Renewing the commitment to a fair go for all: Part 1

When I completed my five-year term as Australian Human Rights Commissioner last August, I received some twenty or thirty requests from the media for interviews about Australia’s human rights performance over my term and future human rights challenges. I now offer my assessment of Australia’s human rights performance over the past five years and of the human rights challenges we face over the next few.

My assessment must be based in large part on the experiences and impressions of my term as Human Rights Commissioner and on the law rather than on statistics alone. We seem to collect data regularly, even monthly, on every conceivable economic indicator but only irregularly and incompletely on social and civil indicators.

Without doubt the most outstanding improvement in human rights in Australia over the past five years has been in relation to the right to work. There is a human right to work, recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Australia has ratified. Work builds self esteem. It provides personal fulfilment. It enables an individual to participate in and contribute to society. It can lift workers and their families out of poverty. So the extension of the enjoyment of the right to work has to be seen as an important human rights achievement.

First and foremost, the extra jobs have provided higher income, and so less poverty, for those who otherwise would be dependent on social security. There is less income inequality between the lowest 20 per cent of income earners as a group and other income earners. Before we get too excited about this, however, we should note two less encouraging factors. First, the mean income of the top 20 per cent of income earners increased by more than that of the bottom 20 per cent. Second, the better relative performance of the poorest group reflects the improved employment situation. For those still out of work the income gap is unlikely to have improved significantly or at all.

For those in work, too, there are concerns about whether equality is increasing or decreasing. Between May 1994 and May 1999 (the latest figures available) average weekly ordinary-time earnings increased by 22.1 per cent for men and 21.3 per cent for women, placing men’s income further ahead of women’s income. During about the same period (June 1995 to June 2000) total company profits before tax almost doubled. Certainly the rich continue to get richer. Some of the poor are doing better than before but many of the poor continue to get poorer.

We are well placed to do something significant and permanent about poverty in this country. More people are enjoying their right to work than ever before. We must ensure that their work opportunities continue, that they have properly paid, secure and personally fulfilling employment, that their right to organise is not violated and that their workplaces are free from discrimination and harassment.

We must also continue policies and programs and develop new policies and programs that extend job opportunities to those still missing out. And we must tackle the equally important problem of ensuring that those who cannot work or cannot find work, especially single women with children and young people, are not sentenced to poverty for life as a permanent poor minority whose human rights are ignored and violated.

The right to work is the best news. The worst news continues to be Indigenous rights. Five years ago Indigenous Australians were by far the most disadvantaged of all Australians and their human rights were the most violated and the most seriously violated. That remains the case.

The basic facts of Indigenous disadvantage are well known – facts like:

• life expectancy 20 years less than other Australians
• infant mortality three times that of other Australians
• half the school completion rate
• more than twice the unemployment rate
• less than half the average household income
• poorer and more crowded housing
• more and worse poverty

and so on.

Indigenous adults are imprisoned at 15 times the non-Indigenous rate. Indigenous people make up abut 3 per cent of the national population but 19 per cent of all prisoners – 60 per cent of prisoners in the Northern Territory. The central recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was that Indigenous people be kept out of prison. But they are now imprisoned in numbers higher than ever before and they continue to die in prison in numbers in excess of those that forced the establishment of the Royal Commission in the first place.

There have been many developments in Indigenous rights over the past five years that have great historical significance. The most important is the inquiry into the "Stolen Generation". That inquiry was the most important undertaking of the Commission since its establishment in 1986. It brought to public attention a great national wrong that had never been acknowledged and addressed.

The inquiry’s report presented the evidence of laws passed by parliaments in all Australian states and territories, of policies set out in writing by ministers and administrators and of practices reported to political and bureaucratic superiors. It documented the historical record. It also presented the actual stories of people’s lives and experiences, in their own words. These accounts turned dry laws and policies into flesh and blood and, more than anything else, convinced today’s Australians, as they convinced us, that what had happened was a gross violation of human rights.

The report made important findings. It also made recommendations commensurate to the gross human rights violations it documented. Commendably, federal, state and territory governments accepted many of the recommendations that related to oral histories, counselling services and reunions, although implementation has been slow and patchy. In addition, all state and territory governments except the Northern Territory accepted the recommendation for a formal apology and joined with most opposition parties in their parliaments to pass formal motions of apology and sorrow. A national apology by the national government remains essential and I am confident that it will be given in the near future – probably by the next Prime Minister, whichever party he or she comes from. In the meantime, hundreds of cases will continue to work their way through the courts, at great public cost and little public benefit, because another of the inquiry’s recommendations, for a cheap, quick, easy and effective process to assess and determine compensation claims, has also been rejected.

The second most significant development in Indigenous rights has been native title. The High Court’s Mabo decision in 1992 accorded Indigenous people for the first time legal recognition of the continuation of their customary law after British colonisation of Australia. The later Wik decision clarified the Mabo principles in relation to pastoral leases.

The present federal government opposed native title when in opposition and has acted to curtail it while in government. In an atmosphere of crisis following the Wik decision, an atmosphere generated by the federal government itself through an inaccurate and emotional media campaign, the native title legislation was amended to remove important rights of traditional owners.

The present federal government has emphasised a basic-needs approach to Indigenous affairs. It has said that it rejects symbolic gestures and that it gives priority to health, education, housing and employment. It has reduced the role of Indigenous organisations in service delivery and rejected the language and policy of self determination. There are no statistics yet available to see whether these new policies are working and indeed we should not expect instant results. Too often policies and priorities are changed before they have a chance to work because governments demand quick fixes where none exist and so do not persist when persistence is required. But I fear that these new policies will not work.

Experience over the past thirty years demonstrates that services for Indigenous people have the best chance of succeeding when they are designed and delivered by Indigenous people themselves. Noel Pearson has spoken many times this year about the need to free Indigenous people from welfare dependency and for them to take responsibility for their own people and communities. The government has warmly applauded Mr Pearson’s analysis and comments and says that they are consistent with its policies and priorities. The government's changes to Indigenous programs and services may be attacking welfare dependency but it is doing so by removing support and leaving people high and dry. And the changes to service delivery are moving in precisely the opposite direction to that Mr Pearson recommends, away from Indigenous community responsibility, not towards it. They are removing responsibility and the means to exercise responsibility.

In this context we cannot be surprised that the reconciliation process, commenced ten years ago with such hope and with unanimous parliamentary support, is ending with hopes unfulfilled. Indeed I consider that relations between Indigenous Australians and the national government are back where they were 35 years ago, before the 1967 referendum. Thirty-five years of painful effort by governments of both sides of politics destroyed in just five.

The government’s dismal failure has only one good consequence but it is the critical one. That is the surge of genuine, deeply committed public support for reconciliation with, and justice for, Indigenous Australians. The bridge crossings throughout Australia, beginning in Sydney last May and culminating in Melbourne and Perth, demonstrate that in a public political way. Almost a million people walked for reconciliation in those bridge crossings, probably a record number participating in a political cause. But even more re-assuring for me is the commitment I have found among Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, businesses and local governments in country areas of Australia to develop new ways of working together for the benefit of all.

I do not doubt for a minute that we will be reconciled with each other, that there will be great improvements in the protection and fulfilment of human rights for Indigenous Australians and that we will be a far better nation for it. But that achievement will be won by the people of Australia. It will not be led by the present government. The challenge for governments now, perhaps the most we can expect of them, is not to obstruct the process, not to get in the way.