Ruddock's changes to ATSIC further disempower Indigneous Australians

Indigenous policy over the past 30 years has been a crazy quilt of varying and inconsistent laws, failed attempts at Indigenous "consultative" bodies and mismatched administrations divided between the bureaucracies of Federal, State and Territory governments.

It was hoped the overwhelming "yes" vote in the 1967 referendum would signal a new approach by federal governments to overcome the endemic social problems in Aboriginal communities left in the wake of crude acts of governments to dispossess Aboriginal people of their land, culture and children.

The recent decision by the current Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Philip Ruddock, regarding ATSIC has a sense of deja vu about it.

It takes us back to a time 30 years ago when the first clumsy steps were taken towards setting up an elected national Indigenous consultative structure.

Have we have learned anything from the failure of the two national consultative bodies - the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC) and the National Aboriginal Congress (NAC) - or are we bound to repeat history?

ATSIC's role combined consultation, advocacy and policy development, monitoring of other government departments' performance and administration of some of the programs in the Indigenous affairs budget - such as CDEP (the Work for the Dole scheme), community housing and infrastructure and later areas like native title.

All other services concerned with improving the lot of Indigenous people, especially in the areas of education, health, domestic violence and high rates of incarceration remain with their various federal departments.

The problem, as I see it, is that government administrators, mission managers and now bureaucrats have continued to be the dominant players in the lives of Indigenous Australians and the problems in Indigenous communities are largely the result of failed federal policy.

ATSIC was a flawed model from the very start. First, it was created as an agency of government and second, it has never enjoy cross-party support - even before it was established.

Our current Prime Minister argued rabidly against the creation of ATSIC in 1989 saying, "…that if the government wants to divide Australian against Australian, if it wants to create a black nation within the Australian nation, it should go ahead with its ATSIC legislation and its treaty. In the process, it will be doing a monumental disservice to the Australian community".

The heavily amended legislation ensured - and time has shown - the creation of ATSIC has done nothing of the sort.

There are many still in public life today who rail against Indigenous Australians exercising their right to have a say in their lives in any way.

Philip Ruddock's recent decision is a case in point and he has been accompanied most vociferously by the likes of Peter Howson, who continue to espouse that service delivery based on need for one racial group in this country is tantamount to "separatism".

It is this prevailing attitude that has made Indigenous Australians tax-eaters rather than tax-makers thereby compounding the fact that organisations like ATSIC and the newly proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services Agency, will forever delegate responsibility for Indigenous lives to faceless white bureaucrats rather than Indigenous people themselves.

The problems within Indigenous communities are not incurable and nor can they be achieved by well-meaning but small economic initiatives alone.

First, there is an urgent need to develop a uniform, consistent and accurate national database on Indigenous demography. I have repeatedly called upon the Howard government to undertake this important measure so that the effectiveness of programs and services delivered and expenditure can be measured.

Second, currently there are no national benchmarks and standards to address Indigenous disadvantage. Without these, how is it possible to measure government performance, measure Indigenous community self-sufficiency and achievement, and provide some level of confidence to the broader community that their taxpayer dollars are getting results?

Philip Ruddock's decision will lead to an increasing financial dependence by black people upon white society for three main reasons.

First, he has excluded Indigenous people from the decision-making processes and no thought has been given to the compounding effect of diminishing the power of ATSIC upon Indigenous people and likewise, their service delivery organisations.

Second, his government lacks vision and he has been unable to enunciate clearly defined goals and ways of reaching them.

Third, we Indigenous people do not suffer from a lack of policy but rather a lack of implementation and unless the Howard government is prepared to make some serious financial commitments in this year's budget, then it is unlikely that anything will be cured.

Finally, governments need to be reminded that every time history repeats itself, the price goes up and the cost to taxpayers of the government's mismanagement of Indigenous Affairs is rising daily.