Some of the most destructive periods in the history of many places in the world occur over disputes between different ethnic groups over occupation of land and the right to self-determination on it. Usually, the disputes take the form of a prior occupancy against a newer occupant who has effective rule of the territory. Examples abound: the Kurdish disputes; Northern Ireland; Israel/Palestine; the Basque territory; Bosnia; Tibet, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and a dozen disputes in the former Soviet Union. The list goes on. Some of the disputes involve extreme violence and war. Others are festering sores of historic discontent without overt violence. Either, however way they engender great human suffering. Invariably, the violent solution does not work and peace, reconciliation and an end to suffering come only through political leadership, which, alas, is so often lacking in these circumstances. Might is right is too often applied.
When one looks at the world’s trouble spots a pattern emerges of one ethnic or religious group feeling dispossessed and alienated from the social and governmental structure of the state in which they happen to live. Leaving aside general cries for democracy in totalitarian states, there is hardly a trouble spot on earth, now or in the past, that does not at least loosely fit this pattern.
Small wonder, then, that the issue of Aboriginal and Islander people’s position in Australia’s democracy has caused such a cauldron, especially in the past year. It, too, fits the pattern. To date, Australia has been blessed that, unlike so many places in the world, the frustration caused by Aboriginal and Islander dispossession have never manifested themselves in violence. To that we owe the patience of the Aboriginal and Islander people. We are also blessed that, unlike so many other places in the world, there has been an almost unique breakthrough in the exercise in political leadership to come to an historic reconciliation and end to the alienation.
That breakthrough did not come from the elected politicians. It came from the High Court, in the form of the Mabo case. And it was political leadership, in the broad sense of the words. Politics is about the exercise of power in a governmental framework. The High Court is as much a part of the political process as the House of Representatives, albeit a part that has less day-to-day influence. Essentially, the High Court recognised and acted on a matter of fundamental justice that the elected politicians only talked about: you have to correct an historic wrong if ever the nation is to be at peace with itself. This is not guilt industry; it is a fact of world history.
Governments from the 1967 referendum to 1972, in one way or another, failed to do the necessary follow up redress the wrong. From 1972 to 1983 the follow up was well-meaning, but misdirected. From 1983 on Bob Hawke talked about a treaty and promised land rights, and reneged, crying and making excuses on his last day in the Prime Ministership at his failure.
The political leadership had to come from a court. It has forced the elected politicians to act. It has forced the people of Australia to think and respond.
As a direct result of the case, it forced, a mission to far north Queensland in the past week of six very senior Opposition politicians (the leader, John Hewson; deputy, Michael Wooldridge; spokesman on Aboriginal Affairs, Peter Nugent; on environment, Ian MacLauchlan; on attorney-general matter, Darryl Williams; and the deputy leader of the National Party, John Anderson.
One or two had wide experience of Aboriginal and Islander issues. Others had virtually none. Whatever, their starting point, the mission must have given them greater understanding of the indigenous people’s plight in remote parts of Australia. It is damning that the impetus for the mission had to come from an earlier display of political leadership by the High Court, rather than from within the Opposition parties much earlier.
On the Government side, it is damning, too, that it took the political leadership of the High Court to spur its leaders into recognising the national profundity of the issue and to move to correct Bob Hawke’s shameful reneging of his earlier promises during the grubby, greedy mid-1980s.
Yes; there will be uncertainty, economic concerns, extravagant claims, hyperbole and fear. But Australia can thank its Lucky Country stars that its most important national issue _ the very place of people in this land _ is being fought in the media, in the meeting halls of Aboriginal and Islander communities, in the Parliament and in the courts, and not, as so often has been the case elsewhere in the world in these situations with bullets.
On the world scale, what we are seeing with the Mabo case is by no means turbulent.