No Song & Dance for Reconciliation Week
25 May 2004
National Reconciliation Week, 27 May - 3 June
This year’s theme for National Reconciliation Week, "Pathways to Reconciliation: together we’re doing it", is designed to promote partnerships between the Indigenous community, Governments, Private Business and the broader community as a whole, to find different ways of reducing the disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.
Yet this year's Reconciliation week, held from 27 May – 3 June, gives nothing to Indigenous people to sing or dance about.
The recent announcement by the Howard Government to abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) represents an expression of total contempt for Reconciliation and a reneging of the Coalition's obligation to Indigenous Australians.
Once again ATSIC is being used as a scape goat to justify the Coalition’s attack on Indigenous peoples' right to self determination. Whilst there have been issues with ATSIC, these are not totally confined to the ATSIC leadership, but are more related to the Government's operation of the ATSIC Act and the Act’s relationship to other Australian legislation.
The truth of the matter is that, through the Howard Government’s intervention and regulation, ATSIC has not had any real responsibility or autonomy over Indigenous health, education and employment policy or funding. This trend is maintained with the Coalition’s plan to devolve all Indigenous program responsibility to government departments and establish a Federal Indigenous Policy Advisory Committee with the members appointed by the Government.
The Coalition's policy of "Practical Reconciliation" in the context of "mutual obligation", represents a double standard that is an absolute farce. Howard’s track record in attacking Indigenous rights across all areas is plainly evident and is the primary cause for continuing Indigenous disadvantage of which the responsibility rests squarely with his government.
Some of these causes are;
- Government reinforcing of negative social attitudes towards Indigenous people
- discriminatory polices in the provision of essential services and infrastructure
- the eroding of rights associated with lands as a result of the Wik legislation which alone denies Indigenous people millions of dollars in royalties and incomes derived from the exploitation of resources within their lands.
- Eroding of the right to participate in the democratic process on equal footing
The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was established under recommendation 339 from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, with the other 338 recommendations largely being ignored. It is these 338 recommendations that provide real Reconciliation and unless all political parties are committed to fulfilling the nation's responsibility to the issues therein, Reconciliation will remain just another word used to whitewash the real causes to continuing Indigenous disadvantage.
For more information contact
Joel
Wright – NTEU National
IndigenousOfficer
03 92541910,
0408 525 492,
jwright@nteu.org.au
Click here to visit the Reconciliation Australia website