The Disgrace of Western Australia's Treatment of Aboriginal People

Pivot West*

The Western Australian government has commenced a program of closing down about half of the state's 274 remote communities. The program will, the Premier acknowledges, 'cause distress' to the more than 12,000 Aboriginal people who live there. Premier Colin Barnett cites the 'existing high rates of suicide, poor health and a lack of jobs' as well as the 'abuse and neglect of young children' as the reason for these measures. He says that the latter is 'a disgrace for the state'.

The Western Australian government is somehow managing to make this disgrace even worse. What is unclear about these extraordinary measures is how replacing one government disgrace with another provides any kind of solution to the endemic social problems of these communities. Sadly this act of institutional racism in pursuit of so-called economic outcomes is unsurprising. The signs are all around us that government, at all levels, has failed society in its metamorphosis from state to business.

The cost of 'regular' freehold over Indigenous land in Queensland

Opening up land for development*

There is perhaps a tension within the way we understand these communities as both an expression of Indigenous autonomy but also with a more oppressive colonial past. This tension is implicit in the complicated relationship between ideas of being treated the same - having a 'regular' freehold title - and recognising communal title and traditional ownership as prevailing norms within Indigenous communities.

The Queensland government has now passed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land (Providing Freehold) Act 2014. The Act's primary purpose is to enable the freeholding of land in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Presently much of this land is held as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander freehold or on trust for the community. The current arrangements limit the grant of these interests to traditional owners or other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander inhabitants of the community. The existing freehold is therefore a limited type of freehold.


The aims of this reform is to 'introduce the option of ordinary freehold title into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities'. According to the government, this will 'provide greater economic development opportunities and remove barriers to home ownership in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.' While this may well be the effect, it raises the question: at what cost?

Unsettled Great South Land? 'Um' indeed

Australia: settled? Unsettled?

The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, in a speech concerning foreign investment is reported as having said 

I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, Great South Land.

Similarly, this week New Matilda reported on Rolf Harris' racism, noting his 2008 comments that

The attitude is that in their [ie Aboriginal peoples'] original way of life they would really wreck the surrounding countryside that they lived in and they would leave all the garbage and they would go walkabout to the next place.

Without addressing the implications of the Prime Minister's equating English acquisition of Australian territory with the benign sounding 'foreign investment', the allegation of a 'scarcely settled' land deserves correction. Like Rolf Harris' statement, it represents a misunderstanding of the nature of connection, occupation and use of land by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. While I cannot speak for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, I believe that I can point out the obvious mistake in these outdated notions.

To Change or Not to Change? That is the (Constitutional) Question

On 19 January, the Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples ('Panel') delivered its report Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution.  Since the Panel was convened, there has been a lot of comment and public debate - mostly, it seems, centred around the legal implications of constitutional change.

If you are, like me, not an expert in constitutional law, your head may be spinning trying to keep track of the pros and cons of the recommendations.  What then are the primary recommendations for change, and how on earth do we sort through the legal arguments?  In this post, I go out on a limb and say that we need to focus on the goal of constitutional change and let go of the law.