Talk by Tony Thomas for launch of Peter O’Brien’s book, The Indigenous Voice to Parliament? The “No” Case. Thursday May 11, 2023, at Carlton Vic.
Thanks everyone for coming along this evening.
I’ve read Peter Obrien’s book on the No case and not only learnt a lot from it but very much enjoyed reading it. It’s compact and written in direct and frank style. It’s also a great reference to have handy so please buy a copy.
I’ve been writing essays about Aboriginal affairs for the past 20 years, including my own pocket edition of Keith Windschuttle’s magisterial 700-page book on The Fabrication of Aboriginal History – the Stolen Generations. I summed up the whole saga in one paragraph as follows:
Nationally from about 1880 to 1970, Windschuttle found 8250 Aboriginal children taken into care for all reasons. That’s about 90 a year, including orphans, the destitute, the neglected and those given up voluntarily by parents. The small numbers leave small scope for any “stolen generation” national genocide involving a total 50,000-100,000 forcible removals.
In 2013, not long after Andrew Bolt’s conviction via the Racial Villication legislation, I felt impelled by some current cases to write a series of four essays on what I called “The Horror of Aboriginal Violence”. I traced examples of barbaric cultural practices from 1788 to the present day, but as I published them I felt genuine fear that I myself could be prosecuted, even though everything I wrote derived from public records. As it happened, I met no consequences but how strange that in democratic Australia, free expression can appear so dangerous.
This is heavy stuff so I’ll lighten things with a couple of stories.
A year or two ago I was researching for an essay on how many people were newly identifying as Aboriginals, and why. The answer is that between the 2011 and 2016 censuses, 130,000 whites switched to black, and 45,000 did the opposite – switched from black to white. That created in 2016 a net bunch of 85,000 new identifiers as black . That meant one in seven of the Aboriginal population in 2011 was fluid if not flaky. These numbers came from a special longitudinal study by ANU researches – there’s no recent numbers from the 2021 census.
But the gross numbers of Aborigines increased from 2016 to 2021 by no less than 25% (160,000 people). Only 45% of that increase was biological; the rest – 55% or more than half – were from more people ticking the Aborigine box. They’re nearly all from NSW and Victoria, As for Tasmania, there were only 700 Aborigines recorded in 1971 and today there’s 30,000, or more than 5% of all Tasmanians. So in a random street near Hobart, you’d probably turn up 11 professed Aborigines.
I tried poking around in a 1996 Griffith University thesis for Master of Arts by a Fiona Noble, about new identifiers. She asked a sample how they had come to re-identify as black. One lady told her:
I was just different, really different, in that all the animals were my friends and I used to spend hours in the chook yard talking to my chooks, because like they were the only ones who understood anything that I was feeling or that I was thinking.
I know King Charles 111 talks to his flower pots, but discussing Aboriginality with your chooks in the backyard is something else.
For another little story, we at Quadrant published a marvellous essay only last Tuesday by a medical professor Paul Prociv . He got a grant of $115,000 30 years ago to do research on gut parasite infections in the kids at Galiwinku on Elcho Island off Arnhem Land. That was some time back but I bet little has changed for the better.
It took the rival clans among 2000 people there a whole year to elect a chairman to get the approval signed.
The Professor found when he got there that the chairman thought all money came direct from Queen Elizabeth for the council’s personal benefit. He immediately creamed off $65,000 or more than half the funds for his Council’s administrative expenses.
The Professor found that most of the kids there were functionally starving with lack of protein and iron, and a typical days’ sustenance was a bag of potato chips and a can of Coke. Instead of going to school they crowded into shacks during the day to watch junk videos. The kids had used the town water tower as a swimming pool and crapped in it.
The community was littered with wrecks of expensive Land Cruisers and a whole yard of heavy machinery like graders and excavators that were rotting away from lack of maintenance.
The Professor took a boat trip and they passed by the house of Yothu Yindi musician and actor the late Gullaroy Yunipingu. Gullaroy not only had a two storey beachfront mansion with private jetty, but his personal helicopter on floats at the end of it. With a full-time pilot presumed standing by for duty, he used it for luxury travel and hunting and fishing.
In all the time during the medical research, the only signs the professor saw of any Aboriginal culture was pantomimes and dress-ups to impress politicians during their fly-in visits of a few hours. Every community need was met by inflows of government cash, creating no incentives for work or community self-improvement.
It’s quite a first hand story albeit a bit dated.
Before I get on to the serious stuff, I’ll just fill you in on my pet horror, the Welcomes to Country. It’s quite an industry now and the grandma of all welcomes would have to be Aunty Matilda House-Williams, from the Ngambri clan in Canberra. She did the Welcomes for three Parliaments. Treasury is a bit coy about the pay rate but it became public that her payment for opening the Tony Abbott parliament was $10,500. She gave good value back, saying
“Like our ancestors, we can reach new heights soaring on the wings of the eagles. Thank you very much, and welcome to the land of my ancestors.”
We all know that these welcomes date from Ernie Dingo in Perth in 1976 (actually 1978), to mollify four NZ and Cook Island dancers. But I found another claim from Rhoda Roberts, head of indigenous programs at Sydney Opera House, who welcomed guests ar0und the same time by marking them with ochre and Aboriginal sweat.
I once studied under the famous anthropologist Ron Berndt, it was quite an education for a 20 year old young innocent. In his best known book he writes about an actual welcome to country at Oodnadatta:
“When a man with a subincised penis enters a strange camp, he takes up the hand of each local man in turn, pressing his penis flatly on the palm.[6] This gesture, of offering and acceptance in a close physical contact, signifies the establishment of friendly relations, and is associated with the settling of grievances.”[7]
Explorer Edward John Eyre also describes the permissions of one group wanting to enter. There didn’t appear to be any “welcome” ceremony.
I quote Alistair Crooks:
“Central to Eyre’s notes is the aboriginal belief that only the old and young can die of natural causes. All adults only die as the result of contact with sickness country, by the action of malignant spirits, or by the intervention of sorcery by neighbouring tribes.
Thus when two tribes meet at one tribal boundary, they first settle accounts for all the tribal deaths attributable to sorcery by each tribe since they last met. After a discussion a group of men would be selected out and would allow themselves to be speared by the other tribe. After this settling of accounts, normal relations were established and they could get on with the business.” [8]
[8] To be whimsical, such ritual spearings of white leaders by Aboriginal performers at Welcome ceremonies could lend an authentic touch, and generate some literal healing of past wounds.
One early observer, a certain Mrs Smith, wife of a Mt Gambier missionary, noted that welcomes didn’t always end well: “The tribes, like most savage peoples, were in continual dread of each other; and although they occasionally met up on friendly terms to hold a murapena (corroboree), it usually eventuated in a fight, in which one or two were killed and afterwards eaten.”[9]
Let’s turn now to the Referendum about the Voice. Peter’s the expert so I’ll focus on Victoria where a State voice, treaty and reparations are well under way. In other words, Victoria gives a template for what might happen nationally if the Yes vote gets up. By the end of this year, State Treaty negotiations will be under way.
The money side in Victoria is mind-boggling. From when the Victorian treaty business started in 2016 to last year, we locals spent $93m on it. In the State budget last year, after smoking ceremonies, possum skin fancy dress parades and message sticks, Dan Andrews allocated another $151 million over four years for the First Peoples (don’t know if they are different to First Nations) to do their negotiating from a position of financial strength. So that’s a total $245m and it hardly scratches the surface.
The fresh funds will go largely into an Aboriginal run “Self Determination Fund”, a charitable trust. There will be a lot of controls on spending, but I imagine there’ll be a plethora of overseas junkets and paid gigs, for starters
Officially, “The Fund will empower First Peoples to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development in exercise of First Peoples’ inherent right to self-determination, a fundamental right that is affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).”
Meanwhile, last year Dan Andrews launched a Stolen Generations Reparation fund, allocating $150m to it as a first step. This fund was designed by an. Independent steering committee of Aborigines, including professed stolen generation members, their families, and a heap of Aboriginal entities like the Aboriginal Legal Service and welfare groups. Its officially described as “ a chance for the Victorian Government to begin making amends for these past injustices.”
Every successful claimant gets $100,000 plus a personal apology from the State. I don’t know what’s been handed out so far.
The co-chair of the First People’s Assembly, Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, had this to say about the $151m;
“I don’t believe there is anything that can heal that trauma or ever repay that loss, but the package announced today will go some way to helping people address the disadvantage caused by the inhumane practices our people have been subjected to.”
The committee chair Ian Hamm, added that “ the process was designed to reduce any additional trauma by keeping the evidentiary bar as low as possible – “if there is any gathering of evidence needed, the onus is on the state to gather that.”
We’re not finished yet with the big-money issues. Since 2021 Victoria has been running the Yoorrook Justice Commission for truth-telling about past and present injustices, and developing a shared narrative of the true impact of colonisation. It has the powers of a royal commission. The commission has just applied to stay in business to mid-2026, what a surprise.!
The truth telling commission among other things will recommend “appropriate redress” for its victims of colonialism.
The Treaty stakes are high: in WA’s southwest, a de facto treaty is phasing in $1.3 billion to the Noongar communities.
Dan Andrews really means it about Aboriginal self-determination.
Labor’s Treaty Minister Gabrielle Willams says her government will legislate to effect the full Uluru Statement. She says, “First Peoples will be in the driver’s seat, making decisions about the matters that impact their lives. Treaty is the all-important mechanism from which First Peoples can pursue their aspirations, and design and deliver their own solutions to improve outcomes”.
Under the Treaty Act, the First Peoples’ Assembly is an equal partner, holding equal authority, during the negotiations process.
- Dan Andrews says, “What we achieve together will ultimately forge a stronger future for all Victorians. A future led entirely by Aboriginal communities, Aboriginal voices and Aboriginal leaders. “
The goal sounds quite nasty – the treaties are to “remove the shadow of colonisation” and ”the racist legacies of invasion”.
The Victorian public service is being convulsed by
Aboriginality. Dan’s Minister Gabrielle has brought in a Self-Determination Reform Framework across the entire public service, for “systematic and structural transformation” to account for Aboriginal input.
She says, “It needs long-term commitment and sustained effort from all parts of government. All Victorian departments have put in place self-determination strategies that build internal governance to oversee efforts to enable self-determination.”
Perhaps so much taxpayer money must be spent because Victoria won’t have just one treaty for the State, but five separate and local treaties for groups in five State zones.
The Statewide Treaty Assembly will have about 31seats, 21 general seats plus 11 seats reserved for traditional owners. elections are from this Saturday to June 3 to cull the 75 candidates down to 31.
I spent this morning trying to find out how voters for these Aboriginal bodies will prove their Aboriginality. I even tried to enrol as voter myself as I believe I’m descended from the tribal chief of the Perth nation. However I had to tell too many lies on the forms so I suspended my false-flag exercise.
The fact is, you can enrol to vote for these First People’s bodies just by dropping the name of your clan, mob or nation. Since the Kulin nation covers most of Melbourne, that’s an easy start for anyone. So what’s the control system? It’s just that your nomination can be challenged by any already-enrolled member, and adjudicated by a panel of respected Aboriginal community members. The organisers professed goal is to maximise voters on the roll to impress politicians, so a lot of dubious names might creep in.
I don’t want to bore you but the treaty structure includes offshoots like a Treaty Authority with half a dozen members to keep everyone in line as an independent umpire.
Most tricky of all is that the Treaty Assembly will have a upper house of Elders, a bit like Britain’s house of lords. Actually no-one can define who rates as an Elder. What about an “emerging Elder”, an older non-elder, or just a proud member of the XYZ Nation toting a Senior’s Card? So after about five years, design of this upper house is still in limbo.
This Elders’ Voice is officially “a permanent forum or arm of the Assembly that will help keep us culturally strong and guide the work of the elected Assembly Members.”
Actually the treaty groups hired PriceWaterhouseCoopers in 2019 to report on who gets to be an Elder and how the upper house would work, and the report is 35,000 words long. Just the chapter defining an Elder is 5000 words, after consulting 200 Aborigines in 20 workshops. More than 80% of PWC’s existing Elders complained about other spurious Elders.
The consultants couldn’t find any way to settle disputes about Eldership and just said it was subjective, anyone can claim to be an Elder and be accepted here but rejected there.
One Elder said, “It’s hard enough to confirm Aboriginality, who would confirm Eldership?”
The numbers proposed for the upper house ranged from two (one man and one woman) to literally thousands – two reps for each family group. The animosities are also high — The need for “respect” for and among Elders occurs 90 times in the PwC report.
There was a big conference of elders in the Pullman Hotel in Melbourne in 2019, but they brought along heaps of their family members as well. These youngsters and kids also thought they could pipe up during the proceedings, so it was bedlam. One large group walked out over an Issue and threatened to present Dan Andrews with a minority report.
The only winner from the exercise was PWC which earned a heap for its 60 indigenous specialty consultants.
So getting back to the Voice referendum, on the Victorian example a Yes win will produce not just a can of worms administratively, but a can of pythons. And that’s without considering any issues of principle. Who knows what’s in store for poor fellow , our country. Thanks and pls buy Peter’s book.#
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