This is the speech Tania Major, 22, will deliver on Wednesday at a meeting between John Howard Howard and Cape York leaders. Tania has a degree in criminology and is a trainee manager at her home community of Kowanyama on Cape York and an ATSIC Regional Councillor.

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Here I am

by Tania Major

Here I am: a young Cape York woman addressing the Prime Minister of Australia directly. The fact that you are here today, Mr Howard, is largely due to the hard work and vision of our leaders.

We are proud of their efforts. Especially I want to mention Noel Pearson. He has been my mentor and contributed to paying for my education. We are also proud of the efforts of our elders who have struggled to keep our culture alive.

I thank you for coming here today and acknowledge that your visit might signify the start of a new era in Cape York Peninsulas Aboriginal governance. I say ‘might’ because there is a huge job in front of us and if we are going to succeed we need your commitment as well as our own. I hope this is truly the start of a new relationship between Government and Cape York Peninsula people.

In less then 60 years the people of my tribe have gone from being an independent nation to cultural prisoners to welfare recipients. Is it any wonder that there are so many problems facing indigenous Australians today? Prime Minister, I want you to gain a brief picture of the life of young people in our communities.

When I was growing up in Kowanyama there were 15 people in my class. Today I am the only one that has gone to University, let alone finished secondary education. I’m also the only girl in my class who did not have a child at 15. Of the boys in my class seven have been incarcerated, two for murder, rape and assault. Of the 15 there are only three of us who are not alcoholics. And, Prime Minister, one of the saddest things I must report to you is that four of my class mates have already committed suicide.

Now if this paints a grim picture of community life for you, it should. Life as a young Aboriginal person is not easy, in any setting. Life for a young Aboriginal woman is even harder. We have to fight for respect from every one.

The story of my fellow students is a lesson in the magnitude of the problems that young Indigenous people in Cape York face. The two issues that, in my opinion, are central to changing this story are education and health. And your Government’s policies affect these things.

Two months ago I told the Queensland Principals conference that the levels of literacy and numeracy are very low in Aboriginal communities. I told them that when I went to school in Brisbane it was as if I had missed out on my primary education.

There is a huge gap between what we get in communities and what other kids get in cities. I got straight As at Kowanyama but when I got to Brisbane I was getting Cs and Ds. It really goes to show that there was something seriously wrong with the education system in our communities.

One of the problems facing education in remote Indigenous schools is that teachers tend to be just out of training and generally stay for only a year or two. There was not one teacher who stayed for the whole of my nine years at school, even the principals. On top of the racism that Aboriginal people face every day of our lives this seeming lack of commitment by teachers makes you feel they don’t care.

Prime Minister we need to review the curriculum in these communities because it’s pitched at a very low level. I have had to draw the conclusion that Governments and educationalists see us as less than white people.

It was really sad to go to school in my community because the attitude in the whole community was that white kids are much smarter than me. How can the education being offered to our young people be justified?

Education should be uplifting not serve to reinforce lack of self-esteem and the heart wrenching low expectations that my mob suffer from. If we cannot get education right then we are doomed.

We need a massive re-assessment of education policies and an equally massive investment in education. Government let down most of my classmates. Noel Pearson helped me to an education, but most young people won’t be assisted by a sponsor.

I got a chance in my life, worked hard with support from family and friends and today I stand before you as a qualified criminologist. All across Cape York I see and meet young Murris; smart, brave, compassionate, talented and beautiful. What is missing from their lives is an education that promotes self-confidence and drive.

With these qualities, hundreds of Cape York Peninsula Murris could be the next group of doctors, lawyers, painters, mechanics, criminologists or engineers. We have spent so long listening to some whitefellas telling us we are stupid, lazy no-hopers that the majority of my people actually believe it.

The relationship between poor education and poor health is clear. People whose self-esteem and pride have been decimated by a sub-standard education system and a social system that creates an addiction to passive welfare have little reason to live healthy lives.

Prime Minister, our health is getting worse not better. The policies that determine the delivery of health services are deeply flawed by a bureaucracy that does not want to let go and hear our voices. Health services are too often confined to the clinic. It’s a patch em up and spit em out kind of health regime.

In Kowanyama we had the only doctor based in a Cape York Aboriginal community. She left two weeks ago because the Queensland Health bureaucracy did not support her. Her practice epitomised the sort of health system we need. She understood the relationship between physical, mental and spiritual health. She took health out of the clinic and into the lives and homes of community people. She took her responsibilities to serve the community seriously and now she’s gone. Another blow to my community’s already low morale.

Prime Minister, it’s problems and challenges such as the ones I’ve described to you already that led me to stand in last October’s ATSIC election. I decided to run because I believe ATSIC provides a great opportunity to advocate for my people; to have a say in distributing funding through out Cape York Peninsula and influence State and Federal Government policy decisions that affect me and my people.

It is great privilege for me to represent my community and I hope that with experience I will be an effective ATSIC Councillor.

I know that in the coming months your Government will decide the future of ATSIC and I hope that you will understand that ATSIC is more than the Board of Commissioners and the Canberra bureaucracy. ATSIC is also people like myself and my Chairperson Eddie Woodley. People who are from community and work hard for community.

Prime Minister, we recognise that Governments cannot solve our problems for us. As young people we are trying to take responsibility for our future. We are working with our Elders to address the terrible problems of grog, illicit drugs and violence. We are working hard to create economic, training and employment opportunities for ourselves. We are supporting our fellow young people to achieve their potential.

Mr Howard, I ask not that you fix these problems for us but that you and your Government see us as equal partners in the huge task of rebuilding our families, communities and Cape York Peninsula.

You have demonstrated your commitment by engaging your government at the recent family and domestic violence summit and, for what it’s worth Prime Minister, my own view is that the level of domestic violence and child abuse sums up all that has been wrong with Aboriginal affairs policy.

We need a new relationship to address this frightening reality in our lives. Aboriginal people are reluctant to admit that young girls and women are being raped by their own people because of the blanket of shame. I am asking you to help lift that blanket.

The fact that you are here today is a good start in the process of change and I urge you, as a fair minded man, not just as Prime Minister, to become part of the solution. I stand up here as a proud Aboriginal woman, a Kokoberra woman as well as a criminologist and I thank you for your time and attention.

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In the depths of the gut-wrenching and brutal debate in 2001 about the rape allegations against Geoff Clark and the exposure they triggered of the nightmare lives of many women and children in Aboriginal communities, I wrote about the need for a changing of the guard in Aboriginal leadership. At the time, I tried to get some young leaders to speak out but they refused, citing the tradition of respect for elders. Geoff Clark’s determination to hold on, and on, to power appears to have hastened the necessary guard-change. I’ve republished below a Herald piece I wrote during the rape debate calling for the abolition of ATSIC, and a piece I wrote for the Herald in January 2000 on welfare dependence and the failure of progressives on indigenous policy. Webdiary’s discussion of the rape allegations and subsequent revelations is at Rape and racism, Us and them, The sound of values clashing, Sex, race, violence, politics, media, law – where to for reconciliation?, Time for action, It’s make or break time, Ray and Terry, Ending the cover-up, Easing black men’s rage: many rivers to cross and Geoff, where do you get off?

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Abolish ATSIC

by Margo Kingston, SMH June 27, 2001

It’s time to stop messing around. ATSIC must be overhauled, the cover-up must end and a fresh, new Aboriginal body put in place to lead the fight for the safety of Aboriginal women and children.

When Evelyn Scott wrote last week that violence against Aboriginal women had become “a part of our tradition and culture and cannot be spoken about” and that “many women and children are cowed into helplessness by their menfolk” the end was nigh for ATSIC in its current form.

When senior Aboriginal women backed her dreadful confession and Australians learned that ATSIC was part of the conspiracy of silence and inaction, the end had come.

Now claims of sexual misconduct swirl around three senior Aboriginal male leaders, all members of the ATSIC hierarchy.

Now Reconciliation Australia, the replacement body for the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation, urges an end to the talk and the beginning of concentrated, concerted action to save Aboriginal women and children from endemic physical and sexual violence.

ATSIC should have led this debate for years. It should have been its top priority to expose the crisis and to shame white governments into financing solutions. Imagine a world where there is no safe house, nowhere to go if a mother or her child has been raped or bashed. As Labor’s spokeswoman on the status of women, Carmen Lawrence, told the Herald: “There’s no refuges, there’s no support from the legal system, and women are often exposed to the same players. These are the key reasons why indigenous women often shut up about it.”

Yet rather than protect its children, ATSIC was largely silent. It has not denied a devastating claim by former minister John Herron that when he raised the issue five years ago the ATSIC board denied its existence, and that in 1999 deputy chairman Ray Robinson told him ATSIC would allocate a mere $200,000.

Yet in 1995 ATSIC agreed to pay Robinson $45,000 to pursue a private legal action against the Queensland Government for wrongful arrest, after he had been convicted of rape in 1989 (his second rape conviction) then acquitted at a retrial in 1992.

What business was it for ATSIC to underwrite this action, as well as top up his legal expenses?

Robinson said last week on behalf of the ATSIC board that unanimously backed Geoff Clark that ATSIC “will support him in whatever legal course of action he should pursue in seeking remedy against the newspaper”.

Maybe it is time for Aboriginal leaders who cut their teeth winning equal rights for Aboriginal people decades ago to step down in favour of young Aboriginal leaders with fresh ideas and a fresh commitment to further the interests of their people.

One thing is certain: this discredited ATSIC, which cannot see that the safety of Aboriginal children is its top priority, has lost its authority to speak to the Australian people on behalf of the Aboriginal people of Australia.

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Labor’s silence can only harm Aborigines (published January 17, 2000)

It’s time to the Opposition to stop tiptoeing around the problem of welfare-dependence among indigenous people, writes Margo Kingston.

DURING the last Federal election campaign, Pauline Hanson faced claims by a Queensland One Nation MP that indigenous Australians were better off when they lived and worked on pastoral leases “for a bit of meat”. Hanson responded that it was a much “happier time for the Aborigines and the pastoralists”. The next year, Noel Pearson began his crusade to end “the poison of welfare”, and came close to concurring:

“The dilemma facing policymakers at the time the equal wage case was being debated [in 1965] was this. On the one hand, Aboriginal stockworkers were being discriminated against in relation to their wages and conditions and this could not continue,” Pearson said. “On the other hand, it was clear to everyone that the institution of equal wages would result in the …removal of Aboriginal people from cattle station work to social security on the settlements.”

The tragic consequences of taking the latter option were cultural (Aborigines removed from traditional lands to settlements), social (work to no work) and an end to coexistence, however flawed.

Equal rights for Aborigines are an essential ingredient of a civilised society and a bedrock precursor to reconciliation, but Pearson believes the Government should have used Aborigines’ social security entitlements “to subsidise continued work in the cattle industry” and improve living conditions on the stations. Ironically, this would have meant agreements between government, pastoralists and Aborigines, something taking place only now since the Wik decision.

Labor’s Aboriginal affairs spokesman, Bob McMullan, notes that Pearson’s honesty about the horrors of welfare dependency in Aboriginal communities and his radical solutions like giving social security entitlements to Aboriginal communities rather than individuals are fraught with danger, including One Nation-type dangers of winding back rights.

But Labor has succumbed to this fear for too long. It has not yet engaged in serious public discourse on Aboriginal welfare, leaving itself open to Pearson’s charge that “the left side of politics is strong and correct on rights and the conservative side is strong and correct on responsibilities”.

Another reason for Labor’s silence is its lack of fresh ideas after establishing ATSIC, the embodiment of its self-determination ideal. That vacuum saw Paul Keating renege on the third prong of his promised response to the High Court’s Ameba decision a comprehensive plan to ensure social justice for Aborigines.

As the revolutionary ATSIC endured teething problems, money disappeared before it reached those on the ground. In 1994, an evaluation of Labor’s $250 million Aboriginal health strategy found “little evidence” that it ever existed, “a lack of political will” to get the job done and “a confusing and dysfunctional array of political responses” standing between problem and solution.

The then minister, Robert Tickner, said the Government needed “vision and purpose” to break through, and warned of the pending political mood shift which would fan Hanson’s flame. “The climate of public and government opinion is changing… Now is the time to act,” Tickner said then.

Most Australians are eager for new solutions which benefit from old failures, and would agree with Pearson that it is no longer enough “to just hold on to our ideals as a matter of philosophy and intellectual debate [while] the real society and economy unravels in front of our eyes”.

Keating’s Labor took responsibility for health away from ATSIC and gave it to the health minister. The Coalition’s Michael Wooldridge, deeply committed to Aboriginal advancement, has begun moving some decision-making and responsibility for Aboriginal community health to communities on the ground.

This attachment of rights and responsibilities in a constructive way is what Pearson is talking about.

Last year Peter Reith made an impact with a pilot employment program where private sector employers get a $4,000 subsidy to place an indigenous Australian in paid work for 26 weeks.

Reith’s response to the “special treatment” brigade was the simple, effective statement that Aboriginal unemployment was higher than the average and his job was to ensure equality for all Australians.

It is senseless for progressives committed to the survival of Aboriginal people and their culture to tiptoe around Aboriginal welfare dependence because they fear that engagement would fuel racist flames.

Everyone sees the problem, and without a progressive philosophy to tackle it, the solutions may end up promoting a largely unstated goal of many on the Right assimilation.

Reconciliation is about each culture learning from and adjusting to the other. It should enrich the lives of all Australians. I don’t fear what will happen if progressives publicly debate the future of Aboriginal welfare. I do fear what will happen if they don’t.