The Hatfield clan circa 1897

I had a long chat recently with an old mate from my politics days who I hadn’t seen for some time.  The conversation turned to Aboriginal affairs issues, as it does when you’ve both worked with and for Indigenous groups for the best part of thirty years.

Somewhat surprisingly for an aging lefty, my old mate’s attitude was quite similar to mine (and that of another old lefty in Bob Durnan who I often mention in posts like this).  The former left-liberal approach to Aboriginal affairs, based as it was on “self-determination” and symbolic issues like treaties, apologies and recognition of customary law, just didn’t work.  The plight of Aboriginal people actually became progressively worse by just about any measure.  Of course, some supporters of that approach continue to argue that self-determination was only ever tried in a half-hearted, piecemeal, stop-start fashion.  There’s probably some truth in that , but you still can’t argue that those policies even remotely resembled a raging success.

Similarly, the Howard Intervention  and its relabelling by the ALP government as “Closing the Gap” has also enjoyed underwhelming success to date despite multi-billion dollar spending, as a recent article by Indigenous legal academic Larissa Behrendt highlights.  Part of the problem, as Behrendt argues, is the “top-down”, prescriptive, paternalistic nature of the federal programs.  As Behrendt observes, successive Productivity Commission reports (hardly a bleeding heart, left-leaning organisation) have found that the programs that work in Aboriginal communities are those based on consultation, partnership, mutual respect and communities “taking ownership” of initiatives.  That must not obviate acountability or efficiency, but the two are not incompatible.

However, I strongly suspect after nearly 30 years of observation that the lack of a  “partnership” approach per se isn’t the main problem.   The principal and possibly insoluble problem is that key central aspects of traditional Indigenous culture are simply fundamentally incompatible with a contemporary, post-industrial, western capitalist individualistic culture like that of the dominant Australian community.  However, as soon as you make such a statement, other than privately and sotto voce, you end up being howled down as a “racist” (or at the very least an arrogant xenophobe).  Even undeniably well-motivated, knowledgeable experts like veteran anthropologist Peter Sutton have experienced this backlash after daring to critique aspects of Aboriginal culture.  Here is Sutton talking about the inherent extreme violence of Aboriginal society:

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I should concede that the analogy drawn in this post between Dave Tollner and Tony Abbott is an imperfect one (image from NT News)

Northern Territory politics is nearly always very silly but equally unfailingly highly entertaining.  It was the inspiration for the “Troppo” in this blog’s name and is best explained or at least described by the combination of heat, humidity, rotting mangoes and associated insouciant mañana lifestyle that makes Territorians behave very strangely at times especially in the buildup and wet season. What with a very long wet buildup and an even wetter wet season, the opposition Country Liberal Party’s latest bout of infighting is a vintage example of the phenomenon.

Just 18 months ago most observers would have put the CLP at short odds-on to win government in a canter at the next election due in 2012.  Labor appeared to be dead men walking to almost as great an extent as their NSW counterparts.  Chief Minister Paul Henderson had opportunistically deposed the extraordinarily successful and popular Clare Martin by riding on the coat-tails of John Howard’s equally opportunistic attempt to create an electoral wedge by announcing the Indigenous Intervention on the patently spurious excuse that Martin had failed to move promptly to implement the Little Children Are Sacred recommendations which Howard and Mal Brough then proceeded to completely ignore anyway.

Hendo then narrowly survived the 2008 NT election that he had been expected to win easily, ending up governing with the narrowest possible majority of 13/12. Mild-mannered CLP Opposition Leader Terry Mills had almost led his party to a totally unexpected victory, a bit like Tony Abbott at federal level but without the bombast or budgie smugglers.

Then, after a bewildering series of soap opera Ministerial and Party resignations and temper tantrums, Hendo’s attenuated Labor team was reduced to just 12 rather puzzled and shell-shocked pollies in minority government with Independent and former chook farmer Gerry Wood.

Most people saw it as only a matter of time until Mills and the CLP took over.  But they were wrong.  Gerry Wood, despite an image as a conservative-leaning eccentric, proved to be a much more reliable ally for the ALP than most had expected. Probably more importantly, Hendo fluked on a master-stroke by appointing wise old apparatchik and senior public servant Dennis Bree as Secretary to Cabinet then seconding him as Chief of Staff.  Bree imposed a sense of discipline and purpose that the Cabinet and Caucus hadn’t previously possessed even in Clare Martin’s halcyon days, although he has no doubt been helped by the party’s near death experience and the certain knowledge that one major slip means instant electoral annihilation.

However, this discipline born of desperation seems to have done the trick.  Although the NT hasn’t been without ongoing public fiascos since then, most have been unresolved hangovers from the pre-Bree era.  Since Bree was appointed Ministers have mostly stayed disciplined and on-message and previous cock-ups like the SIHIP program (a massive federally funded indigenous housing scheme under the post-Intervention Closing the Gap concept) have been progressively put back on track; a chaotic power system seems to have become more reliable; and the economy has largely recovered from the GFC, although tourism remains fairly subdued under the impact of a strong Australian dollar.

All in all, if the massive INPEX LNG project gets the final go-ahead later this year, you’d cautiously favour Labor to actually win the 2012 election fairly comfortably, an unimaginable outcome only a few short months ago.  If a week is a long time in politics then 18 months is an eternity.

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Letter to the Editor NT News:

I don’t hold any brief for the CLP, or Labor for that matter (although I did a long time ago).  However I have strong moral objections when I see someone’s reputation trashed unfairly.  That especially includes politicians, a human sub-species about whom most people love to believe the worst even though most pollies I’ve met on both sides of the fence are thoroughly decent, hard-working people with a strong sense of public service.

Now that the transcript of CLP leader Terry Mills’ conversation with former Lingiari candidate Leo Abbott has been published in full on the NT News website, I can’t help asking what the fuss was all about?

If that’s all that was said, there was certainly no “bribery” on the part of Terry Mills, or anything else that could possibly form a foundation for an allegation of corruption or illegality of any sort.  I don’t even think there was anything ethically or morally questionable about anything Mills said.  It was an entirely appropriate conversation for a Party leader to have with a problematic candidate who he was trying to persuade to step aside.

In the circumstances I can’t help wondering why the NT News continues to publish a story with a headline like “Mills secret chat to hand Abbott a deal”?