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September 20, 2007
Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who was opposed to the Howard Government's intervention into indigenous affairs, has now supported it. The reason for his initial opposition?
The answer is simple. I told him [Mal Brough, the Minister] I was a landowner and leader and he had not spoken to me. He had acquired my land and sought control of my life without talking to me, let alone seeking my consent. Nor had he spoken to the hundreds of people like me throughout the NT who spent their lives coping with Third World conditions, a lack of services and the abject failures of governments. That simple failure to consult, I told him, would eventually undermine his good intentions. The conditions that hurt children and that he was pledging to fix would remain while he sought to impose a solution. It really is that simple. He could not work for us unless he worked with us.
Despite saying at the Garma Festival recently that he was worried sick by the prospect of a land grab Galarrwuy Yunupingu signed a memorandum of understanding with the Howard Government. He says that this 99 year leasing agreement:
satisfies my concerns about the land-leasing issues and will ensure that the changes to the permit system will be workable and not undermine land rights. I believe this new model will empower traditional owners to control the development of towns and living areas, and to participate fully in all aspects of economic development on their land. I have also sought and received the minister’s agreement to the establishment of the Mala Elders group.
The Mala Elders group will remind governments that they are not to control our lives but to empower our people.
We will remind all politicians with great seriousness that the land is our backbone and that for Aboriginal children land remains central to their identity. This is something that must never be forgotten. Land ownership is the past, the present and the future for each child in Arnhem Land. Without their land they will not be people.
He adds that his concern is for indigenous people to have real jobs, which community development employment projects have not delivered. He adds:
Nearly all the real jobs in our communities are taken by non-Aborigines, which is an unacceptable situation. And we must have real schools and we must have real training. On these matters—low levels of education, training and employment, and the crippling of our people by alcohol and drugs—I am in agreement with Noel Pearson of Cape York. He came to meet me and we discussed these matters.
Noel Pearson was the crucial figure in this approach to indigenous people taking responsibility for their future. Is this self-determination, which the Howard Government is opposed to? Will this government show respect for indigenous land, law and culture?
That intervention involves, and is part of, a raft of components which appear to have little connection with protecting children. They include the following:
Small communities should be consolidated into "core concentration centres";
A health audit of all children should be conducted;
Local government should replace local councils, if necessary under a government-appointed administrator;
Communal title should be converted to leasehold;
Public housing should be privatised, with new houses and funding for maintenance to go only to those communities with 99-year leases;
The permit system should be abolished;
CDEP should be ended;
Customary law should be ended.
Most of these recommendations have since been implemented, under the guise of protecting children, despite the fact that they are supported by questionable scholarship.
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