Vanstone's 'No Idea' Committee

The Government members believe therefore that the bill should be returned to the Parliament as soon as possible.

The Committee could, it if chose, continue its deliberations on service delivery and replacement options on the basis that any further legislative or administrative options thought necessary could be left to an incoming government.

So there you have it.

After 185 public submissions, 7 public hearings from Canberra to Broome to Thursday Island and hundreds of pages of evidence, here are 2 perfunctory letters that clearly show the Government’s intent and indicate the Latham-led Labor Party is content to throw in the towel in the battle on the future of Aboriginal Affairs.

It’s certain the Howard Government will reintroduce the ATSIC Amendment Bill when the Parliament reconvenes.

Amanda Vanstone’s re-appointment to the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio will ensure the Government will be pushing to have ATSIC gone by Christmas. She’ll be peddling her familiar line that preservation of the ATSIC Board is a waste of taxpayer’s money. Latham supports its abolition and Labor is just being bloody-minded. This ignores the reality that the Government’s pursuit of ATSIC’s demise has cost a lot more than ATSIC Commissioners could consume in the new life of this Government.

The Howard Government’s real agenda is to kill off any prospect of a High Court legal challenge on this shabby affair. That prospect only continues to exist while the ATSIC Board remains a legal entity. The discovery of documents in that process would be highly embarrassing to this Government and they know it.

Vanstone’s statements, and that of the Government Senators outlined above, also ignore the key policy differences between Liberal and Labor. Labor is committed to replacing ATSIC with an elected representative body. The Government is not. So what will Labor do now?

I understand this was the subject of earnest discussion when Latham called the Caucus together for its first meeting since the disastrous election result.

I am reliably informed that Latham agreed his Senate team should ignore Vanstone’s bluster and seek to have the ATSIC “kill bill” referred to a re-invigorated Select Committee. No decision has yet been made on when the committee would report back to the Senate but some suggest it is likely to be June next year just before the new Senate takes its place. Given their public statements the Democrats and the Greens would support the bill’s further referral to a Committee.

It has been a matter of significant disappointment to me to see certain ATSIC Commissioners give some public credence to Vanstone’s wish to have ATSIC gone by Christmas. They’d do well to keep insisting on their legal right to be there. In my view they should be asking how she can claim a mandate and yet rob them of theirs.

They and Labor might also have a close look at the submission presented to the Senate Committee by the outgoing Social Justice Commissioner Doctor Bill Jonas. It puts the lie to the claim made by the Government senators in their letter to the President of the Senate that the bill “does nothing more than abolish the ATSIC Board”.