Ayers Rock: closing the climb

The Rock is in a National Park and should therefore belong to all the people of Australia. By enabling a small minority to have veto rights over the climb, the rights of all Australians are infringed. Uluru is a World Heritage Site. Visitors from all over the world are also denied their rights.

The Parks Australia Fact Sheet on World Heritage is instructive. It says that the listing "confirms the validity of Tjukurpa". Validity? This highlights a serious problem. We are apparently now officially no longer able to distinguish between myth and reality. All societies have their traditional creation myths. None has any scientific validity. They are not "valid". Other creation myths are not elevated to such official status.

By giving official sanction to Aboriginal religious and superstitious beliefs, we are violating basic tenets of reason, rationality and secularism. It is not a question of imposing "western values" in their stead. Being able to distinguish fact from fiction is an essential aspiration, on which all we all depend, and on which all human progress relies. Despite what relativists may claim, scientific knowledge is universal, not culturally specific.

Government Aboriginal policy in Australia has failed over many decades, including at Uluru. Aboriginal communities suffer significant economic and social disadvantages, such that we still seek to "close the gap". Why is the issue so intractable?

Aboriginal culture is superbly adapted to survival in a harsh and dry environment. Cultural knowledge, stored in songlines and verbally transmitted, enabled success in the constant daily quest to provide sufficient food and water to stay alive. What happens to this traditional culture when food and water are provided, without the traditional effort required? The result is a reassertion of traditional beliefs. The cultural factors that may contribute to the perpetuation of disadvantage in Aboriginal communities are almost never discussed.

The definitive exposé of the situation is given in The Dystopia in the Desert: TheSilent Culture of Australia's remotest Aboriginal Communities, by Tadhgh Purtill. There exists a dystopian tripartite standoff between three entities: the Aboriginal communities, the agencies that service them, and the government. Each has their own mutually contradictory agenda, self-interest, and worldview: their own separate "truth".

A typical illustration of how this plays out is in reference to the term "empowerment". All agree it is a good thing. The government assumes it means developing capacity within the communities for economic and social advancement. After this is achieved, "the gap" will be closed, and the need for a high level of welfare support perhaps reduced. The Aboriginal communities tend to see welfare as an entitlement, and assume that their "empowerment" means their increased ability to practise their traditional culture without the necessity to abide by whitefella requirements. The service regime is in the middle, mostly well-meaning, but forced into expedience by often irresolvable dilemmas and is subject to moral hazard.

It is a difficult, intractable, and there are no easy solutions. But one thing Purtill is clear about: the denial, the turning of blind eyes to real issues, and the acceptance of mutually contradictory "truths" are the major contributors to the continuation of the "dystopia". A key aspect is the traditional resort to superstitious explanations, which inhibit proper accountability. A society thoroughly wedded to ancient superstition cannot readily adapt to the requirements of modernity.

This is likely the reason that welfare and educational outcomes under the missionaries were often much better. The missionaries attempted to replace one set of fictitious myths with another set of fictitious myths, but at least they probably tried to discourage the more counterproductive superstitions. Now we do not. We encourage them.

The systemic failure of government Aboriginal policy is now epitomised by the decision to accede to the request to close the Rock to access. The ban will be seen as a legitimate "empowerment" of the local Anangu. But the dystopian issues are relevant. The Anangu at Uluru live in Mutitjulu.

It was the alleged sexual abuse of children in Mutitjulu that led to the Northern Territory Intervention by John Howard in 2007. The police and army were sent in. The operation cost $587 million. The ABC's Four Corners team at the time found significant societal dysfunction at Mutitjulu, but no one was ever charged. Ten years afterwards, the community said that the intervention had left the men feeling hurt and that nothing much had changed.

Mutitjulu is home to about 300 people and is situated a few kilometres east of the Rock. Most visitors to Uluru would not know is it there. It is sign-posted but not listed on tourist maps. A permit is required to visit. It is in the name of these people that climbing the Rock is being prohibited. The Rock can be viewed from the ground and photographed, but the climb is the only way the Rock can actually be accessed.