Unfinished Business

jcunial — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:27:48 +0000

Professor Paul Patton, Associate Dean (Research), University of NSW School of History and Philosophy

While an apology from our Prime Minister has made a start, the vexed issue of justice for Indigenous Australians will require creative effort across multiple disciplines of social and political thought if our nation is truly to make amends, writes Paul Patton.

The condition of Australia’s Indigenous population poses some of the most difficult public policy problems facing the country. Academic scholarship from across the Humanities and Social Sciences has long been a source for new approaches to some of these problems. Anthropologists led the way in enabling non-Indigenous people to appreciate the complexity of Indigenous societies and their relationship with the land.

Re-writing history

Historians have re-written the history of colonisation to take into account the experience of Indigenous people. Art historians, literary and cultural theorists have helped make Indigenous culture accessible to a broad public.

Sociologists and political scientists have drawn attention to the internal complexity of contemporary Indigenous social and political life. Political theorists and philosophers as well as lawyers have explored the issues raised by the demands of Indigenous peoples for justice and equality.

‘Just foundations’

Many people support the goal outlined by former Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1993, when he described the Mabo decision as an historic opportunity to establish relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens on ‘just foundations’. However, there is much less agreement on what would constitute a just settlement in this case.

The first dimension of justice involves equal treatment for all. Th is requires not just the formal equality that comes with equal treatment before the law and the absence of discrimination, but also substantive equality of access to public goods and services. Statistics show that Indigenous people remain disadvantaged in relation to health, education, employment and treatment by the criminal justice system.

The second dimension of justice involves compensation for past injustices. While there is room for disagreement about the principles that should govern such compensation and the manner in which it should be calculated, these are not insuperable difficulties. They alone do not justify the reluctance of courts and governments to compensate for past policies such as child removal.

A New Dialogue is being pursued between Indegenous and non-Indigenous Austalians

New Relationships

The third dimension of justice is more difficult to characterise, as it concerns the nature of the relationship between individuals and groups. It relies on the idea that all peoples are equally deserving of recognition and respect and that they should not be arbitrarily subject to external government.

Yet the authority of the present Australian government derives from the colonial rule that was imposed on Indigenous peoples without their consent and without regard for their own laws and practices of government. This is why many believe that as long as the present Constitution fails to place the country’s relationship with its Indigenous peoples on just foundations, there remains unfinished business.

New philosophies

As Patrick Dodson, the former Chair of the Reconciliation Commission, argued in his 2008 Nulungu Lecture, “There is a task for the nation in the achieving of a new philosophical framework that underpins the relationship between the settler peoples and the first Australians”.

In late February 2009, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of NSW, Professor James Donald, appointed Patrick Dodson as the Professor of Indigenous Policy and the Director of the Indigenous Policy and Dialogue Research Unit (IPDRU) with a view to contributing to this task. The Unit will also provide an institutional and research centre for the ‘Australian Dialogue’ initiative.

An Australian dialogue

The ‘Australian Dialogue’ initiative, which was established in 2008 by Professor Dodson and Major General John Sanderson, aims to develop the new philosophical groundwork that will guide the development of a new relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

The IPDRU will initially sit within the faculty’s highly regarded Social Policy Research Centre. It will collaborate with the University’s Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Centre to provide an institutional base for continuing the kind of multi-faceted dialogue envisaged by Professor Dodson and his collaborators.

Professor Paul Patton is Associate Dean (Research) at the University of NSW School of History and Philosophy