The new National Indigenous Council (NIC) created by the Australian Government has become the object of great controversy among Australia’s indigenous and government leaders.
On November 6, Amanda Vanstone, Minister of Indigenous Affairs said that the new Council "will provide expert advice to the Australian Government on policy, program and service-delivery issues affecting Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders," according to the Ministry’s press release.
The NIC is headed by Perth magistrate Dr. Sue Gordon. 14 Council members, all Aboriginal, are not elected but rather appointed by the government. Among the appointees are Adam Goodes, an Aboriginal footballer, Wesley Aird, the first indigenous graduate from the Duntroon Royal Military College, Dr. John Moriarty, a Sydney businessman, and Archie Barton, a founding member of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. There are five women on the Council.
Tim Rowse, senior fellow at the Australian National University, said that all councilors are worthy and credible individuals, selected with a good spread of gender and age. He also noted, "One of the councilors, Warren Mundine, is the senior vice-president of the Australian Labour party, so it will be difficult for the opposition [party] to complain that Prime Minister John Howard is consulting only his own people."
However, the NIC has been rejected by some important Aboriginal leaders who say it is a token gesture on the government’s part and will only be used to rubber-stamp its policies. Even before its first meeting in December, the NIC was strongly criticized by one of the nation’s most respected Aboriginal leaders, Patrick Dodson, who told The Australian the government had "copped out" on giving Aborigines a "real say" in their future. The government had "taken away any real ability of Aboriginal people to influence the political direction of policies over our lives and reduced us to being subordinates," he said. "John Howard and his government are failing us." Dodson characterized the composition of the Council as "terribly conservative."
Another blow to the new organization was delivered by the former aboriginal Australian football player Michael Long, who turned down a position on the Council’s board, saying that he did not believe it was sustainable.
The government brushed away criticism. According to Minister Vanstone, the Council would have a broad range of goals, such as facilitating early childhood development, creating safer environment for children and women and diminishing reliance on welfare for nation’s indigenous community. The head of the NIC, Dr. Gordon indicated that Aboriginal domestic violence would be at the forefront of NIC’s agenda.
According to Rowse, in the late 1990s it became clear that domestic and intra community violence is a huge problem facing indigenous Australians. "The NIC is thus able to present itself as leading a movement of reform that has popular roots, particularly among indigenous women."
In April this year, Australia’s government abolished its elected indigenous organization, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), claiming it had become preoccupied with symbolic issues rather than the serious day-to-day problems faced by Aborigines. ATSIC, set up in 1990, lost the confidence of the 300,000-strong Aboriginal community due to the agency’s alleged corruption and mismanagement, although many activists claim that ATSIC was not given a chance to succeed.
Only one of ATSIC’s elected representatives, Michael White, was invited on to the NIC. He told The Australian he would resign if he thought the government was not listening. White said he considered boycotting the NIC by declining the position, but then decided there were too many urgent issues the government needed to be pushed on.
The government claims the NIC is not a replacement for ATSIC and is not meant to be a representative agency. Rowse said that the delivery of services to the country’s aboriginal population does not seem to be undermined by ATSIC’s abolishment. "International forums have been given a false impression of ATSIC’s centrality," he said. "The Howard government has never sought to reverse the trend for many public services to be delivered to indigenous Australians by publicly-funded indigenous associations. Some of them were under the oversight of ATSIC, many were not; the removal of ATSIC means that those formerly under ATSIC will now be under the oversight of ‘mainstream’ agencies, but that does not in itself threaten the work of those indigenous associations."
