During his Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech , journalist John Pilger spoke of the need to break “the great Australian political silence ". He told his audience the nation was manipulated by a great power which spoke through an invisible government of propaganda that subdues and limits our political imagination and ensures we are always at war –against our own people and those seeking refuge.
Pilger referred to the NT in the near 6000 word provocative oration . He said his own real Australian education began at the end of the 1960s when Charlie Perkins and his mother, Hetti, took him to the “Aboriginal compound” at Jay Creek in the NT. “We had to smash down the gate to get in ,” he said ." The shock at what I saw is unforgettable . The poverty. The sickness . The despair . The quiet anger. I began to recognise and understand the Australian silence.”
He took Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to task for saying government did not have a clear idea of what was happening on the ground in Aboriginal Australia . "How much information does the prime minister need? How many ideas? How many reports? How many royal commissions? How many inquests? How many funerals? Is he not aware that Australia appears on an international ‘shame list’ for having failed to eradicate trachoma, a preventable disease of poverty that blinds Aboriginal children?” In August this year, the United Nations once again distinguished Australia with the kind of shaming once associated with South Africa.
We discriminated on the basis of race. The UN blew the whistle on the so-called “intervention”, which began with the Howard government smearing Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory with allegations of sex slavery and paedophile rings in “unthinkable numbers”, according to the Minister for Indigenous affairs . In May last year, official figures were released and barely reported. Out of 7433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, 39 had been referred to the authorities for suspected abuse. Of those, a maximum of four possible cases were identified. So much for the “unthinkable numbers”. Of course, child abuse did exist, in black Australia and white Australia.
The difference was that no soldiers invaded the North Shore ( of Sydney ) ; no white parents were swept aside; no white welfare had been “quarantined”. What the doctors found they already knew: that Aboriginal children were at risk - from the effects of extreme poverty and the denial of resources in one of the world’s richest countries. Billions of dollars had been spent – not on paving roads and building houses, but on a war of legal attrition waged against black communities.
Kevin Rudd had made a formal apology to the First Australians." He spoke fine words. For many Aboriginal people, who value healing, the apology was very important. However, the Sydney Morning Herald published a remarkably honest editorial. It described the apology as ‘a piece of political wreckage’ that ‘the Rudd government has moved quickly to clear away... in a way that responds to some of its supporters’ emotional needs’”. Since the apology, Aboriginal poverty had worsened . The promised housing programme –SIHIP-was a grim joke. No gap had even begun to be bridged. Instead, the federal government had threatened communities in the Northern Territory that if they did not hand over their precious freehold leases, they would be denied the basic services that white Australia took for granted.
Pilger said that in the 1970s, Aboriginal communities were granted comprehensive land rights in the Northern Territory, and John Howard set about clawing back these rights with" bribery and bullying ". The Labor government was doing the same. “You see, there are deals to be done," he added . "” The Territory contains extraordinary mineral wealth, especially uranium. And Aboriginal land is wanted as a radioactive waste dump. This is very big business, and foreign companies want a piece of the action .” This was a continuation of the darkest side of our colonial history: a land grab. Where were the influential voices raised against this? Where were the peak legal bodies? Where were those in the media who told us endlessly how fair-minded we were ? Silence.
He paid tribute to those who did not listen to the silence - like Barbara Shaw and Larissa Behrendt, and the Mutitjulu community leaders and their tenacious lawyer George Newhouse, and Chris Graham, the fearless editor of the National Indigenous Times;Michael Mansell, Lyle Munro, Gary Foley, Vince Forrester and Pat Dodson, and Arthur Murray. Also mentioned was Australia’s historian of courage and truth, Henry Reynolds, who stood against white supremacists posing as academics and journalists. Swimmer Ian Thorpe had raised his voice against intervention in the NT , an objection which had yet to find an echo among the pampered sporting heroes of the country where the gap between white and black sporting facilities and opportunities had hardly diminished. (Further condensed extracts will be posted .)
