Axis of Hope: papers

Olga Havnen: Human Rights and Indigenous Australia

Olga Havnen is the Indigenous Program Manager of the Fred Hollows Foundation.

Perhaps before I start, I might just pick up on I think a rather critical point here and that is that despite the enormous disparity in the wellbeing, socioeconomic wellbeing of indigenous Australians, relative to that of other people in our community, I'd have to say at the outset at least we don't pay with it in our lives, in the sense that they do in other places around the world, namely through torture and detention and so on. But I would argue very strongly that I think that indigenous Australians do pay with our lives by the mere fact that the life expectancy for indigenous people here is generally twenty to twenty-six years less than other Australians. And I just ask you to think for one minute, what it's like to lose a family member, you know, whether it was a grandparent, a sibling, a parent or a cousin. And the tremendous impact that that has on your lives for years. The emotional and social impact that that has. And so for families who suffer as victims of torture and detention, but also for indigenous people, who lose a family member I would say on average at least two or three times a year, the impact that that has on your life and on your sort of socio and emotional wellbeing I think is profound. And I would ask you to think about that for a moment because that I think actually puts the human face on the plight of indigenous Australians today.

But to go on. The situation for indigenous people in Australia, I think, with respect to the progressive realisation and enjoyment of human rights has really been a very recent one. And I say recent because it was only some thirty-five years ago in this country that Aboriginal people had no freedom of movement, the people lived on reserves and missions and their lives were absolutely controlled by those people in authority, whether it happened to be agents of the government or churches and missionary groups. I mean, this extended to the ability of people or the freedom to actually marry who you wanted and to determine where you lived, whether you could come and go as you pleased. And in many ways, I think the kind of legislative regimes that have applied in this country are very, very similar and if not in fact parallel to that which existed in South Africa, prior to apartheid being abolished. And I think that's also a very sobering thought for this country, because we tend to pride ourselves with a sense of, you know, a strong commitment and a history of recognition and promotion of human rights. But I don't think that our domestic track record actually holds us in such good stead.

Many of the things that I've just mentioned are in fact in the living memory of people today. People of my mother's generation and certainly people older than her. And I guess for young people, and particularly students, I suspect sometimes that people, young people in particular, don't realise how recent many of these reforms and changes have been. And I would urge you strongly, I think, to pay great note and attention to our history and particularly a lot of the untold history in this country. Not just for that of indigenous people but also of migrants and other minority groups. Because I would argue too that the kind of oppression and discrimination that we have experienced as first peoples in this country have similarly applied to people from non-English speaking backgrounds as well.

I think the most-sort of profound impact on our lives was, in fact, you know, the 1967 referendum. Many people mistakenly believe or understand it to have been the time at which Aboriginal people were given the right to vote. That in fact is not correct. It in fact was an amendment to the constitution which gave power, express powers to the Commonwealth Government to pass laws with respect to indigenous Australians. Prior to that, Aboriginal people came under the state jurisdictions and in some places, like South Australia, Aboriginal people had the right to vote long before 1967. So I'd clarify that myth. Interestingly enough to note, I mean, that 67 referendum was the result of a ten year campaign and at that time 97% of Australians voted in favour of giving the Commonwealth these express powers to pass laws with respect to indigenous people. And I'll come back to this in a moment, too, because this is an interesting point in our very recent history.

Together with the 67 referendum, there were also major changes and expansion, if you like, with respect to the recognition of Aboriginal rights. Not least of which was the passage in 1975 of the Racial Discrimination Act. We actually did believe that having federal legislation would further protect and enhance the rights of indigenous people. Other recent sort of forms of legislative reform I think included things like the Land Rights Act, which applied to the Northern Territory, in the 70s and 80s there were also land rights legislations in various other states. The 1990s saw a supposed commitment to a decade of Aboriginal reconciliation. And then, of course, in 92, with the historic High Court decision of Mabo. Following that, in 93, was the Native Title Act and I think that was a particularly significant event in itself because here was the first time the passage of national legislation with respect to Aboriginal people where we were actually at the negotiating table. Never before in the history of this country were there previous laws ever passed in any parliament were indigenous people able to contribute and participate in that debate. So I think 93 was particularly significant.

Sad to say, however, we then had the Wick amendment debate in 96 and 97 and that was a major step backwards, because of course we were totally locked out of that process altogether. So I think for a period of approximately twenty years we saw significant, if somewhat slow and incremental change and improvement. A turning point where I think that we actually lost an awful lot of ground. And I would urge you, too, that you need to sort of think about this in terms of not only what's happened here domestically, but also in the international context, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

Suffice to say, however, though, that I think we're probably naîve as citizens of this country to think that governments will continue to act in a way which promotes and protects the rights of its citizens. You only need to look at what's happened in our very recent past, since 1996, where I can cite, and I'll give you numerous examples of where there were specific laws and amendments to legislation that have not acted to promote and protect the rights of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our society. The first example I would cite or bring to mind is the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act to pass racially discriminatory amendments to the Native Title Act. I mean, I find this an interesting observation that on one hand we pass national legislation that prohibits racial discrimination and yet you have a federal parliament that can then apply special laws, if you like, and special measures that says, oh well, we'll suspend the application of the Racial Discrimination Act to these provisions. I mean, it's an obscenity. Another example was the Hindmarsh Island Bridge, I guess many of you'll be familiar with that particular dispute. But, again, here it was to single out a single group of people - and in this case the Narrinyeri - to prevent them exercising their legal rights under heritage protection.

Second example. The next one I would go on to mention, again, with the Hindmarsh Act, there was that here was a particular issue that was put to the High Court and the question at issue there was under the 1967 amendment to the constitution, which allowed government, the federal government to pass laws with respect to Aboriginal people, the question that was being tested or asked in that case was whether or not those laws could only be for the benefit or the detriment. And in the Hindmarsh Island case, the High Court held that the federal government does have power to pass detrimental legislation. So this is a country whereby that we pride ourselves on notions of egalitarian and equality, a fair mindedness and decency, and yet here are examples, I guess, whereby that the government of the day and the powers-that-be will quite happily make amendments to national laws in order to achieve their own ends. And to pay no heed to international law and international obligations. Another example that I would mention here, and I think it's also critically important, and that is the use particularly of the navy with respect to boat people and refugees. I mean, here is a clear breach of international law, with respect to the law of the sea. It's something that is universally accepted by sailors all over the world and have done for centuries. That is, that anybody in distress at sea can reasonably expect to be provided with assistance. At the express direction of the Australian Government, yeah, and particularly the Department of Defence, to our navy which was to either scuttle those boats, return them to international waters, but they were told explicitly they were not to provide assistance. I mean, this resulted in the drownings of some 350 people. You know, what kind of a country are we that we can do this? I think they're rather sobering thoughts.

I mean, it concerns me deeply that since 1996 the Howard Government has rejected, very clearly, any kind of rights based agenda - not just as it applies to indigenous Australians, but as it applies to minority groups and I think to other groups as well. I mean, you only need look at the kinds of changes to industrial relations law to see how the rights of workers has been significantly wound back. A further point on this is that the government seems to think that it can selectively cherry pick which human rights or which group or cluster of rights that it will choose to either promote or recognise - and I think they tend to sort of think that you can cherry pick out health or education or housing - and somehow argue that these are perhaps government services that you as our clients, you know, we'll bestow on you, rather than recognising and accepting that human rights are not only indivisible, that is, you can't split them and differentiate between civil and political rights, or economic and social and cultural rights, but they also fail to accept the universality of those rights. That is, that they apply to all people, irrespective of who we are and where we're from. But quite clearly, the government chooses not to recognise and protect those rights as they apply to either refugees or indigenous people.

The fact that we keep people in asylum centres in detention I think is also a grave matter of concern. We are, as far as I'm aware, the only country in the world to do so. Again, it begs the question in my mind, you know, what sort of a society do we think we are. Is this the kind of a community that we choose to belong to? Because if it's not, then I think I'd really urge you to take some courage and to take some action about it, to speak out, to write letters, to do whatever you can to keep those issues on the national agenda. And I mean, sure, some people will pay a price for it, that is, you're likely to be arrested, but it's probably unlikely you're going to get killed for it. You do have some recourse to law. That is, you know, you can have legal representation. You're more likely to be bailed, but you're not likely to disappear. So I don't think it takes, you know, sort of enormous depths of courage to take the kind of action that we can take. But I'd suggest to you that if you don't take those actions, if you don't exercise those rights, then I think you're going to see increasingly that the ability of people to express civil dissatisfaction with government policies and changes to laws and legislation that we'll live in a climate of fear, people will be discouraged from taking those sorts of actions. So I think you have to be vigilant about it. I think that the fact that you're here, you know, as a group, listening to us and participating in these sorts of forums, you know, gives me enormous heart. But I think we need to do much more.

I want to touch also very quickly on why human rights is basically off the agenda, because I'd suggest to you that it's not a case of it just being off the agenda here in Australia, but it's something that I think is starting to happen more worldwide and globally. And a little bit as to the question why. I mean, here in Australia I would suspect that sort of the views expressed by Pauline Hanson and One Nation probably epitomised the sort of, you know, small mindedness and the fear factor that emerged here in Australia. Largely, I think, as a result of increasing concerns about the numbers of people that we had here from non-English speaking backgrounds, you know, migrating to Australia, but also that this was a time of enormous change, I think, within the local economies. That is, many people sort of lost their jobs. But, again, instead of it being talked about as people being retrenched, it was euphemistically called down-sizing. So somehow we were able to remove the human face of what was happening and what was going on. And so I can understand, you know, people feeling insecure and people being afraid. But, I guess you need to understand where some of this fear also comes from because I think that currently we're living in a society whereby that we're no longer a part of a community anymore. That we've tended to become part of perhaps just an economy and it loses its sense of humanness and human dimension. And we've moved from being citizens with rights to now being called, you know, consumers who can make a choice. And I think we need to think about some of these changes that we hear in everyday language.

A few other examples: I mean, banks no longer provide services - yeah? They sell products. Hospitals no longer have patients, they've now become clients. And likewise, you know, another example, airlines, they don't carry passengers anymore, we've now become customers. And it seems to me that everything has become reduced to sort of the bottom line and the dollar. And that almost everything that's decided on in terms of government policy tends to be decided on the basis of how it will effect the economy. And as a result of this, I think human rights have become expendable. And when human rights become expendable, it tends to adversely effect, I think disproportionately those that are the most vulnerable in our communities. These are the young, the old, indigenous people, refugees - and it's basically those people without a voice.

I'll just turn back very quickly, too, to some of these - and I know this is sort of jumping around a bit, but bear with me. I want to go back to some of the sort of litany of statistics that we often here cited with respect to indigenous people. And we seem to sort of quote these statistics ad nauseam, as though somehow it's something to be proud of. A few examples, you know, that is that we have the highest youth suicide rates in the world. That indigenous life expectancy is, in some cases thirty years less than other Australians. In the East Kimberley region, the average age of death for men is about 36 years. The rates of low birth weights for babies across northern Australia is on par with countries like Nepal and Eritrea. We have rates of malnutrition in our indigenous communities which is on par with the Sudan. I'm talking about 20% of children between the ages of zero and five years. We are a wealthy, first world country. To me, you know, this is absolutely unacceptable. But there's a form of almost industrial deafness out there. You could almost ask any person in the street that would care to sort of tap on the shoulder and say, well, tell me what you know about indigenous societies or communities today. And these'd be some of the statistics that they'd be about to quote back to you. We know them all and I think we know them perhaps too well, but I guess what we're not doing is actually thinking about what it means and how it effects people in their day to day lives. And all of those statistics that I've quoted to you are, in fact, underpinned I guess in the Universal Declaration and that is, the right to life. When we have people in our own community who fail to reach the kind of life expectancies that we see in many other developing countries, then it begs the question, you know, in my mind, what the hell is going on here?

When you look at the improvements in life expectancies for indigenous people in Canada, New Zealand, the United States and in Norway - all of these are other first world countries. Most of them have made significant improvements in the gaps between life expectancy for indigenous and non-indigenous people. I think the best is probably Norway, where there is almost no difference between the Sami and other Norwegians. The United States, I think the difference is three to four years. And here we are in Australia, and we're still lagging at twenty-five and twenty-six years behind. I mean, I don't think there is anything particularly unique about Australia or about indigenous Australians that we aren't able to turn this around and to change it. And so when you ask the question of me, well, why haven't we been able to make those improvements, I would suggest it's probably due to a lack of political will and a lack of commitment to adequately fund and resource indigenous communities and people to have the same standards of living - yeah? That is, housing, roads, schools - yeah? - access to decent health services as do any other Australians. We've never had that kind of intensive investment, I suppose, in catching up in basic infrastructure. We have levels of overcrowding in indigenous communities that are contributing to things like TB, people have prevalences of contagious diseases like scabies, that you wouldn't expect to find anywhere else in the world, yeah? All of this in underpinned by poor housing. Yeah? I mean, these are basic human rights. And until I think that there is a commitment, bipartisan commitment and across the board at state and territory government and commonwealth levels, we will not change this and we won't turn it around. And I think it's really up to ordinary every day Australian citizens to either take a good look in the mirror - yeah? And if you see what I see, then I'd urge you to do something about it. Thank you.