Ronald Wilson into the so-called Stolen Generation, or the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents. This would become one of the most emotional and controversial aspects of Indigenous policy and the foundation of the push for a formal apology, ultimately given by the Rudd Government shortly after its election.
Indigenous policy did not figure prominently in the 12 months that I had led the opposition before winning government, except for the controversy surrounding attempts by the Keating Government, which ultimately failed, to block the construction of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge in South Australia because a sacred Aboriginal site was involved, with the added twist that it was a place where ‘secret women’s business’ was conducted, and that it was offensive to Indigenous people for men to know anything about it. To most Australians the whole saga was absurd, and drained away sympathy for legitimate Aboriginal grievances.
From the early weeks of my Government it was very clear that virtually all of the Aboriginal leadership shared the Labor view of Indigenous affairs, which was overwhelmingly about the rights of Indigenous people; symbolic gestures and commitments in furtherance of those rights assumed far greater significance than anything else. The Dodson brothers, Pat and Mick, typified this approach. Noel Pearson had developed a close relationship with Paul Keating and he was, in the wake of the Wik decision, to become a fierce critic of the Coalition until some years later when he provided some of the best advice my Government received in the whole area.
Pat Dodson was the chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and Lois (now Lowitja) O’Donoghue, another constant critic of the Coalition through virtually the whole time it was in office, chaired ATSIC. The Aboriginal leadership didn’t take kindly to John Herron’s appointment. They rightly perceived that he would talk about responsibilities as often as he talked about rights. In one particularly caustic comment, Mick Dodson expressed his resentment that I had referred to John Herron’s work in Rwanda as some kind of qualification for helping Indigenous people. It was a piece of arrogance which puzzled me, as the only point I was trying to make was that Herron’s surgical work in Africa was evidence of his decency and compassion.
One of Herron’s first acts as minister was to expose some financial mismanagement by ATSIC and to recommend a series of changes to bring it under tighter financial control. He met fierce resistance, not only from Aboriginal leaders but also the Labor Party, which continued a business-as-usual approach to Indigenous policy.
Just before Christmas 1996, the High Court delivered its judgement in the Wik case and, to the surprise of most, did not confirm the belief implicit in the Native Title legislation of the Keating Government, and contained in a recital (or preface) to that act: that the grant of a pastoral lease extinguished native title. It found that the rights of Indigenous owners and those granted a pastoral lease could coexist, and to the extent that those rights collided in individual cases, then the rights of the pastoral leaseholder would prevail.
This decision shocked the pastoral and mining industries, disconcerted the Government, appeared on the face of it to be unworkable, and gave fresh impetus to those within the Indigenous community and elsewhere who believed that the Native Title Act of the Keating Government had not gone far enough.
The Coalition had been elected with a promise to amend the Native Title Act, to make it more workable for farmers and miners. We did not w
ant to scrap it, but there was inevitable suspicion of us amongst Aboriginal figures because we had voted against the act in 1993. The High Court finding in the Wik case had just made our task that much harder.
The Wik decision had given native-title claimants more leverage than they had expected. There was no way that they were going to surrender any of this, particularly as they knew that the Government did not have the numbers in the Senate to pass amending legislation. The ALP and the Democrats would give us no assistance with amending legislation. I decided that the Government should try and negotiate an outcome with all of the interested parties, and that I would involve myself heavily in those negotiations.
The Wik decision caused internal problems for the Coalition. Understandably, farmers were very upset that ambiguity now existed in relation to the operation of pastoral leases. This was reflected through the National Party and some Liberal members of parliament. Some agitated for tough amending legislation and, if necessary, a double dissolution to resolve the issue. I never entertained for a moment having a double dissolution. With the Wik decision under their belt, Indigenous leaders became more strident. Noel Pearson, later to become more reasonable, was no exception. I knew that part of a successful negotiation would be to engage him. He had a superior technical understanding of native title legislation. We had some polite discussions, but it was obvious that he was in no mood to concede anything. He did not have to. The High Court’s decision had been an unexpected bonus, and he knew as well as anyone else that the Coalition would not be able to get legislation through the Senate restoring what had been previously believed: namely, that the grant of a pastoral lease had extinguished native title.
I commenced the negotiation process thinking that it would be seen as a virtue to widely consult and listen to all parties. This was only partly correct. What had been needed was a short period of intensive negotiations followed by a clear-cut set of proposals on which legislation would be based.
By the time I produced the well-known ten-point plan to deal with the consequences of the Wik decision, the Liberal and National parties had passed through several months of appearing divided and indecisive about native title. This had a bad impact on many of our traditional supporters in rural areas who, bewildered by the Wik decision, had wanted a speedy and clear government response. It was hard to persuade them that life was not as simple as that. We simply couldn’t do what we might have wanted to because we lacked the numbers in the Senate.
On 17 May 1997, Tim Fischer and I addressed a rally, largely of farmers, at Longreach in Central Queensland to explain our Wik plan. The turnout was big and, despite media reporting to the contrary, I found the atmosphere relatively understanding.
Predictably the Labor Party and the Australian Democrats opposed a large part of the ten-point plan. The Independent Senator Brian Harradine was more flexible, although he was unwilling to support everything in our outline. The inevitable compromise was finally reached in some frantic personal discussions with him. He was sympathetic to the Indigenous position and had no desire to see a double dissolution fought on native-title issues, but was broadly supportive of the Government.
I liked Brian Harradine a lot. One always had a good idea where Harradine stood on important questions. Despite the transparency of his position on so many issues, on the particular detail of legislation he was a wily negotiator who kept both sides guessing until the very end. He employed this tactic to the full during the Wik negotiations.
It would be more than a year before the Wik legislation, embodying most of the ten-point plan, finally passed the Senate on Wednesday 8 July 1998. The debate on these amendments had been the longest in the Senate on any one measure since Federation. Their most valuable features were the removal of uncertainties regarding action since the Native Title Act had been passed and restrictions on capricious native-title claims. It wasn’t an entirely satisfactory outcome; it was a good deal less than what many of our strong rural supporters might have expected when the Government changed. In the circumstances, however, it was a reasonable solution given the unexpected High Court decision in the Wik case.
The political cost to the Coalition had been marked. By the middle of 1997, we had fallen behind the Labor Party in the opinion polls. The apparent drift on the native-title issue had played a big part in this. The Pauline Hanson factor, dealt with earlier, came into the mix; her simplistic slogans made our life harder.
I made things worse for myself when speaking at a reconciliation meeting in Melbourne on 26 May 1997. I knew this meeting would be hard and though I intended to recognise symbolic sensitivities I was determined to avoid the abjectly apologetic language so often used by members of the Labor Party and others. The audience was overwhelmingly Indigenous, and when I commenced my remarks many of them had stood and turned their backs on me, a symbolic act of contempt for a speaker.
In my speech I said:
At the same time we need to acknowledge openly that the treatment accorded to many Indigenous Australians over a significant period of European settlement represents the most blemished chapter in our history. Clearly there were injustices done and no-one should obscure or minimise them. We need to acknowledge as a nation what European settlement has meant for the first Australians, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and in particular the assault on their traditions and the discrimination and violence they endured over many decades.
I mentioned the forthcoming tabling of the Stolen Children, or Bringing Them Home, report and said that it would neither be summarily rejected nor uncritically embraced. I did, however, say this: ‘Personally, I feel deep sorrow for those of my fellow Australians who suffered injustices under the practices of past generations towards Indigenous people. Equally I am sorry for the hurt and trauma many people here today may continue to feel as a consequence of those practices.’
I cautioned against depicting Australia’s history since 1788 as little more than a disgraceful record of imperialism, exploitation and racism. I said, ‘Such a portrayal is a gross distortion and deliberately neglects the overall story of great Australian achievement that is there in our history to be told, and such an approach will be repudiated by the overwhelming majority of Australians who are proud of what this country has achieved although inevitably acknowledging the blemishes in its past history.’
In summary I said that Australians of the current generation should not be required to accept blame for past policies over which they had no control. However, we should acknowledge past wrongs and realise that they continue to cause pain and commit to remedy disadvantage, now and in the future.
So moderate did my remarks turn out to be that, on hearing them, many actually turned around to face me and sat down. When I got to the portion of my speech dealing with the Government’s response to the Wik decision, there were some noisy interjections from a section of the audience close to me. Foolishly, I responded by shouting over the interjections, appearing to lose control. It looked very bad on television and thus became an enduring image, negative for me, on Indigenous issues. My critics were delighted, as the episode played strongly to the view that I was at permanent loggerheads with Indigenous Australians.
Regrettably, this totally obliterated what I felt had been a very balanced presentation on the whole Indigenous issue. The views I outlined that day continued to guide my Government’s policy for its next decade in office.
These remarks echoed the sentiments of mainstream Australia. Such has been the hysteria of this debate that I doubt that more than a tiny fraction of Australians know that as far back as May 1997 I had expressed my personal sorrow for past injustices against Indigenous Australians.
The continuing problem for us, and worse still for Indigenous Australia, was that until the aftermath of the 2004 election, almost eight years later, the bulk of Australia’s Aboriginal leadership was unwilling to accept our legitimacy, and refused to deal with us except on the basis of the Government accepting their agenda. That did massive damage t
o the Indigenous cause.
Then there was the Bringing Them Home report of the Human Rights Commission Inquiry, chaired by Sir Ronald Wilson, tabled in federal parliament on 26 May 1997. Amongst other things, it described as ‘an act of genocide’ the practices of past governments in removing some Indigenous children from their parents. As well as funding for Indigenous agencies and the payment of reparations, all parliaments in Australia were asked to offer formal apologies and officially acknowledge the responsibility of their predecessors for the laws, policies and practices of forcible removal.
From very early in my prime ministership, I made it known that I was not all that sympathetic to the inquiry and that I had a fundamental difficulty with the notion of later generations passing judgement on the deeds of earlier generations, not according to the values of earlier generations but according to those of current generations. It is very easy to apologise for the mistakes of your predecessors. It is a lot harder to apologise for your own and, as a consequence, real-time apologies are a lot rarer than the other type. I would never embrace the artificiality of a formal apology for the simple reason that the only person or government which can give an effective apology is the original perpetrator.