It was a last ditch effort. After five years of scandal had crippled the only elected governmental agency representing indigenous people in Australia, an independent three-member review panel went to work.
In November 2003, the review panel—which was appointed by Prime Minister John Howard’s ruling Liberal Party government—released a 120-page assessment of the regionally-elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). The report recommended shifting power toward ATSIC’s regional councils, while streamlining the national body in order to promote better communication and accountability.
But those recommendations were ignored, said Jackie Huggins, a noted Aboriginal historian and author who was one of the three panelists. In April, Howard shut down the 24-year-old ATSIC, mainstreaming the services it provided to Aboriginals into other governmental agencies. While the Howard government claims this dissolution will generate over $100 million in additional funding for Australia’s indigenous peoples (which make up about two percent of the country’s population) over the next four years, Aboriginal activists and leaders are worried that they’ve lost their representative voice within the government.
"We’ve been put back 30 years," said Huggins, a descendent of the Bodjara people of central Queensland, in a phone interview from Australia. "Mainstreaming has never worked for indigenous people in Australia."
Before its dissolution, almost no one claimed that ATSIC was in good shape. Charges of fraud, misappropriation of funds, and personal misconduct among ATSIC’s executive leadership had severely tarnished the organization’s image. Part of the problem, according to John Scott, the director of the United Nation’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, were unrealistic expectations put on the service arm of ATSIC.
"[ATSIC] was never funded to provide programs across all those levels in the first place," said Scott, a descendent of the Inigay people. "It was funded to provide a national voice [for Aboriginals]."
That national voice was supposed to come from 35 elected regional councils. But Aboriginal leaders said those councils faced cultural barriers that inhibited their effectiveness.
One of those barriers was an ignorance of how to work with bureaucracies. Tribal society is organized on kinship and clan basis, a structure that Aboriginal leaders claim doesn’t translate easily into governmental entities—like ATSIC—that are designed on a Western construct.
Exacerbating that challenge were the regional elections, which often saw Aboriginal elders selected based on seniority, even though it was more middle-aged Aboriginals—many of them professionals—who had a greater understanding of Western politics.
"There were some [Aboriginals] on ATSIC Regional Councils… who were only able to write their name, and had very minimal knowledge of English," said Huggins. "So in terms of handling big governmental structures—that’s not going to be easy for them."
Scott said that ATSIC was made the "whipping boy" of the Australian government, which could blame all problems related to Aboriginal affairs on the organization. After 200 years of oppression, and decades spent forcibly detained on governmental reserves, Aboriginals deserved more than 20 years to understand the mechanics of working within the Australian government, he said.
Others Aboriginals send a different message. Fiona Foley, a prominent Australian artist, said ATSIC was "doomed from the start," and that Aboriginals must now enter mainstream politics to magnify their voice.
"We need to look elsewhere to see what political structures are in place, and try to agitate for [Aboriginal causes] there," she said in a phone interview from New York City, where she is currently working.
Huggins and Scott argue that even if ATSIC wasn’t perfect, its greatest attribute was to give Aboriginals a political voice. Much like Affirmative Action in the United States, it helped to "level the playing field," Scott said.
But all may not be lost for elected Aboriginal representation in the Australian government. A June 1 statement released by Australia’s opposition Labor Party said that while they support the abolition of ATSIC, they will send the issue to a Senate committee for review in the coming legislative session, in hopes of determining another way to encourage distinct Aboriginal representation.
Across the aisle, Howard’s Liberal Party plans to appoint a 10-person Aboriginal council to advise the government on Aboriginal issues. (Scott said that membership on this handpicked council, whose powers would be minimal, would be a "death wish" for any Aboriginal.) Parliamentary elections tilted for this October may determine which party’s plan comes to fruition.
Meanwhile, Huggins and other Aboriginal leaders will meet in Adelaide from June 10 to June 16 to discuss further plans for re-working Aboriginal representation, in hopes that some kind of future elected body could be in the cards. Huggins believes that such measures as corporate governance training for elected Aboriginals would increase the effectiveness of a future body.
If there is one silver lining in the abolition of ATSIC, Huggins and Scott say it is this: that the Australian government will now be held entirely accountable for making sure Aboriginal affairs and services are dealt with properly.
"It would be nice if a government department was actually held accountable for helping people," Scott said.
Jennifer Stellar contributed to this report.