Anthony Albanese’s recent visit to the Gama Festival will certainly be memorable but not in ways that he will necessarily appreciate. It displayed, in a manner for all to see, his government’s final renunciation of the Uluru Statement From The Heart of 2017 and the attendant process of reconciliation.
The Referendum of October 2023 rejected the Voice to Parliament. The Prime Minister has now closed down all consideration of the Makarrata Commission, truth telling and treaty making. In placing his emphasis on economic development he has returned to John Howard’s policy of ‘practical reconciliation’ dating from C. 1996 but tarted up now as something new and innovative. It brings to an end an era of reform dating back to the 1980’s when the emphasis was on social justice and human rights, both domestic and international. It was a period when the world moved on in relation to indigenous rights but Australia fell by the wayside unable to shed its colonial heritage. Albanese has run up the white flag to appease the resurgent right wing and fully confirmed his administration’s moral myopia.
It is clear as well that the Government either knows nothing of pertinent recent history or if that isn’t the case, doesn’t give a fig about it. This is seen most clearly in relation to the concept of the Makarrata which takes us back forty years to the final years of the Fraser government in 1982 and the work of a star-studded bi-partisan Senate Select Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs which produced a document After Two Hundred Years in 1983. The title indicated that the Committee realised that they were dealing with legal and constitutional problems which resulted from the way in which the British had established the colony in 1788. After extensive consultation with legal experts and with First Nation’s communities their conclusions will appear very familiar to a contemporary audience. The Committee members determined that their chosen task was’ to consider the feasibility of a compact or “Makarrata” between the Commonwealth and the Aboriginal people.’ It should be achieved by the means of a referendum to amend the constitution, a process they favoured, because of the:
- symbolic value of the necessary referendum process to insert the provisions in the
- Constitution, whereby the non-Aboriginal community would be given the opportunity
- to recognise the failings of the past 200 years and to acknowledge their commitment
- to a new beginning between themselves and the nation’s original inhabitants. The
- necessary educative process preceding such a referendum would be an important
- part of the longer process of reconciliation symbolised by the passage of the referendum.
The Committee’s objective was clear. But they were unsure when the referendum should be held. That indeed was the rub. The most obvious moment was the bi-centenary in 1988. Prime Minister Hawke intimated that he wanted to move in that direction in 1987 but nothing happened although at the Barunga Festival of 1988 he was presented with two paintings and accompanying text which called on the Commonwealth to negotiate a treaty recognising Aboriginal prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty. He promised that appropriate legislation would be passed by the end of 1990. It wasn’t– a failure which Hawke it is said, long regretted. Instead in 1991 the Reconciliation Council was set up with a life of ten years and the brief to prepare the way for an appropriate document to be presented to the people to mark the centenary of federation in 2001. But by then John Howard was securely in power and had no intention of consummating what was, by then, the much discussed treaty.
Can we be surprised that First Nation’s leaders when, in 2015, they were commissioned by both Prime Minister Abbott and Opposition Leader Shorten to consult with communities all over the country on ways to ‘complete the constitution’ that they came up with modest proposals that had been widely considered for a generation. They thought they had a supportive community and a political class which took seriously the rights of indigenous people. Why wouldn’t they? The International Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People was adopted by 150 nations in the General Assembly in 2007 representing the great bulk of the world’s population. Australian representatives had played a prominent part in the long process of formulation and the final document was formally presented to the General Assembly by the veteran activist Les Maelzer. It was formally ratified by the Rudd Government in 2009. Originally opposed by the Federal Opposition it was enthusiastically supported by Julie Bishop during her five year period as Foreign Minister between 2013 and 2018. So for ten years the Declaration has had bipartisan endorsement. Not that anyone would know. Did any member of the government refer to it during the referendum debates? More to the point have any of them referred to the Declaration as a way forward right now for our First Nations? In 2022 the Australian Law Council prepared a detailed paper on ways in which aspects of the Declaration could be incorporated into our domestic statutes by means of relatively minor amendments, but it would seem that no-one in Canberra was listening. But Albanese, Wong and Marles were all members of Rudd’s Ministry when the Declaration was ratified. Did they not notice it at the time? Or is it a matter of self-administered amnesia to such an extent that the only tactic that appears to have been considered post referendum is retreat in order to take Australia back to where it had been a generation ago before people had even heard the word Makarrata?
And yet Marles and Wong, in particular, rattle on around the world about our dedication to a rules based international order.
So what has been achieved in the forty years between the publication of After Two Hundred Years in 1983 and the failed referendum campaign in 2023?
The one great advance was the High Court’s Mabo judgement in 1992 clearly a radical reform which may never have been emerged from our parliaments. And this at a time when comparable countries were moving rapidly ahead with their varied commitments to enhance indigenous self- determination. There was the Waitangi Tribunal in New Zealand, Sami parliaments in Norway, Sweden and Finland and in Canada the negotiation of 24 regional treaties covering over 40% of the land mass.
In 2023, the Australian electorate baulked at the proposal to establish nothing more than a parliamentary advisory committee with not much more than moral authority.
Henry Reynolds is an eminent Australian historian.
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