Indigenous dreaming of a new era

I’m confident this time around that the voting public will be more cautious when casting their crucial vote as I believe they all know that they will not get another opportunity from a sympathetic government to elect a national representative body if they get it wrong again.

On an issues front you only need to look at recent newspaper articles to see what today’s major crisis is.

The West Australian (November 8) reported a senior police officer telling a coronial inquest into Aboriginal deaths that up to 25 planes a week with up to 90 cartons of alcohol on board had been flying into the remote community of Oombulgurri.

“We have had reports of planes landing and being unstable and tipping, you know, because of the weight, too much weight, and just being primarily alcohol on board,” Sgt Thompson told State Coroner Alastair Hope last month.

The Courier-Mail (September 20) had bold headlines of warring tribal clans (Wik Mungkin and Wik Ngathan tribes) fuelled by a boatload of "sly grog" turning on police in a riot involving up to 200 people at the Aboriginal community of Aurukun.

The article reported that sly groggers evaded police roadblocks by shipping a dinghy full of rum, beer and wine from nearby Weipa on Sunday, sparking a week of violence in the Cape York community.

Mostly communities want what other mainstream communities have and that is an adequate police presence to assist with law and order and for their people to access higher levels of education, employment, health and housing opportunities.

The Indigenous community members seek to have social parity with mainstream society which requires a long term financial commitment from government to “close the gap” on health and social disadvantage and on life expectancy - something that continues to be a blight on Australia’s international human rights record.

A recent report revealed that 90 per cent of the total Northern Territory prison population were of Indigenous descent; and there was an unacceptable and appalling over-representation of Indigenous youth and women in jails nationally.

Many Indigenous people feel they have run into a brick wall with their native title claims due to the incompetence of far too many inept Native Title Representative Bodies who favour some traditional owner groups over others and distribute their minimal resources accordingly.

So after the celebrations of the Labor party victory have subsided I suggest all Indigenous people of voting age seriously engage with one another in communities and enter into dialogue with government officials. They need to become part of the decision making process on the name, composition and terms of reference of the proposed national elected representative body.

But the most important thing I would like Indigenous people to think of when they go to cast their vote in an AEC-sanctioned secret ballot for a new national representative body is the famous old saying of George Santayana who once said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."