The Calm Before the Storm

Anybody who didn’t care or who didn’t bother to try to understand the effect of John Howard’s amendments to the Native Title Act, would be likely to think the native title "problem" had been "solved". They may even believe Mr Harradine’s phoney propaganda about the benefits of passing the racist amendments and avoiding a "race-based election", whatever that was supposed to mean.

But the battle has just begun. How heartening to see The Age publish a feature (27/1/99) describing the tragedy of Aboriginal children being forcibly removed, stolen, from their families. The passion in Robert Manne’s writing is a reminder that the wrongs committed against Aboriginal people are so gross that they just can not be buried by government rhetoric and blatantly inequitable legislation.

The Howard government will one day be made to answer for it’s shameful exploitation of the native title issue to make a gift of vast areas of Australia to wealthy pastoralists. The mantra of "certainty" was a myth which this country’s right wing media happily accepted and played to a largely uninterested and careless middle Australia. And it is middle Australia which will one day open its eyes and see that the theft of land rights effected by the Native Title Amendment Act was not just a theft from Aboriginals, it was a theft from all Australians. I must say at this point that of course, the significance of the theft is definitely greater to Aboriginals than it is to non-Aboriginals. Just when steps were being taken down the long and troublesome road to reconciliation, the narrow-minded and destructive forces of wealth and greed have strewn that road with the carcasses of the foot soldiers for reconciliation and given a clear message to anybody else who dares to take up the march that to do so is to invite trouble.

But it’s not only a tragedy for Aboriginals. For what Howard and Harradine have done is to hand to pastoral leaseholders the right use land which belongs to all Australians. A pastoral lease amounts to no more than a right to graze sheep and cattle . It is much closer to a licence to take the grass than what most people would understand by the word "lease". Many pastoral "leases" specifically and carefully limit the rights given to the pastoralist because the governments which granted them (at a very small fee) were anxious to retain control over the land and, in many instances, were anxious to ensure that Aboriginals were not disadvantaged by the pastoralist’s use of the land.

Yet now the rights of these pastoralists, many of whom are multinational companies with vast resources and no need for any assistance, have been given the right to use the land for anything from timber harvesting to tourism. Why? Is it fair that the most disadvantaged people in our society should be stripped of their legal rights so that others can diversify their income-earning activities?

There are 8000 pastoral leaseholders in Australia. There are over 700,000 Aboriginals in Australia. Whether the government was conned by the pastoralists or whether it was just racist and stupid, the effect is the same. A select few have benefited at the direct expense of all Australians, most strikingly Aboriginal Australians.

As time goes on and the burden of our past and continuing injustices becomes too heavy to bear, there will come a realisation of the gravity of the Howard/Harradine sin. We can only hope that the realisation comes before the pastoralists destroy the land, with the same gusto with which this government has tried to destroy fairness and equality in the hearts of right-minded Australians.