The recycling of debates around welfare, violence and history in Settler-Indigenous Australian affairs involves the circulation of some well-worn perspectives. The authors assert that the entire relationship of black and white Australia needs to be reconsidered, and claim that this should include a critical examination of Australia's political and administrative rationality and (the history of) its intersection with Aboriginal culture. They call for a dialogue between European and Aboriginal political values and systems

Brigg, Morgan

Murphy, Lyndon

University of Queensland eSpace

The Sad Predictability of Indigenous Affairs 
 
Lyndon Murphy and Morgan Brigg 
 
The recycling of debates around welfare, violence and history in Settler-Indigenous 
Australian affairs involves the circulation of some well-worn perspectives. For new – and 
not-so-new – assimilationists such as Janet Albrechtsen, Peter Howson, Paul Toohey and 
Gary Johns, recent high-profile discussions around violence and the playing out of 
ATSIC politics are proof that any particular identification with land and culture by 
Aboriginal people is misplaced. We are told that with “autonomy” has not come 
responsibility. The time has arrived, so they tell us, for the end of “special” programs, 
time for all Aboriginal people to join the modern world, to get a job and develop 
neoliberal self-responsibility. Over the past 30 years of Indigenous affairs this perspective 
has operated in opposition to the more moderate rhetoric and practice of the Left.  
 
Surprising though, at least to leftist supporters of Indigenous rights, is that respected 
anthropologist, Peter Sutton, has added to this drumbeat. Sutton begins a 2001 academic 
paper by arguing that levels of violence and depravity require examination of the 
‘complex joining together of recent … factors of external impact, with a substantial 
number of ancient, pre-existent social and cultural factors’1. He ends arguing for 
significant shifts in culture and economy for Aboriginal people. Most recently, in Paul 
Toohey’s article (The Australian 13th June p 11), he is quoted as openly challenging the 
different treatment of Aboriginal communities and the wisdom of Aboriginal liberation 
politics.    
 
So what were the gains of “liberation” politics?  During the 1960s, Aboriginal people 
asserted rights to freedom of movement, to vote, minimum wages, access to a minimum 
level of social security, education, to consume alcohol and so on. The resulting 
achievements helped to close the gap between Aboriginal status as determined by 
legislative and administrative action at both Commonwealth and State levels on one 
hand, and rights of citizenship on the other. In practice this translated as the removal of 
discriminatory practices which barred Aboriginal people from participating fully in the 
civic life of white Australia. 
 
During the 1970s and 1980s, the expression of “liberation” politics fell considerably upon 
the shoulders of Charles Perkins. The intention of Perkins and others was to reverse the 
position of Aboriginal people as mere recipients of bureaucratic processes to positions of 
control within the administration. Over time, administrative systems changed the colour 
scheme of service-delivery and Aboriginal people came to occupy positions to manage 
that delivery.  But while the policies developed advocated Aboriginal aspirations, they 
remained tied to mainstream ways of doing things. The slogan, whitefella wants for 
blackfella needs became its articulation among some Aboriginal people. 
 
                                                 
1 Sutton, P. 2001 "The politics of suffering: Indigenous policy in Australia since the 1970s." 
Anthropological Forum, 11(2, Nov 2001), 125 – 173, page 127. 
There is no doubt that there is some value in reforming administrative arrangements in 
response to symptoms such as those identified by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal 
Deaths in Custody. But this approach also has its dangers. For Aboriginal people, it 
means beginning to trade in a different currency. A major risk lies in adopting this 
currency. By trading in “whitegoods” Aboriginal politics, policies, the articulation of 
interests, problems and solutions, are defined through the administrative expressions 
seeking Aboriginal involvement. This occurs at the expense of knowledge informed by 
Aboriginal history and experience with white institutions.  
 
To take up Sutton’s point about the coming together of cultural factors, there was little or 
no deep-seated recognition of a difference of culture or values during the mobilization of 
“liberation” politics. White Australia may market the distinct values and cultures of 
Aboriginal Australia in pursuit of economic gain and national symbolism, but in relation 
to political and administrative policies Aboriginal values are considered to be in common 
with all Australians. Aboriginal gains from “liberation” politics include access to white 
citizenship, incorporatist models, institutional and internal assimilationist policies and 
practices. In short, an opportunity to act and think white.  
 
If the rhetoric of the Left gives Aboriginal people the opportunity to be subsumed with 
“whitegoods” and the right insist that only “whitegoods” are marketable, how can they 
claim to be so opposed?  Process. The Left graciously offers up “whitegoods” while 
salving the nation’s collective soul, the Right says take it or leave it. Here the operation 
of power effected by the Left has perhaps proved the more effective through its 
encouragement of Aboriginal ownership. Somewhat ironically, the so-called “separatist” 
policies of the past 30 years may be the most successful practices of assimilation 
Aboriginal people have encountered. The point of departure between Left and Right 
concerns means, not ends.  Their respective ideologies may take the field but they are 
both bound by the political philosophy of a liberal democratic tradition just as the current 
history wars largely operate through the Western historical tradition. 
 
The result in the administration of Aboriginal affairs and the associated politics is that 
critiques from Left and Right have consistently been restricted to the management 
paradigm. This focus on administrative content and process to the exclusion of structures 
and values has created false oppositions in politicking about Aboriginal policy. The 
massive failing in all this is that the management paradigm can only evaluate its projects 
self-referentially, it has no way of engaging the interface between the two cultures. When 
governments encounter policy failure their immediate response is to modify the inputs, 
occasionally their own, but predominantly those organizations charged with the 
responsibility to deliver the intended policy outcomes.   
 
This repackaging only enables government to change how they do things, not what they 
are doing.  It simply allows administrative arrangements to reinvent new strategies for old 
ideas over and over until we reach points like the current crisis. Along the way, the rug 
has slipped out from under Leftist and Aboriginal leaders, undermining their rhetoric for 
substantive equality, justice and rights.  Previously, the argument was that whitefellas 
couldn’t deal with black programs. Under the banner of self-determination blackfellas 
took up the reigns. Now that the wagon has lost its way, nobody is more to blame than 
anyone else: white oppression “disappears” as problems faced by Aboriginal people are 
rendered as problems that any people might face.  
 
Well-meaning leftists are strangely silent in the face of shocking statistics and anecdotes 
from Aboriginal communities. Aboriginal claims framed through rights discourse are also 
muted as they spin their wheels in the terrain stalked by the new assimilationists: 
“whitegoods” have a limited life – trading in them can bring you unstuck. It is here that 
politically astute and skilled operators like Noel Pearson carve out a place for themselves. 
At times Pearson advocates taking responsibility and acting decisively on substance 
abuse with limited or no reference to historical context. At other times he invokes land 
rights, values and history. And then he mixes it up with word-plays about the right to take 
responsibility. Here we rejoin the new assimilationists. The identification with 
“whitegoods” and the taking of responsibility politely identifies black culture as the 
failure. Meanwhile, the new assimilationists shout it out.    
 
But what happened to Sutton’s call to examine the complex joining together of cultural 
factors? He says all bets are off and that everything must be up for consideration, which 
sounds eminently sensible in such a tight situation. However, not up for examination, it 
seems, is Sutton’s own culture. White culture including bureaucratic management 
paradigms, liberal values and notions such as rights, representation, and democracy are 
not tackled in his paper or in any of the contemporary debate. 
 
In all of this, the debate about policy failure in Aboriginal affairs ignores the cultural 
assumptions and biases of a white worldview of “civil society” or, in the case of the 
history wars, the contours and constraints of white history grappling with its own story. 
These assumptions sustain relationships between polity and institutions that reinforce 
liberal Western culture. Charles Perkins often made comment about the fear of white 
backlash. This was not imagined. In the current debate it would seem that those in the 
best position to advocate Aboriginal interests, cower under its shadow. 
 
Yes, it is time that all bets were off, that everything, was up for consideration. This 
should include a critical examination of Australia’s political and administrative 
rationality and (the history of) its intersection with Aboriginal culture. In short, we need a 
dialogue between European and Aboriginal political values and systems. It’s time for 
conversations rather than conversion, brow beating and false oppositions.  


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