Saturday Extra

One of the key people who worked behind the scenes to bring about the Prime Minister's change of heart on Aboriginal reconciliation is Professor Marcia Langton from the University of Melbourne.

Professor Langton says John Howard's motivation is less important than the outcome.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Geraldine Doogue: First to that extraordinary development on Thursday night when the Prime Minister stunned us all, I think it's pretty fair to say, with a U-turn on Aboriginal rights. At its core, he offered to hold a referendum on a new preamble to our constitution. It would be a statement of reconciliation, it would recognise the history of indigenous people as the land's first inhabitants, their culture and heritage and their 'special though not separate place' within a reconciled, indivisible nation. And that referendum would be within 18 months of his re-election.

Well it quite took my breath away when I heard my ABC newsreader announce it at the top of the 7pm News. But it was thought-provoking in the extreme to hear the different reactions over the next 24 hours to those statements, and I do suspect it'll dominate quite a few weekend conversations too, whatever the PM does, or does not, do in terms of visiting the Governor-General this morning. I don't think he'll bowl up to Admiralty House before 9, but if he does we'll let you know.

So this morning we thought we might tap into some different perspectives on this huge symbolic move, because in this case, motive and action seem to matter equally. Why is this happening now? What might it mean for both Aboriginal people and the broader community?

Now we're expecting soon Marcia Langton to join us. She's a Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Geography and Environment at Melbourne University. According to The Age she, along with Noel Pearson and Guluru Yunipingu, three of the towering figures of indigenous politics, they can take credit for first persuading Mal Brough, the Aboriginal Affairs Minister, of the need for some big, positive move in the wake of the Territory intervention, and that Mr Brough worked on the PM, all of which led to Thursday's announcement.

But we've also invited members of our regular political panel: the veteran journalist, Max Walsh, and former W.A. Premier, Geoff Gallop, into the studio to offer us their insights. So, gentlemen, welcome. What do you make of this announcement Geoff Gallop, and why now?

Geoff Gallop: Well I don't think you can put a lot of political significance on to it in terms of the election campaign. It more seems like John Howard making a type of statement about his own position in history. But when you actually analyse it, I don't think it's a huge shift at all. The referendum proposal I think is a good one, and it's part of what we would call symbolic reconciliation, but the fact that he's not agreeing to the apology for issues like the Stolen Generation, I believe means that he hasn't really gone very far at all, and somehow or another he's trying to position himself within the Aboriginal debate in Australia currently. I don't think it'll have great significance in terms of the campaign, but when you really look at it, without the apology, there's no epiphany here at all. I think it's someone looking for a little bit of redemption as they face the inevitable, you know.

Geraldine Doogue: Peter Hartcher, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, had a very interesting - his final paragraph I thought was extraordinary, but the 'one minute to midnight' urgency of the change suggests something more. 'Howard tolerated with equanimity Aboriginal activists turning their backs on him' (this is back in 1997) 'but now it seems the broader electorate is turning its back. Howard is seeking an urgent reconciliation.' Max Walsh, is that too cynical?

Max Walsh: I agree with Geoff, basically. I don't think this will affect the outcome of the election in any way whatsoever. I can't see any votes changing hands over this particular one. I really think that what's happened is that John Howard is seeing the end looming, he's seen the opinion polls, and he's on his way out, regardless, one way or the other. And when he looks at the history of his stewardship, there's clearly one ugly blot on the whole escutcheon, and that is the treatment of Aboriginals. And at the time when he has delivered greater wealth to a majority of Australians, the most disadvantaged section of our society has gone back by every social indicator. And that sits there. And he knows that when the history of this time is written, that will loom large.

Geraldine Doogue: So you in fact, ah well that's interesting, you see it as almost an implicit recognition by Howard of the predicament he's in, electorally, do you?

Max Walsh: Not necessarily; yes I do, but I don't think that's been driven by the fact that he's going to lose this election. He's coming to the end of his political life anyway, that's what I'm saying, and the election focuses attention all the more on this particular fact. And like all politicians, they like to know what history's going to say about them, that's why they're in politics.

Geoff Gallop: The quote of the week of course though Geraldine, comes from Alexander Downer, when he said yesterday, "I mean he's got well-known views on this issue, and he hasn't abandoned everything he believes in on it. You would never expect that from John Howard". So according to Alexander, he's abandoned something, and I think the something he's abandoned is the question of the symbolic reconciliation concept, but all he's willing to throw into that bag is the referendum. Now that's good, and lots of us have been arguing for that for a long time, but without the apology I don't think you can really argue he's come to terms with this issue in its totality.

Geraldine Doogue: It's just interesting. The Weekend Australian's own headline in this, in the Inquirer section, is 'John Howard has reached out to the so-called Rudd Liberals with this week's indigenous referendum promise, as he seeks to show he can greet the future.' So that's why I'm interested, Max, and you've actually got a subtly different feel about it.

Max Walsh: Not subtly different, it's diametrically opposed to what's in The Australian. No, The Australian's just beating the Howard drum there. Look, could you imagine one Rudd Liberal who's followed this for the last ten years, the Aboriginal issue, if that's what we're referring to, they're suddenly going to wake up this morning and say 'Oh, I must vote for John Howard'. Now I mean that was a very tinny speech he gave; I mean he suddenly discovered symbolism as far as the Aboriginals are concerned. Here's a man who walks around in Akubra hats, and gets around in a gold and green tracksuit every morning, and wraps himself in the flag on every possible occasion, the one that stands the full import of symbolism, lives dies by symbolism for the last 32 years of his life, and suddenly discovers it matters to the Aborigines. He's a person who says 'It's all because of my age and my culture that I didn't understand the problem.' I mean this is a bloke who's been in public life for 32 years; the Aboriginal issue has been to the fore for the last 32 years. I mean really bum notes were hit in that speech.

Geraldine Doogue: Well it's quite interesting also that as various people have pointed out, he could have made an announcement like this before the 40th anniversary of the '67 Aboriginal Referendum, earlier this year. And there was no such. Because I was wondering whether that 40 years, because I think it was extremely significant, that obviously the 40 years since that Referendum, and I thought that might have been a time, I wasn't thinking about Referendum, but I thought that might have been a time Geoff Gallop for some sort of big bold move, and nothing happened.

Geoff Gallop: Well of course that would have linked the issue into Australian history in a more I think, in a sense that would have made it more systematically part of a reconciliation concept. And so I think the fact that it's come up the way it has and not been linked into some sort of historical development like that, does take away some of the content. The referendum proposal is a good thing, one has to acknowledge that.

Geraldine Doogue: But do you not think that it might have some impact on a certain type of person sitting in, say a seat like Bennelong, Max? Or North Sydney or in parts of the areas that we're getting some feedback that there really is some shift in some of those previously thought to be safe seats, Coalition-held safe seats. That the softening by him might actually just keep people with him a bit longer?

Max Walsh: I don't think so. I think the sort of John Howards have got a one-card trick for this election. It's economic management, and strangely enough he's thrashed that particular approach with his pork-barrelling and his performance over the last month or so. I think he's turned his great strength into the new weakness. But I don't really believe that anybody imagines John Howard's actually had a deathbed conversion, in the sense that it's a philosophical shift.

Geraldine Doogue: Have you been listening - the conversations have been fascinating about this; some of the most surprising people, if you read the ABC website, they've got this new little area called Unleashed, where they provoke comment. It's quite fascinating to see the people who really believe this has been quite a long time coming and I'll be talking to Marcia Langton in a while. I spoke to Ray Martin yesterday on the phone, for instance, who worked on the Reconciliation Council for years, and he believes this is the result of a ten year process of getting to him.

Max Walsh: Just got there, right at the last moment! Yes. Look, these a true believers, they're nice people, and they want to believe it.

Geraldine Doogue: Do you think that's right? Do you think Geoff, it's a hard - I have watched this before, is it very difficult for some people to fully grasp for all politicians, Mr Howard's a particular case in point, that they can be possibly manipulative and that this is part of their character?

Geoff Gallop: Well it is interesting that this move has been made in terms of John Howard's personal and political development, and Max, having been around a bit longer than me at the Federal scene, obviously has a clear view on that. I can imagine if you were one of those true believers as they've just been described, you would see a move here, and you might be delighted in that, and enthusiastic about it. But when you put it into the total package, really there isn't a move here. I mean this notion that Australian history should be treated as a balance sheet of good and bad, and John Howard even said it again yesterday, 'but on the balance it's all positive'. Well I would have thought if you were an Aboriginal person the very fact that you use that methodology is the problem.

Geraldine Doogue: And look, the whole issue of it following the intervention in the Territory, how important do you think that is? Like how much was this a different bookend of that intervention; that's very much practical reconciliation he would see it as. Do you think this is a totally different approach that was necessary?

Geoff Gallop: Well clearly, there's one political sense in which this may be treated, and that is that some Aboriginal leaders have been going John Howard's way on some of these issues for a time, and he may feel that this is consolidating that, and therefore it may be part of a political strategy to win over 'the Rudd Liberals'. But as Max said, if that is a strategy, it certainly won't work that way.

Geraldine Doogue: It's interesting that according to The Australian this morning Max, Sue Gordon, the woman who wrote the 'Bring the little children home', she got to see the speech before any other members of the Cabinet, the speech that was presented on Thursday night was presented to her, as Peter Shergold, the Head of the Prime Minister's Cabinet sent it along to her before other members of the Cabinet. It's just an extraordinary story, isn't it?

Max Walsh: Well it is. And just to reinforce was Geoff was saying: I think the appointment of Brough was very important, far, far more important than the symbolism engaged in this particular exercise. And I don't criticise that for what it is, it's just the motivation behind it I identify. But it took ten years to appoint somebody like Brough, a real Cabinet minister, with ambition, who wants to put his name down, and wants to actually get out there and do something. That's the real measure of John Howard's interest in the Aboriginal issue. It's been a black-border???.

Geraldine Doogue: Mind you, I don't think you could have seen that Brough was going to be as activist as he's turned out to be.

Max Walsh: Well I don't think he hides his ambition under a bushel.

Geraldine Doogue: OK, now look, I want to let you go in a moment, but if this huge debate - Laurie Oakes thinks it's going to be this morning, Michelle Gratton thinks it's going to be sometime before the middle of the day, it's just been pointed out to me the tragic soldier who died in Afghanistan, his body's coming home today; maybe that might hold him up. But I mean Max, how do you think that the election will come about finally; have you got any particular thoughts?

Max Walsh: I go along - I was talking with Geoff earlier, today's the logical time to announce it, just for the practical reason the people start arriving back in Canberra for next week's parliamentary meeting otherwise.

Geraldine Doogue: Surely you can't have people turning around and going back home.

Max Walsh: It just adds to sort of the farcical nature of the situation. So I think it'll be announced today, and it'll probably be the 24th November, I think he'll string it out as far as possible, in the hope that something will turn up. And I've got to say, that frankly, if Rudd falls over in the last two weeks, Howard will win the election, so this is not a done deal.

Geraldine Doogue: Do you agree with that, Geoff?

Geoff Gallop: Well nothing's a done deal, and I would urge the Australian people to prepare themselves for the money that's going to be thrown in their direction over the next month. It will be massive. There will be a huge campaign to try and buy people's votes and it could even go to December 1st I think, Max, I'm not sure. John Howard will definitely go for a long campaign.

Geraldine Doogue: But you don't think it's a done deal, Max? You seriously don't think it's a done deal?

Max Walsh: Oh no, no. I remember '72 when I thought Gough Whitlam was going to romp home, and I had a terrible night on election night.

Geraldine Doogue: Because you predicted - ?

Max Walsh: Well I did, and it looked that way, there was no question, and I've got to say that Howard's a lot better-looking Prime Minister than Billy McMahon ever was.

Geraldine Doogue: Yes, yes, quite. Although Mike Stekete had a very interesting piece this week, I don't know whether you read it in The Australian, pointing out that the only other governments that have gone over their three-year mandate, I think three years was last Wednesday, or Tuesday, were Ben Chifley, and Billy McMahon, both paradigm shift territory, if you know what I mean, when those governments changed there were huge changes to Australia. So it is an interesting little anniversary to note, Geoff Gallop I think. Historically.

Geoff Gallop: Well there's always history and history. I think this is a fairly unique set of circumstances now. One of the things we've talked about often on this program are the newer issues coming along as well, such as climate change and John Howard was way behind on those. And there are a lot of younger voters that relate to those. In the end, economic management is still the key, and as Max has hinted, it may become mismanagement over the next month.

Geraldine Doogue: Well we're going to discuss exactly that actually, later in the program when we look at the way in which, I suppose, individual Australians have interpreted economic management, such that they've taken out huge amounts of debt, and what that's actually doing to their households. Look, thank you very much indeed. We will see you gentlemen during the campaign: Max Walsh and Geoff Gallop, thank you.

And we're also going to introduce a second panel. We're going to have people sitting in the regions who are political activists in the various regions in Australia, so that we're not accused of being Sydney or urban centric. So that'll be coming up.

I'm delighted now to welcome Professor Marcia Langton, who as I said earlier has been credited in The Age as being part of this whole shift of attitudes that led to the Prime Minister's dramatic announcement on Thursday night. Marcia Langton, welcome to Saturday Extra.

Marcia Langton: Thank you, Geraldine, good morning.

Geraldine Doogue: Good to have you join me. Now what was your reaction to Thursday night's announcement?

Marcia Langton: Geraldine I have to admit that I was surprised.

Geraldine Doogue: Oh, you were?

Marcia Langton: Yes. But at the same time, I know that this is what Noel discussed with the Prime Minister; he told me that that's what he would do. This has been an ongoing conversation I think. You see, one of the things that concerns Noel, and leaders such as Galarrwuy is that the Prime Minister can't keep berating us to perform as the kinds of citizens that he imagines that we ought to be, according to his old reconciliation model. And I think the logic of that, along with the extraordinary change of mind in the Australian public, has I think led John Howard to re-think the way that he approaches Aboriginal issues.

Geraldine Doogue: Were you part of this meeting that Mischa Schubert in The Age, reported you, Gullaroy and Noel Pearson actually sitting down with Mal Brough, just two weeks after the historic intervention in the Territory, where in effect, if I'm reading between the lines, you pleaded with him to say There's got to be something as well as this practical intervention, there's got to be. Is that an accurate reading of things?

Marcia Langton: I was certainly at the meeting, and I did say a few things, but the conversation with Minister Mal Brough, was led by Galarrwuy Yunipingu. Noel followed up on the telephone, I was in a car with the Minister, Mal Brough, back to the airport. I did say a few things but I credit Galarrwuy Yunipingu. and Noel Pearson with leading the conversation and shaping the response to the Minister and the Prime Minister. I've certainly been in discussion with them ever since.

Geraldine Doogue: And was there, in your view, looking back, because this could really be quite an historic time, a tipping point in change of attitude by either the Minister or by extension, the Prime Minister?

Marcia Langton: I think there certainly was a moment in a time when both the Minister and the Prime Minister were having a change of heart about the way they think about these issues. And I would say that it is because - you see what I found interesting during the Northern Territory intervention, was that you had a lot of ordinary Australians going to the Northern Territory as volunteers, as volunteer doctors, and these people began to write letters, and to say things in the media, and I've had these experiences throughout my life when I say something, say on a radio program, I get letters from Australians who have worked in Aboriginal communities particularly say doctors, doctors' wives, missionaries and people who worked in Aboriginal communities many years ago, and are alarmed that the situation's worse than it was when they were working in Aboriginal communities, and I think this attention to the conditions of the Aboriginal communities by ordinary Australians has finally brought it home that this is not just a left-wing political idea that's floating out there in the political ether, and as a burr under the saddle, if you like, to the politicians who represent Australia as people would like to believe it is.

Geraldine Doogue: So you do believe that there has been, as the Prime Minister says, some movement, some substantive movement in the population about this, the broader population?

Marcia Langton: I do. I teach at a University. My students ask me questions non-stop about these issues now. Whereas once I would have had an extraordinarily difficult time even explaining that there are existent Aboriginal societies with traditions, and their own ways of life, their own beliefs, now ask questions and I think there's been an awakening.

Geraldine Doogue: The tragedy is I'd suggest to you, Marcia, some of that has come about by these grotesque stories from the Territory, so it's a terrible spur, isn't it?

Marcia Langton: That's exactly right. And of course you see the focus is more on Aboriginal children in a way that it's never been in the past. The focus is on Aboriginal children and the stories, well I think this began with Nanette Rogers' speech, you remember that she was the Public Prosecutor in Alice Springs, and she made a public appeal citing the evidence that she's had to deal with in the courts in Alice Springs in cases of child abuse. It was very obvious that she was distressed, that she's actually traumatised, and I think Nanette's triggered this series of events. Now many people in the Aboriginal community have been saying exactly what Nanette said for decades. But when a woman who is a Public Prosecutor -

Geraldine Doogue: And white, of course.

Marcia Langton: And white. Makes the public appeal in the terms that she did, that's what opened the floodgates.

Geraldine Doogue: It's also been my experience with some key Aboriginal people that they were so devastated by the almost unfolding drama, the intervention, what it represented, that I just wonder whether people like yourself, Noel, Galarrwuy Yunipingu. , Jackie Huggins, that the need for something positive as a bookend for that, was vital, and that that also played a role in this story about the preamble to the constitution.

Marcia Langton: I think it would have been impossible for the Prime Minister, for Mal Brough, or his Cabinet, to sustain their analysis with the facts that have been revealed over the last two years, hitting the newspapers every day. It would have been impossible. They had to give at some point.

Geraldine Doogue: Look, this is a symbolic gesture the Prime Minister's making, and clearly you think it is genuine. But only two months ago I suggest to you, the Australian government refused to support in the United Nations the declaration on indigenous rights, something all countries supported except for the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Now it wasn't a treaty, but it was a declaration. So in a sense that was a form of symbolic recognition, and there was nothing also before the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum just earlier this year in July. I wonder in a way do you think in any way that undermines his announcement on Thursday night?

Marcia Langton: I think there's a big difference between supporting an international measure and proposing one's own domestic acknowledgment of the problem. And you know that it's always been the Prime Minister's view that United Nations conventions and so on, he says interfere with Australia's sovereignty. And so I think there's a substantial difference between the two.

Geraldine Doogue: So if people come up to you and say, 'This is deeply, deeply cynical' and 'This is as we said, a deathbed conversion' for a purpose that is not - it might include Aboriginal people, but it's not primarily driven by Aboriginal people, what do you say to them?

Marcia Langton: I listen to these words and I've had a think about the words that he used. I personally think that it's not possible for a person such as himself to make the kinds of admissions that he made without some sincerity. And in any case, I don't believe that we can truly know whether or not a person - what a person believes. At some point we have to take on face value what they say to us. Unless the facts fly in the face of a statement. But going back to the United Nations declaration, I think that the declaration is the kind of symbolic measure that John Howard's former analysis of reconciliation held to be merely symbolic. I personally don't believe that, but I can see how members of his party would see that as say for instance, a kind of useless symbolism that didn't solve the practical problems. And it's true that international law doesn't, but Australia has almost become the Deputy Sheriff in the region, and the level of hypocrisy involved in Australia, Australians work in other countries under UN mandates in especially the Asia Pacific area, which has now been called an arc of instability. You see the response from many other countries always has been, and now they can really turn to the volume up on Australia's hypocrisy in dealing with human rights problems, civil conflict problems, whilst the Aboriginal situation is not only bad, but demonstrably worsening.

Geraldine Doogue: So look finally I suppose Marcia, I got the impression from ringing around a little bit yesterday, that Aboriginal people in a way, don't even care about analysing the politics of this, they're just delighted and relieved beyond measure that there is this, that this has been a declaration. Is that a fair sort of summary of your views?

Marcia Langton: Well I think it sums up my view, certainly. I think the views in the Aboriginal community go something like this: people are of course pleased that at last there's been a response to the Aboriginal child health situation, and of course the Commonwealth has the powers to intervene in the Northern Territory and not in the States. In Western Australia, the situation is very, very bad as well. People are concerned that the intervention is sustainable. They would like Aboriginal communities to be consulted, and I think well personally, that's really beginning to happen now.

Geraldine Doogue: We've got to go I'm afraid Marcia, I'm sorry, the News is ticking away. Thank you very, very much for joining us today.

Marcia Langton: Thank you.

Geraldine Doogue: OK. Professor Marcia Langton from the Department of Anthropology, Geography and Environment at Melbourne University. We'd love your views on this. So do write to us.

Guests

Marcia Langton
Senior Fellow Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies

Professor Geoff Gallop
Director of Sydney University's Graduate School of Government

Max Walsh
Senior journalist and columnist

Story Researcher and Producer

Jo Jarvis