Robert Tickner reaches into the shelves and drags out a school social-studies textbook. The page falls open easily on to a page on Aborigines that he, as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, has used before to illustrate a point.
“”That was my text book for the NSW School Certificate in 1967,” he says, pointing to some underlined bits.
“”Look at this stuff,” he says.
I read: “”They were lazy individuals, apparently devoid of morals and always prepared to lie, cheat or steal. They would also recklessly share their possessions with parasitic relatives and friends.”
“”I had Aboriginal kids in my class,” Tickner says with some passion. “”Imagine how they felt reading that in their school textbook. Yes; I am ashamed.”
The book was first published in 1965 and revised in 1966, leaving that in it. And it was a School Certificate textbook the following year when Australia passed the referendum to count Aborigines in the census and to give the Federal Parliament power to make laws for Aboriginal people.
Tickner was brought up in Foster in northern NSW. His father was a member of the National Party who would not hire Aborigines in the business. A good man, but a victim of his surroundings. The son rebelled against the racism and went into the Aboriginal Legal Service, the Labor Party and Federal politics.
He is not seen as a mover or shaker or a policy innovator. This is because he sees consensus across the political divide as essential in Aboriginal affairs. Without it you get nowhere; with it you might get somewhere.
He has seen the destructiveness of opposing policies over national land rights, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the treaty and prefers to get parliamentary consensus. He thinks if the Parliament made a unanimous or near unanimous statement about Aboriginal affairs the community will embrace that view. If a party goes it alone it will not get essential community backing.
And thus Tickner has spent most of his time talking, listening, persuading, convincing and compromising to achieve essential consensus, especially in getting support for the setting up of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in September 1991. He had to deal with people of seemingly irreconcilably different interests: the National Farmers Federation, Aboriginal sovereignty supporters, the miners, Aboriginal moderates, the Federal bureaucracy, his Cabinet colleagues, employer groups, newspaper editorialists, unions and his parliamentary opponents.
Because he has had to consult so widely to produce something of still indeterminate quality, he has therefore been an easy target for critics who say he is all talk and no action and a lightweight.
He certainly has eccentricities not shared by his colleagues. His office looks more like an indoor-plant and Aboriginal-art shop than a ministerial office. His staff good-humouredly make him live up to his equal-opportunity ideals by forcing him to get his own coffee. And he darts about in an unsettling way dealing with three or things at once, trying to do too much.
Among the people he meets, he is surprised at the level of concern about improving the lot of Aboriginal people in Australia. The difficulty is not finding a willingness to act, but a consensus on how it should be done.
He came to the ministry after the 1990 election, following Gerry Hand. He praises Hand’s achievement in getting ATSIC established, “”but it came at great price _ the polarisation of the Parliament and a time of bitter hatred and division manifested in the Parliament over Aboriginal affairs.”
Tickner leaps up and opens a cupboard full of documents. “”Look at the results,” he says, “”Notices of motion, MPIs in the Senate, personal explanations, senate estimates committees and so on.”
Tickner has preferred to go slower and aim at things that would get consensus.
The reconciliation process has been criticised by both indigenous and non-indigenous people as nebulous, as not advancing indigenous rights in the way national land rights or a treaty would.
Tickner rejects this.
“”National land rights is a glib phrase put around by a lot of people, but we need to remember what happened at that time,” he said. “”The proposal sq(in the mid-1980s) for uniform land rights across the country ended up being opposed not only by the mining industry and sq( then Western Australian Premier) Brian Burke but by Aboriginal people themselves because it would water down Northern Territory legislation and because there was no provision for urban Aboriginals and dispossessed Aboriginal people.”
A treaty raised the impossible questions of what it would contain and who would sign it.
Besides, “”as if by signing some document that would of itself transform the country”.
“”That is not how things happen,” he said. “”The lessons of history are that such agreements can be important, but the real changes are inevitably incremental. Things don’t happen over night. Importantly you don’t fix health education, employment and housing issues overnight.”
The treaty had been rejected by the Opposition and if half the Parliament rejected something, the community would treat it as defective or with suspicion.
The reconciliation process, however, had been agreed to unanimously by Parliament. He gave credit to his then Opposition counterpart Michael Wooldridge.
“”I have always believed in the potential of Parliament to send a powerful message to the wider community,” he said. “”It pulls behind it a considerable amount of public opinion. If the whole Parliament is saying that racism is reprehensible, in the wider community racists become marginalised and without credibility.”
The reconciliation process includes an educational-awareness program.
He goes back to the textbook.
“”The oppressive grind of prejudice stultifies and restricts life opportunities for every Aboriginal person: to employment to education and to minimum respect as a citizen of the country,” he said. “”That is why we need education awareness programs not educational prejudice. The Prime Minister’s Redfern Park statement asked people to empathise. What would you have thought if those things sq(in the textbook) had been written about you?
With the reconciliation process Tickner said he “”wanted to find a framework for change use it as a means of bringing the whole Parliament and _ high-minded and idealistic as it might sound _ the whole nation to agree to a commitment to address indigenous aspirations as a key issue leading up to the centenary of federation.”
What about Mabo, (the High Court’s decision that native title has survived white settlement)? Tickner puts into practice what he had said about the importance of achieving consensus. He would not pre-empt the ministerial committee and would not say things that would damage the pursuit of broad agreement.
However, he thought history would judge the issue as more important that the republic.
“”The response to Mabo can be a new beginning, but if we get it wrong it could be an irreparable scar on the reconciliation process,” he said. “”It is a time for ethical and moral decision making.”
Mabo was not a government initiative bestowed upon indigenous people, he said. It was the High Court rewriting the legal framework. Mabo had changed the nature of the things.
“”It necessitates change to the treatment of indigenous people,” Tickner said.
Tickner does not appear to see Mabo as an essential or necessary part of changing non-indigenous attitudes; it would have happened without Mabo. However, Mabo added to momentum.
Mabo, the centenary and republican debate for Tickner are timely catalysts for changes for indigenous people, especially in the context of the reconciliation process which has widespread support.