ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation)

This week I am excited to be heading to Adelaide for the National Indigenous Representative body workshop.

Last year I made a submission to the initial Public consultation stage based on my doctoral research.  I strongly believe that we have the opportunity to be innovative in the design of a new representative body.  In particular, we should be imaginative in how we respond to the concerns of representation.  I am concerned with how we can adequately represent the voices of Indigenous youth who make up the significant portion of our population.  Also, I am concerned with how Elders voices can be better incorporated into the work of a representative body.  Former ATSIC Commissioner Brian Butler raised this as a critical issue for Elders during an ABC Radio National panel on the new representative body that I was a participant in. 

As my submission reflected, I also worry about the way in which Aboriginal women may become marginalized in any new political structure.  There is much evidence of the way in which mainstream political structures marginalise women and women’s issues. And certainly there is ample evidence to suggest ATSIC also marginalised Aboriginal women’s issues (as most minimalist “ballot box” structures do). But I do not believe establishing a “special” women’s council separate to a main representative body is enough to ensure that women’s needs and interests will be adequately met.  In fact “special” councils separate to a main decision-making body is already a clear concession to inadequate representation. 

Of course, all of this depends on the particular model that is chosen. At this stage it has been suggested by Tom Calma that there is no preference for any particular model.  I strongly believe that the work of the body should be underpinned by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and international human rights law.  It is an appropriate foundation upon which the state should engage with Indigenous communities.  In particular the DRIP does provide that States shall takes measures to ensure that Indigenous women and children enjoy the full protection of the law and guarantees against all forms of violence and discrimination.  This would make the issue of violence against women and children central to the agenda of any future body’s work. 

One of the areas that has suffered in the absence of a representative body is law reform and international human rights law advocacy.  Law reform will be an important task of the new representative body in a number of areas.  For example, in terms of the states commitment to the rule of law and equality before the law, funding to Family Violence Prevention Legal Services and Aboriginal Legal Services is critical.  The unresolved issue of the Racial Discrimination Act and the measures under the Northern Territory Intervention will also be relevant.  Also, urgent coronial reform is required as advocated by the authors in the Indigenous Law Centre’s Australian Indigenous Law Review special edition on coronial reform and preventable Indigenous death. Native Title is also an area of law reform that requires leadership and an organized approach to put pressure on the state for more equitable outcomes to ameliorate the impact of the common law’s misinterpretation of native title.

One of the core objectives of a new body should be be constitutional reform and reconciliation which will be one of the most important aspects of the new body’s agenda.  Reconciliation Australia is playing an important and effective role in reconciliation and the representatives of this new body will be able to engage Indigenous communities across the country in an effective and meaningful way, taking the personalities and politics out of reconciliation as a national process.

The new body should have a review role to evaluate the progress of state and federal expenditure.  This is really crucial in terms of negotiating the complexities of the federal system and also redressing the inertia that federal departments and state governments exhibit when it comes to issues of Indigenous peoples. One thing everyone agrees on is that any future body should have no role in service delivery.  The hybrid structure of ATSIC that included service delivery allowed state and federal governments to pass the blame onto ATSIC for their own failings and for the problem of disadvantage in Aboriginal communities.

Finally, it is of vital importance that the activities and the decisions of the body are open and transparent. This is the only way to engender a sense of participation and ownership over a new body.  For any public institution to be successful, individuals and communities have to have faith in its objectives, processes and its leadership. 

Certainly, one hopes that this new body will offer up new and vibrant leadership from communities.  It is time for a new generation of male and female Indigenous leaders to have their voices and their ideas heard.  It is time for new approaches and a revitalized discourse that appeals to and engages the current generation of Indigenous children and young adults who walk between two worlds and who are as affected by popular culture as they are their own culture.  Not only are we a youthful community but we are a highly urbanized community.  Research showed that ATSIC representation was weighted in favour of regional and remote communities even though the majority of Aboriginal people live in urban areas.  And so it is hoped that the new leadership reflects fairly and equally the diversity of individuals who make up the Indigenous population in Australia.

But of course to do that one has to step up to the plate, make and effort and become actively involved. 

Lastly, congratulations to Queensland for winning the Imparja Cup for the second year in a row - special congratulations to my older brother Will Davis, the old man of the team.