Today, the representatives of the Australian people apologise, on behalf of governments, and the people of Australia, to Aboriginal Australians for a long and sorry saga of social engineering which has had catastrophic consequences. Hundreds of direct victims, and thousands of indirect victims, have gathered in Canberra and at other centres to witness what they think is a moment of history. They will be joined by many other non-Aboriginal Australians who echo the apology and regret, and empathise with the sadness, and the relief at both the apology and the acknowledgement.
The cynics have already had a field day suggesting that a mere apology will not be enough, and that, one way or another, a major Aboriginal agenda, with a good deal of popular support, will be for compensation and reparations. For some of the victims, that is indeed at the forefront of their hopes, even as they insist that mere money cannot repay lost lives.
Others have a compensation agenda in mind, but not one focused on particular victims or particular sufferings, so much as the opportunity for a renewal of will to make things better in Aboriginal affairs, to remove entrenched disadvantages and to give Aborigines and aboriginality a new and improved life in Australia. Without it, they say reasonably enough, apologies are shams, symbols and distractions and, however welcome, can do little to hide the wounds.
They are right. Down the track the Rudd Government may get some credit for finally saying sorry but it will be judged by what it has done, rather than what it has said.
As it happens, hardly anyone has any real idea just what Labor hopes or intends for Aborigines, just what models of progress and development it plans to adopt or what targets it is setting for itself or for Aborigines. Right now it is simply continuing former programs which are themselves all over the shop. The words that the Prime Minister, or his Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, have used since the election, give little away because, although there have been minor changes in programs, it is impossible to divine from them just what the Government plans or wants.
Today, Kevin Rudd promises that in the future we will "harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity, a future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed, and a future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility".
The puzzle of what he means is compounded by contradictions in various programs he has inherited. There is the Northern Territory intervention, which may or may not be starting to improve some facilities in Aboriginal communities but which openly eschewed any form of consultation with Aborigines in doing so. It has also made no bones about coercion, including sequestering the incomes of all Aborigines in target communities.
The rationale for the intervention has put most focus on the urgent task of child protection, including citing (if not following the recommendations of) any number of reports showing terrible rates of abuse and neglect. But not much of the intervention's useful activity has had much to do with this, and many of the big promises (say of extra police in communities) have already been whittled down. Nine months on, for example, the much-trumpeted 106 new police in Northern Territory communities have become 17 Northern Territory police and 32 interstate police and a good proportion of these are not, as promised, actually stationed in Aboriginal communities, let alone doing anything much about the supposed epidemic of child abuse. The arrival of squads of doctors, at fabulous expense, has yet to notch up any achievements or provide new (or useful) data, and the cost of 6000 or so examinations of children (perhaps half of those there) screams for close examination by the Auditor-General. This week the medical leader of the intervention was complaining that a promised avalanche of specialists has not arrived, but these (for what they are worth, which is little) are on the way, as he well knows; he simply wants to take the credit for their arrival.
The intervention has many Aboriginal critics but it also has its champions, including, recently, Professor Marcia Langton who, in a powerful essay in the Griffith Review, argues that those in opposition to it are "morally and politically wrong". Her view is based on her belief that the intervention is about improving "the unbelievable levels of neglect and abuse of children," and that its critics have become "dependent from a distance - on perpetuating the lot of those who are suffering the most."
"To expect that people who reel from one traumatic event to another can enjoy the much lauded 'rights to self-determination' while their own community and the wider society repeatedly fail them is an indulgent fantasy," she says. "It is also an indulgent fantasy to require 'consultation' before intervention to prevent crimes being committed."
Langton is associated with adventurous programs in the Cape country of Queensland under the aegis of Noel Pearson. These involve a conscious turning away from a rights and welfare payment-oriented system to one focused on responsibilities and economic development. They were well-funded by the previous government, but the attitude of the present Government is entirely unclear. It is still too early to claim much in the way of results the evidence that some things are awry there (especially with some of the child-rape scandals and alcohol riots) emphasises rather more the task of community building than anything one way or another about the models being used.
There are other experiments such as the Commonwealth departmental secretaries' initiative and various Council of Australian Government programs designed to show that results can be improved by better coordination between government agencies, and between governments, in the development of physical and social capital in Aboriginal communities. One might think this common sense, but five years' work has shown very little in the way of greatly improved outcomes.
With or without a welfarist system, with or without adventurous new models of community development, are very discernible gaps. In housing. In community facilities. In access to the sorts of services other Australians take for granted. In school provision. And not only in remote parts of Central Australia but in Bourke, and Redfern, and Mt Druitt. Despite the propaganda about "special" programs for Aborigines, and despite the constant "they get heaps" innuendo of people hostile to Aboriginal aspirations, it is thought that Aborigines consume ordinary public services at about half the rate of the ordinary Australian middle class. That would be as true of education spending, as of health services, aged-care facilities or labour-market programs.
One can berate Aborigines for failing to make the most of the opportunities they do get, perhaps blame them for wallowing in victimhood and failing to get on with it. Or having some lying about intoxicated while their children are not properly looked after. Perhaps some achievements such as communities full of safe, literate and skilled men, women and children can neither be achieved overnight nor suffered to wait forever.
We do know, however, that there will be little change, and not much hope, while the material poverty is so evident, while Aborigines are but bit-actors in their destinies, and while their lives depend rather more on whims in Canberra than they way they organise themselves.
Jack Waterford is Editor-at-Large.