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Howard on reconciliation: not humble pie but hubris

By Carol Johnson - posted Tuesday, 16 October 2007


Howard’s speech (PDF 252KB) to the Sydney Institute on October 11 has been hailed as marking a major shift in his thinking by many commentators. So, The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan claimed that “the Prime Minister has overturned more than a decade of opposition to reconciliation involving symbolism, reviving the idea of a constitutional recognition of the achievements and the place of Indigenous people in Australia”. However, as other journalists and commentators in The Australian, such as Paul Kelly and Noel Pearson, have since acknowledged, there are links with previous statements by the Prime Minister.

Indeed, this is not a speech in which Howard is being penitently humble, but a speech which reflects his fundamental hubris. Howard argues that the time is right for a referendum that formally recognises Indigenous Australians because both key Aboriginal leaders and the Australian people have moved closer to his own position.

Howard claims there is now broad acceptance of his own rejection of black armband, separatist, group rights-based approaches and of saying “sorry” to the stolen generations, in favour of a Howard-like agenda that emphasises individual responsibility and integration into mainstream Australia. (In the process Howard reaffirms his own, highly contestable, interpretation of the Keating government’s position on Indigenous issues).

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Far from containing an admission that his earlier approach was wrong, Howard’s speech reaffirms his longstanding positions. In a subsequent press conference Howard implied that he has won the Culture Wars:

… People say to me, why didn't you intervene like this five years ago, 10 years ago? The public would never have accepted it because we were then still as a nation toying with the old notions of treaties and the concept almost of separate development; that somehow or other you had a split citizenship within one nation. Now I have never believed in that. I used a phrase last night I first used 19 years ago in a document called Future Directions. I used the phrase; One Australia and I have always believed in One Australia.

Similarly, Howard states that the new Preamble statement on reconciliation would “formally recognise Indigenous Australians in our Constitution - their history as the first inhabitants of our country, their unique heritage of culture and languages, and their special (though not separate) place within a reconciled, indivisible nation”.

However, how will this be different from Howard’s 1999 Draft Preamble which acknowledged that: “Since time immemorial our land has been inhabited by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are honoured for their ancient and continuing cultures”?

Significantly, given land rights issues, Howard didn’t mention the final 1999 Preamble’s recognition of the Indigenous people’s “deep kinship with their lands”. Furthermore, Labor preferred recognising that Indigenous Australians were “the original occupants and custodians of our land”.

Nor is Howard’s support for symbolism in the reconciliation process new. Howard acknowledged “the need to blend the symbolic with the practical and to mix rights and responsibilities” in his address at the National Reconciliation Planning Workshop in 2005.

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Furthermore, there is an obvious reason why Howard wants such reconciliation statements to stay merely symbolic (and therefore confined to the Preamble). Howard wants to ensure that no recognition of “the special place of Indigenous people in … the history of this country” entrenches “special rights” or “special entitlements” or involves “a revival of the old paradigms of treaties and formal apologies”.

In other words, Howard’s position also still reflects his longstanding critique of so-called “special interests” that he used so effectively to defeat the Keating government and which I have previously analysed at length in the first edition of my book, Governing Change: From Keating to Howard. Howard may claim that only a Liberal PM can unite both conservatives and the left to support a new Preamble, but it is very much on his own terms.

So, it is hard to see precisely where Howard has shifted fundamentally in the Sydney Institute speech. He implies regret that discussion between the government and Indigenous leaders had virtually broken down at some stages, but he made a similar acknowledgement in his 2005 speech (although not so explicitly sharing the blame for the breakdown). He does say he will negotiate with Aboriginal leaders regarding the new Preamble, which he largely neglected to do in 1999. Howard admits that “the challenge I have faced around Indigenous identity politics is in part an artefact of who I am and the time in which I grew up” but doesn’t specify how that admission is related to any change in his position.

While Howard may claim that “the crisis of Indigenous social identity and cultural disintegration requires a stronger affirmation of Indigenous identity and culture as a source of dignity, self-esteem and pride”, he makes no suggestion as to how government could facilitate this other than via the Preamble.

As I point out in the 2007 edition of my book, Governing Change: From Keating to Howard, federal government policy actively encourages a more Liberal, entrepreneurial, property-owning concepton of Aboriginal identity. Will Howard now reconsider some of his government’s policy including, as the recent intervention in the Northern Territory revealed, undermining traditional Aboriginal identities based on communal land ownership and custodianship? It seems unlikely given his statement that, while “some will no doubt want to portray my remarks tonight as a form of Damascus Road conversion. In reality they are little more than an affirmation of well-worn liberal conservative ideas.”

In short, Howard seems to be repackaging, rather than substantially reforming, his ideas on reconciliation. Presumably, Howard is attempting to appeal to the wet, small “l” liberal voters he fears losing to Kevin Rudd and, more immediately in his own electorate, to Maxine McKew. At the same time, his words reassure “mainstream” Australians who reject feelings of guilt or apologies.

Furthermore, Howard may assume that voters who are more right wing on issues of race will still stick with him anyway because they’ll prefer him to Kevin Rudd - just as Labor has tended to assume that the preferences of the left will eventually flow back to the ALP. Meanwhile Howard can depict himself as a compassionate “big idea” politician with a vision for the future.

Howard may also be attempting to use Rudd’s “me-too” strategy to his advantage. Howard could have rightly assumed that Labor would respond to this proposal immediately with bi-partisan support for a well-worded preamble but without pointing out that Howard’s current position is not new and contains major limitations. Labor’s response then feeds into Howard’s line that changing public opinion now makes him a consensus, not divisive, politician who can bring both the left and the right together to support the Reconciliation Referendum.

Later, Howard has the option of attempting to wedge Labor on the actual wording of the Preamble. Labor is particularly vulnerable to being wedged because ten years of electoral caution have contributed to Howard’s framing of issues on race being reinforced, rather than contested, among some of Labor’s traditional voters.

Either way this scenario suggests, as I pointed out in an earlier On Line Opinion piece that Rudd has failed to recognise that Howard’s identity politics is more than just a distraction or masking device. Rather, identity politics is an integral part of Howard’s broader election strategy, along with economic and security issues. As I’ve argued elsewhere, Howard’s strategy has never just been about fear or marginalising minorities (although that has certainly been one feature) but also about electorally mobilising a mainstream Australian identity that can feel good about itself.

Now Howard’s hubris has led him to believe he can resolve: “the anguish so many Australians feel about the state of Indigenous Australia and the deep yearning in the national psyche for a more positive and unifying approach to reconciliation". However, in 2007 Howard is in deep electoral trouble and his latest mobilisation of identity politics may well be too little too late.

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About the Author

Carol Johnson is a Professor in Politics at the University of Adelaide and has written extensively on Labor governments and also on politics and gender. She has a particular interest in the politics of emotion. She is the author of The Labor Legacy: Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke (Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1989) and Governing Change: From Keating to Howard (Network Books, Nedlands WA, 2007).

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