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October 23, 2006
In an op-ed in The Australian Noel Pearson comes out swinging against neo-conservatism.That is a suprise because he has been seen as a fellow traveller by those on the left, due to his criticism of progressive liberal thinking on idigenous issues. On the latter Pearson says:
The ideas of progressive Australia that most needed to be challenged were: Passive welfare can be an economic foundation for functional communities; choice is possible without capabilities: that indigenous people in remote communities could choose the kind of life they wanted to lead, without education and other capabilities that are necessary for real choice to be exercised; the symptom theory that holds it is mainly dispossession and poverty that causes and maintains addiction and dysfunction.
The qualifiies by saying that the tragedy is that even as many progressives cling to destructive policies, many people of the Right are focused on a cultural war that attempts to reverse the good things that did happen during the progressive reconciliation era, namely the recognition of our rights and our rightful place in this country.
The criticism of neoconservatism starts thus:
During the past decade we have been told that some myths pertaining to the Aboriginal people of Australia have been debunked. The myth of frontier massacres is said to have been debunked by Keith Windschuttle. The myth of the stolen generations is said to have been debunked by Quadrant magazine. The myth of the noble savage is said to have been debunked by Roger Sandall. The myth of terra nullius is said to have been debunked by Michael Connor.
Now, an environmentalist, William Lines, has stepped up to debunk the myth of the ecological Aborigine (see Patriots: Defending Australia's Natural Heritage, extracted in Inquirer on October 14). Oh, my poor people! You have been subjected to a relentless and seemingly endless cultural cleansing. And you appear to be utterly defeated in a cultural war in which you have shown a declining and eventually feeble resistance. All that remains is to smooth the dying pillow of our remnant dignity as a people. There is a breathtaking vehemence to this neo-conservatism.
He says that the worst effect of the neo-conservative ascendancy is that opinions that normally would be mean and ungracious in a generous, democratic country become acceptable and indeed de rigueur. The problem with the valid parts of neo-conservative argument is that legitimate insights are interwoven with a farrago of polemic, usually aimed at discrediting indigenous rights to land and recognition as a people. An example is the forementioned article by William Lines.
Lines says that:
The myth of the ecological Aborigine elevated Aborigines to positions of moral and spiritual superiority and disparaged people of non-Aboriginal background. They would never belong in Australia. Their ancestry rendered them incapable of acquiring a sense of connection.....Many prominent conservationists, however, declared that for non-Aborigines, connection was impossible. According to the tenets of racial thinking, non-Aborigines could never and would never feel comfortable living in Australia. If true -- if non-Aborigines were inherently incapable of attachment -- then conservation was doomed.
What we have, says LInes, is race thinking -- a dividing the world into them and us. Lines is onto something here. We do need to undercut the 'ecological aborigine' because it is a romanticised account of Aboriginal occupancy, and some white people who have lived on the land have connected to the land.
Now Lines links the myth of the ecological Aborigine with land rights through national parks. Could aborigines claim land rights over national parks? Could they hunt rare wildlife with modern firearms in national parks? These national parks were protected areas -- wilderness, and flora and fauna sanctuaries -- and they formed the cornerstone of Australian conservation. Some on the left say that only aborigines can because wilderness is a cultural construct and implies terra nullius. Thus we have race thinking says Lines.
Pearson says that the core of Lines's article was his contention that the land rights movement is to a large extent based on "racial thinking" and he adds:
It is depressing to have to explain that Aboriginal people are traditional owners of land who are belatedly having their ownership recognised. This ownership is based on the original, traditional occupation and possession of the land (recognised by the common law of England as a basis for title to land), not race. Race is just an incident of the fact that Aborigines were the people who occupied the land at the advent of the common law. In typical fashion, Lines turns words such as "race thinking" and "discrimination" against my people, who until recently lived in absolute discrimination and oppression because of their race.
Native title, as the law has developed in Australia, is extremely favourable for non-indigenous people. All non-indigenous rights are automatically protected; indigenous people have to go through a difficult process to get what is left over, including some crown land. He then adds:
It is typical that Lines believes the government should have arbitrarily stopped recognition of our ownership of some of that crown land in national parks. This is symptomatic of a political and cultural climate in which indigenous people's rights can be attacked in an unprincipled way: how could Burkeian conservatives and Hayekian liberals countenance government arbitrarily taking away land that is the lawful inheritance of citizens?
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