Aussie Forces Get The Nod ...
Peter Garrett Sings A Paternalist Tune on La Perouse
Hundreds of people rallied on June 21 to protest against the racist "Intervention" into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. But one year into the Intervention, the ALP government is threatening to introduce NT type measures to Sydney's Aboriginal communities. This was flagged by Rudd's Environment Minister, Peter Garrett on May 26. Garrett stated that: "If it's clear there are some particular strategies that have worked effectively (in the NT) then there's absolutely no reason why they shouldn't be considered in La Pa (La Perouse) and other communities like that as well." (The Daily Telegraph, May 27)
Garrett's lurch to extend the Intervention to Sydney urban communities followed days of sensationalist "exposes" in The Australian newspaper about alleged child abuse and child neglect within the La Perouse community. The newspapers owned by the mega-rich Murdoch family, like The Australian, have been, alongside conservative academics like Keith Windschuttle, spearheading the charge to push Aboriginal people under ever more paternalist policies. They have been assisted by a tiny layer of right-wing Aboriginal "leaders" like Noel Pearson. Pearson's articles are endlessly featured in The Australian while Murdoch's editors deny anti-racist Aboriginal activists any coverage of their views.
The basis of the Intervention is pure racism: essentially a disgusting inference that black people are incapable of looking after their own children without white man's hard prodding and arrogant supervision. Such total lies are "justified" by selectively focusing on social problems within Aboriginal communities when, in fact, these problems exist within communities of all different colours of people inside capitalist White Australia's sick and often violent society. But the ruling classes do not want to acknowledge what happens in the stuffy compounds behind their white picket fences. No, they only want to brand this country's first peoples as inferior and to further strip them of any human dignity.
The formal extension of the Intervention to Sydney Aboriginal communities would add another layer of oppression to its residents. Aboriginal people living in these areas feel like they have been already copping an Intervention for decades. Communities like La Perouse and Redfern are ground down by daily racist police violence. Young black people are regularly stopped and strip searched by police. Quoting Aboriginal activist Lyall Munro, the South Sydney Herald (February 2008) revealed that young Aboriginal women are strip searched even by male white cops. Inevitably, the pain and anguish of having ones sisters, brothers, parents and children humiliated, unfairly imprisoned, bashed - and most horrifically all too often killed - by the authorities causes inevitable social problems. These state-created problems are used as an excuse to ever more heavily stomp on the communities. Residents will face further pauperization and humiliation through the Intervention's welfare restrictions. And they will be further demoralized by an Intervention whose very foundation is the insulting notion that Aboriginal people are violent, uncaring and most unlike other Australian parents.
The Potential for United Working Class
& Aboriginal Struggle Against Racist Laws
The nationwide June 21 protests against the Intervention saw speakers from NT Aboriginal communities express the suffering caused by the Intervention. They explained how welfare restrictions have forced some people in remote communities to travel hours ... just to get food! People are devastated by the more open discrimination they are suffering; demoralized at being made to return to the old days of rations. Those participating in the Sydney action on June 21 not only carried signs opposing the Intervention but marched with placards denouncing the state compensation that was hideously given to the racist policeman who killed Palm Island Aboriginal man Mulrunji Doomadgee in 2004.
It is notable too that the June 21st rally featured slogans that were more unequivocal in their opposition to the Intervention than the slogans that the February 12th Canberra convergence was called on. That earlier rally which was influenced by Rudd's impending "Apology" called for an "Immediate Review of NT Intervention." But a "Review" conducted under the auspices of the capitalist state, whether administered by a Labor or Coalition government, could never be trusted to correct a racist injustice. Today, the Rudd government is indeed conducting a "Review" into the NT intervention. But inevitably it has carefully weighted membership of the Review Board to ensure that the paternalist agenda wins out. Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin selected as Chair of the Review Board, Peter Yu, a Noel Pearson-like figure. Even a year before Howard sent in the troops and Federal Police to the NT, Yu was himself calling for the army to be sent into Aboriginal communities: "Just like we've done in Solomon Islands, just like we've done in East Timor, just like we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq" (The Australian, 17 May 2006).
So it is positive development that rather than calling for a "review" the June 21 anti-Intervention protests demanded "Repeal all 'NT Intervention' legislation." In Sydney, June 21 was organised by the Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC) which includes a section of Aboriginal activists, some white small-l liberal groups like ANTAR, a few major trade unions and certain leftwing groups including Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative (the Solidarity group broke off to form a new coalition.) One of the main slogans that the demonstration was called under was: "Sign and Implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples." However, this particular slogan fosters illusions that the United Nations could be a vehicle to bring justice to those oppressed in this country. The UN is itself dominated (with certain exceptions) by the leaders of world capitalism and therefore kowtows to the needs of that racist system. Thus conventions voted by it are often not worth the paper they are written on. The colonial invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, the robbers of East Timor's oil, the torturers of Guantanamo Bay and the perpetrators of the biggest war crime of all, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have all signed many wonderfully humane-sounding UN conventions.
To be sure, Australia's refusal to sign (alongside only three other countries: the U.S., Canada and New Zealand) the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Canberra's suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) can be used to explain how openly racist the Australian government is. But the signing of this UN Declaration and the restoration of the RDA cannot provide much of an opening to win concessions because of the nature of the power that is interpreting these conventions. The power that adjudicates what constitutes racial discrimination in this country is the racist Australian capitalist state itself. It is notable for example that the first person charged under Western Australia's race hate laws (supposedly brought in to deal with white supremacist groups) was a 15 year-old Aboriginal girl who apparently responded to racist baiting by a white adult. Meanwhile, the UN that interprets international conventions is dominated by a bunch of George Bushes, Alexander Downers and Kevin Rudds. Such people will readily claim adherence to conventions when they think that they can use such declarations as a propaganda weapon against
non-capitalist countries like Cuba and China or as a prelude to intervene against those "Third World" countries that dare to question their orders.
The extent to which it is understood that real justice will not come through the Australian upper class's own legal system or through the UN will be the extent to which the racist movement can progress on to those methods that can actually have a serious impact: the methods of social struggle against the racist ruling class. That means most importantly the methods of the class struggle. It is possible to mobilise the power of the organised workers movement in support of struggles for Aboriginal rights because in the end the extreme attacks against Aboriginal peoples are aimed also at subjugating working class and poor people of all colours. Already the Rudd regime has announced a witchhunting scheme to extend the racist welfare restrictions introduced in the NT to "bad parents" (no doubt they will be poor
It is important that one of the featured speakers at the June 21 Sydney rally was the state secretary of the NSW Fire Brigade Employees Unions. Firemen, rail workers and airline employees who are all battling just to get wage increases that cover rising prices, tenants being driven to the edge of bankruptcy by greedy landlords jacking up rents and low paid workers bullied by bosses all have reason to oppose the ruling elite, the very same elite that is trodding on Aboriginal people. Let's build militant struggles to win gains for working class and oppressed people! The increasing number of people who are becoming active over the need for public housing must especially also demand the building of quality public housing and services without strings attached for Aboriginal communities. And in the course of struggles to defend their own living standards, class conscious workers must also specifically demand an end to the pauperising, discriminatory welfare restrictions that target Aboriginal people. As a placard carried by Trotskyist Platform (TP) supporters who had joined, in solidarity, the June 21st Sydney rally read: "Racist welfare restrictions will later target all the poor. For united working class and black struggle against racist laws!" We understand that by joining together in struggle with strong Aboriginal anti-racists, working class activists will learn much that is indispensable for future battles for workers rights.
Get The Troops And Cops out of The NT And All Other Aboriginal Communities!
The June 21 rallies were angry. This reflected the determined mood of those opposed to the Intervention. But the racist enemy is also determined. Following the demonstrations, the Murdoch papers ran a series of denunciations of the protests. Fortunately, this media offensive had a crippling weakness. You see, the Murdoch press tried to make out that the anti-Intervention protests were irrelevant. But if that were the case why then were Murdoch's News Limited papers bothering to go to such great lengths to oppose the demonstrations? Indeed, Murdoch's flagship paper,
The Australian, thought the demonstrations so "irrelevant" that they devoted their subsequent issue's Editorial (June 24) to a polemic against the rallies.
This Australian Editorial in particular singled out for special attack a TP placard (although they, strangely enough, got the source of the placard wrong) which in part read: "Cops and troops get out of NT and all other black communities!" The Australian described the placard as an example of the "naivety of many present" [at the rally]. Why? Because, according to the Editorial, "... more police is definitely part of the answer, not the problem." Well, while more cops make Murdoch's well-paid propagandists feel more secure, they are a threat to most Aboriginal people. The fact remains that the racist Australian state has been and, indeed, still is today the biggest perpetrator of violence against black women and children. In the last 27 years over 500 indigenous people have died in state custody, many of whom were simply murdered by racist cops and prison guards.
It is telling then that in attacking this placard The Australian decided, presumably for the benefit of its readers, to edit out the first sentence of the placard, the part that rhetorically asked "How many more racist killings in state custody?" Is that because they realized that some of their readers were worried about this issue? Because they realized that some readers knew about what happened to Mulrunji Doomadgee in Palm Island and TJ Hickey in Redfern? You bet it is! That is why Murdoch's scribes are so determined to censor any argument connecting the Intervention with the likelihood of greater police violence. So here again below in a photo from the June 21 rally in Sydney is that placard which The Australian did not want its readers to see in full: "How many more racist killings in state custody? Cops and troops get out of NT and all other black communities!"
Marchers gathered at the June 21 rally.
More police and more laws banning alcohol consumption (only in black communities of course) form a deadly combination that the Intervention has concocted. More police with more pretexts to arrest Aboriginal people. Most of the black people who have died in state custody in Australia were people arrested for very minor offences - offences that affluent white people (like the ones sitting in The Australian's editorial desk) rarely if ever get arrested for. Mulrunji was killed by a policeman in Palm Island in November 2004 after being targeted by cops for simply singing a song while walking along the street drunk. What will happen to those Aboriginal people who are trying to survive under the shadow of the Intervention? Already on April 4 and 5 well over 100 Aboriginal people were arrested in an apartheid-style police "special operation" in Alice Springs under the pretext of "consuming alcohol" or "loitering." Aboriginal people in the NT have described the police behaving like lawless cowboys.
Many of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers deployed in the NT are fresh from action in countries like East Timor and the Solomon Islands. This is particularly dangerous. In those countries the AFP and Australian troops bully the local populations with a mixture of patronizing arrogance and sheer racism. Canberra carries out versions of the NT "Intervention" into these Asia-Pacific countries where under the cover of "imposing good governance" Australian imperialism is tightening its grip on these nations' resource wealth. Whether it's the AFP or the state government administered police forces, police in a capitalist country like Australia are selected, trained and promoted through the ranks for the very purpose of protecting an unfair social order - an order where the have nots are held down at the bottom in the interests of the rich, big property owning classes. In daily performing this subjugating role, the Australian police forces are necessarily a breeding ground for prejudiced attitudes towards the most deprived layers of society. And this extreme bigotry of Australian police "culture is especially vicious when it is unleashed against the people who are most subjugated in capitalist Australia, that is its Aboriginal people.
Breaking Out from Faith in The ALP
After eleven and a half years of unashamed right-wing racism and union busting under the Coalition many had false hopes that the ALP would bring serious change. At a rally in Redfern organised by the ARC just prior to the federal election, the demonstration was steered by its organisers into an elect-the- ALP agenda. But even before the ALP's election, it had in Opposition made clear that it was going to maintain the Conservative's paternalist agenda albeit with a few politically correct sops. And from its election until now, the Rudd government has been showing that it is an enemy of the fight for Aboriginal rights.
To be sure, Rudd's "Apology" to the Stolen Generations did temporarily sway many. It is an indication of how extreme the subjugation of Aboriginal people in this country is that, even a token apology that came with a refusal to provide any compensation was seen by some Aboriginal people as a victory. Many non-indigenous people saw it as a step forward. But the truth is that the "Apology," by carefully portraying the horrific atrocities as ones of the past, by disregarding that some of the perpetrators of these atrocities are still alive today and by avoiding any mention of all the crimes that indeed continue until today, is meant to whitewash and provide an alibi for the racist subjugation of Aboriginal people that is going on right now in the present. Indicative of this reality was the seizing of an Aboriginal baby by DOCS from the child's family as they gathered at the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra in the lead up to the "Apology." And the very day after the "Apology," people rallied in Redfern still seeking justice for 17 year-old Aboriginal boy TJ Hickey who was killed by racist police in 2004. Four years on from TJ's murder, none of the cops involved are any closer to being brought to any kind of justice and the Hickey family have faced consistent police harassment ever since.
Now, Rudd's schemes to extend the Intervention to Queensland and beyond are proving to some that he is indeed a "little Johnny" [Howard]. At the June 21 protest many rightly attacked the ALP government. However, some speakers also continued to voice hopes that the Labor government could still become something significantly different to the previous Liberal/National Coalition. In particular there were illusions expressed in the "Labor Left." But while not as consciously paternalist as the Labor Right, the Labor Left is thoroughly wedded to the Right. What's more it is committed to governing the capitalist order, the system that is the source of racist policies. To consider this last point further it is worth dwelling here on the fact that it is none other than Peter Garrett who has fronted up for the government's push to extend the Intervention to Sydney urban communities. While Garrett is not a leftist, he did acquire through his Midnight Oils songs a reputation as an anti-racist. But now as a minister, Garret cannot but be an administrator of racist measures because those are the policies that are needed by the powerful mining, bank, factory, media/communication and pastoral owners whom the government serves.
The capitalist class needs racism to use as its tool to divide the masses who they exploit. This ruling class sees it as very much in its interests to promote paternalism. For starters, by sidelining Aboriginal representatives from community administration and by inserting more cops into the NT with wider arrest powers, the rulers are increasing their ability to squash any potential Aboriginal resistance to predatory corporations. Increasing their ability to stop resistance, for example, to mine owners imposing "deals" on communities without genuine agreement or real compensation. But this is only part of the elite's motivation for pushing paternalism, as shown by the fact that they are now pushing the Intervention in non-mineral rich areas like urban Sydney.
A major part of Australian capitalism's renewed paternalist drive is related to its foreign policy ambitions. As well as being part of the imperialist marauding in Afghanistan and continuing to have a troop presence in Iraq, Canberra has taken over the Solomon Islands, occupies East Timor, has SAS troops in the Southern Philippines and has in the last few years inserted cops or troops into PNG and Tonga. Rudd now speaks aggressively of Australia becoming more active as a "middle power." But this agenda has a serious weakness. Many people in this country feel queasy about whether Australia as it is currently constituted has the right to intervene abroad when they know of this country's crime against Aboriginal people. Many a foreign leader too, from Malaysia's former leader Mahathir to Zimbabwe's Mugabe, have been able to show up Canberra's hypocritical rhetoric about "human rights" by pointing to this country's record. Australia's rulers see the dissemination of paternalist ideas as a way to fix these problems. The Murdochs, the right-wing think tanks, the Rudds and Nelsons, the high-level bureaucrats all hope that such ideas will make people at home and abroad think that while the Australian establishment may have committed great crimes against Aboriginal people, they were often done with "good intentions" and what's more done because there was and is a need to oversee a people not capable of administering themselves. This is all rubbish and lies. But such rubbish is what the ruling class feeds to the Australian masses thinking this will make them more proud of this country as it is currently structured - i.e. more proud of capitalist Australia - and thus more willing to support its imperialist interventions abroad.
To politically impregnate the people in this way, Rudd and Macklin are more flexible, and thus more devious, than Howard and Brough. The latter hopeless right-wingers only knew one way, while the ALP leaders can mix openly racist paternalism with the liberal-sounding "Apology." But in many ways, both the Apology and the paternalism are different methods for the ruling class to achieve the same goal. The "Apology" is meant to make people feel better about Australian society by whitewashing the racist crimes as things of the past that the nation has now moved on from, while the paternalism whitewashes these crimes as unfortunate accidents that happened in the quest to supposedly save an inferior people from themselves.
So a good part of the capitalist rulers "new," "non-ideological" approach to Aboriginal affairs is about ideology. This is despite the mainstream media's attempts to portray opponents of the Intervention as being driven solely by "romantic notions" and "culture wars" unlike them who are supposedly concerned about the real world interests of the communities. This is of course thoroughly false. If those inhabiting the privileged world of the establishment media were truly interested in the economic wellbeing of Aboriginal people then they would be making a stink about governments refusal to pay back the Stolen Wages of Aboriginal workers. Or they would be exposing the state's failure to provide real jobs in disadvantaged communities by for example funding public sector employment positions to do badly needed postal and utility services work. Or the media would be condemning the Rudd government's outrageous rejection of compensation for the Stolen Generation.
The truth is that ideology is a crucial weapon that both sides in the class struggle - the exploiters trying to maintain their unjust systems and the oppressed and their allies fighting for liberation - wield against their enemy. The Australian capitalist class, led by the Murdochs and the rest, is promoting paternalism because it sees this ideology as helpful to its predatory ambitions. They hope a population that is taught to reject the "black armband" view of Australia's political system will be less motivated to campaign against overseas military deployments and less driven to resist union busting at home. But for exactly the equal and opposite reasons that paternalism is good for the exploiters it is bad for the working class. That is why every pro-working class activist must struggle to mobilize the union movement behind the campaigns to oppose the Intervention. The sooner that activists understand that political forces administering the capitalist order, including ALP governments, are never going to come to their aid in the fight against racism and subjugation, the sooner will existing union sympathy for the anti-paternalist struggle be turned into serious industrial action in support of Aboriginal rights. ♦
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