The Case for a Mentoring Paternalism

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney loves being a victim.  On first being elected to the NSW Parliament she claimed that for the first ten years of her life she was administered under the ‘Flora and Fauna Act’.  That myth has been so thoroughly demolished she no longer makes that claim. However, the myth persists.

Dr Asmi Wood, a Torres Strait Island man, is a professor of law at the Australian National University. In an article in The Conversation in March 2023 he asserted:

The Constitution once also mentioned “Aboriginal natives” for the purposes of exclusion. Section 127 excluded “Aboriginal natives” from the count of the human population and regulated “Aboriginal natives” as fauna – this section was removed in the overwhelmingly supported 1967 referendum.

Is it possible that a professor of law at one of our supposedly world class universities could be so ignorant of our legal history? It must be, because the alternative, that is, that he would deliberately peddle a myth, is unthinkable. Isn’t it?

But back to Burney and Section 127. This is often a misunderstood provision of the original Constitution. Burney, who was born in 1957, told a recent edition of ABC’s Insiders that, because of this section, she was not counted in the census until she was ten. Section 127 was in the original Constitution but repealed as a result of the 1967 referendum. It said: “In reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.” This might seem to the casual eye to be confirmation of Burney’s claim but, on a closer look, it does not mention the census. It has long been shown by scholars such as Geoffrey Sawyer and John La Nauze that, rather than instructing census takers, Section 127 was designed to prevent states — especially Queensland and Western Australia, which in 1901 were still partly unexplored — from using estimates of uncounted Aborigines in their remote regions to boost their population statistics and thus give themselves additional MPs in the lower house of parliament.

Moreover, in a recent article in The Australian, Professor Geoffrey Blainey provided convincing evidence that Aborigines were counted in the Commonwealth census right from 1911 and ever since.  They were also accounted for in the annual reports of the Aboriginal affairs departments of the individual states, which, up until 1967, were exclusively responsible for Aboriginal welfare. Aborigines were always counted as people of Australia.

It is true that the demographic data contained in the census report of 1911 specifically state that its data are ‘excluding of full-blood Aborigines’, as does every census up to 1967.  However, the 1911 census recorded a total of 10,113 ‘half caste Aborigines’ and they were included in the demographic data.  As they have been ever since.

So whatever discrimination, if any, was intended by Section 127, it did not apply to anyone ‘not of the full-blood’.  So, Burney’s claim that she was not counted is false. 

Here she is at it again.  In Parliament the other day she asked why it should be so that her life expectancy is eight years fewer than non-Aboriginal Australians.   As Andrew Bolt observed, unless there is some genetic reason for lower life expectancy for Aborigines, then it could only be lifestyle that would reduce her life expectancy.  Unless she smokes and drinks to excess or consumes an unhealthy diet, her life expectancy is no different from yours or mine. This led me to think about ‘Closing the Gap’, which is what she was referring to. The 2022 Closing the Gap Report tells us:

The National Agreement includes 17 socio-economic outcomes that will make the greatest difference in improving the lives of First Nations peoples. These socio-economic outcomes take into account the accumulated life experiences of First Nations peoples and their socio-economic wellbeing, as well as their cultural identity and the need for intergenerational healing.

The specific targets related to these outcomes, as detailed in the report, are:

1/ Close the Gap in life expectancy within a generation, by 2031 – not on track. “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

2/ By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies with a healthy birthweight to 91% – on track, currently 89.5%. “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

3/ By 2025, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled in Year Before Fulltime Schooling early childhood education to 95% – on track, currently 96.7%.

4/ By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children assessed as developmentally on track in all five domains of the Australian Early Development Census to 55% – not on track, currently 34%. “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

5/ By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (age 20-24) attaining year 12 or equivalent qualification to 96% – no new data to assess progress. 63% in 2016.

6/ By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25-34 years who have completed a tertiary qualification (Certificate III and above) to 70% – no new data to assess progress. 42% in 2016.

7/ By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth (15-24 years) who are in employment, education or training to 67% – no new data to assess progress. 57% in 2016.

8/ By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25-64 who are employed to 62% – no new data to assess progress. 51% in 2016.

9/ By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in appropriately sized (not overcrowded) housing to 88% – currently 81% but slightly below trajectory.

10/ By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults held in incarceration by at least 15% – not on track. “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

11/ By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention by at least 30% – on track.  “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

12/ By 2031, reduce the rate of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45% – not on track. “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

13/ By 2031, the rate of all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children is reduced by at least 50%, as progress towards zero – no new data to assess progress.

14/ Significant and sustained reduction in suicide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people towards zero – not on track. “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

15/ By 2030, a 15% increase in Australia’s landmass and sea area subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s legal rights or interests – land on track, sea not on track. Land currently $4 million sq km.  Sea 90,555 sq km. “However, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target.”

16/ By 2031, there is a sustained increase in number and strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages being spoken – no new data to assess progress. 123 in 2018/19.

17/ By 2026, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have equal levels of digital inclusion – no new data to assess progress. 74% in 2014.

18/ Achieve parity of air-time on ABC Classic FM for Aboriginal composers, with non-Aboriginal – tracking well above expectations.

OK, I made up that last one.  But while I’m on the subject of ABC Classic FM, where do they get the imprimatur to unilaterally change the names of our state capitals to, e.g., Narrm Melbourne? Memo to Ita Buttrose: Sydney, Melbourne etc are not the names of geographical locations.  They are the names of cities, centres of civic life – a concept unknown to pre-colonial Aborigines.  They did not create Sydney or Melbourne, therefore have no right to rename them. And it’s not as if those cities don’t already abound in Aboriginal place names. 

But I digress. In summary, of the 18 targets:

♦ Two are on track, however, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target,

♦ Seven aren’t on track, however, due to the limited number of available data points, caution should be used when considering progress against this target,

♦ Seven record no change due to lack of new data.

Not an encouraging record.  Not a very rigorous basis upon which to base both major spending and a radical proposal to change the Constitution.

Funding for these issues is difficult to assess with any degree of precision, however, from my, admittedly superficial, study of the report, I have calculated an annual total of at least $2.7 billion towards Closing the Gap.  It would be beyond the scope of this article to examine the spending in relation to each of these outcomes, but that which is related to Outcome One – probably the most important one, health – is instructive. Outcome One (inter alia):

$577 million for primary health care in 2022/23, with $510 million being allocated to 134 Aboriginal community-controlled health services, and Funding for First Nations Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) services and support will increase by up to $66 million to 2024-25, additional to current funding. First Nations’ AOD Treatment Services funded under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy currently assists around 75 providers to deliver 90 activities.

The Commonwealth is undertaking a national consultation process with key First Nations stakeholders and the broader AOD treatment sector. The objective of this consultation is to inform decisions about how and where investments can be made. As part of this, the Commonwealth via procurement processes, has engaged 2 supplier services: a lead First Nations Consultation Service and a supporting Subject Matter Expert (SME) Service.

Does all that seem like ‘grass roots’ involvement to you?  It does to me.  One of the arguments put forward by Voice proponents, such as Chris Kenny, is that what we have been doing so far has failed, so why not try something new?   What we have been doing so far dates back to the days of Nugget Coombs, viz, self determination and separate development. Is that not what is proposed for the Voice?  In which case, it is not a ‘new way’, just a new layer of bureaucracy on top of the old way.

Whether it was through colonisation in 1788 or globalization in the 20th century, alcohol, drugs, sugar, money and technology were going to find their way into the continent of Australia. Aboriginal society, if it had been left alone, was going to have to find a way to deal with this.  Does anyone imagine the results in such a scenario could be anything but disastrous?  A non-traditional hierarchy would have emerged in which those who could manage these modern ‘threats’ would have supplanted the elder system and traditional law, but without any of the restraints of our Westminster system.  There is no barrier to dysfunctional communities giving advice as to how to overcome their disadvantage.  But if they are so lacking in agency that they cannot influence personal behaviour, the major cause of disadvantage, then their advice is likely to be of marginal benefit if any.

If we are to overcome the genuine disadvantage suffered by 20 per cent of the Aboriginal population, then our approach should be leavened with a good dose of paternalism.