Engagement will do more than a treaty for indigenous health

We are more likely to achieve treaty like outcomes that will benefit Indigenous health through this pragmatic process, than we are to win a theoretical debate about the relevance of treaties to Indigenous health. In wrestling with this topic I returned to a paper given by Hal Wootten QC at an ATSIC NSW Policy Forum on 2 November 2001. Let me quote a cautionary paragraph from his typescript and its accompanying footnote.

There is no golden key, although people keep hoping they have found: one­ equal rights, self-determination, land rights, recognition, an apology, a treaty. Each of these things has played, or could play, a valuable role. They are steps in a journey but none is a golden key. Don't waste energy looking for the golden key, but seize those opportunities that now and then come along to give things a little nudge in the right direction.

And the footnote:

I am not opposed in principle to the idea of a treaty, which is one way in which an ultimate settlement or reconciliation between Aboriginals and those who have taken over their country might be expressed. However its time would come only after an appropriately representative Aboriginal political structure had developed to be party to such a treaty, and when there was some consensus developed which it was desirable to record in a formal, binding way.

By all means think about a treaty, but the devotion of large amounts of limited funds and energy to it while acute problems of alcohol abuse, family violence and economic dependence are not effectively addressed seems equivalent to fiddling while Rome burns.