Aliens in their own land: Sovereignty and the tent embassy

Australia does a nice line in snafu and this last week has provided a juicy example as the Australia Day prime ministerial dragging fiasco continues to spiral out of control. These events have thrown light on just how screwed political discourse in this country has become. It involves any number of major issues – inadequate security procedures, police incompetence, political misconduct, media manipulation, treatment of Aboriginal issues and subsequent substitution of white fights masquerading as concern for those Aboriginal issues. Not that Aboriginal leaders would be surprised their issues once criticised would then be ignored. It was ever thus since the Aboriginal Tent embassy that supposedly started all the current fuss (and now being ignored in the "who knew what" adviser scandal) was created in 1972.

Just before Christmas, I stumbled on the tent embassy when I was in Canberra. It was around 8.30am and I was on my way to visit the old parliament museum when I found the embassy at its doorstep. The museum didn’t open until 9am so I had time to wander around the site. Unlike the grandness of its near neighbour the Chinese embassy, the Aboriginal tent embassy is a low-key affair. Yet however shabby it looked, it seemed it had a right to be there. Successive governments and administrators have found its mixture of politics, symbolism and theatre difficult to counter. In a corner of the park in front of the old parliament looking across to the War Memorial lies the embassy, its flimsy tarpaulin dotted with signs protesting the lack of a treaty and the need for self determinism.

The camp proclaimed itself as a dry area and in the middle of the garden lay a giant fire circle with an Aboriginal flag and a sculpture of the word “sovereignty” all looking out across the lake. More than the tent, it was this “sacred fire” of sovereignty that gave the embassy an imposing air of permanence. The use of the word embassy gives it a stateliness that is contested by the Australian Government, but not to the point of seeking its removal. There was no sign of any cops about to shut down a long-standing “occupy movement”. Nor was there seemingly any movement there to disoccupy. There was no sign of life that morning though presumably there were people asleep inside the tents. It was all peaceful and remarkably normal.

The tent began in 1972 in frustration at the McMahon Coalition Government's refusal to recognise land rights. Hopes were high for Aboriginal land rights after winning the 1967 referendum to be counted at the ballot box. But five years later it was clear the Coalition was not about to disturb powerful interests. All McMahon would agree to was “general purpose leases” which would not affect existing land or mining titles. Most of the land titles were granted under common law “terra nullius” which assumed nobody lived on the land before the British granted title. The mining titles took precedence because, as McMahon said, they were “in the national interest”.

One of the embassy founders, Gary Foley, said McMahon’s laws made Aborigines “aliens in their own land". Like other aliens they needed an embassy which meant it had to be in Canberra. The notion of the ramshackle embassy as an “eyesore” has been central to its validity since the start. As John Newfong said in 1972: “If people think this is an eyesore, well it is the way it is on Government settlements.” Aboriginal policy was an eyesore that needed to stay in the public eye. Governments tried to remove the embassy by use of police force, invoking territory ordinances and planning guidelines, direct negotiation and simply turning a blind eye with the hope that the embassy would fizzle out. None worked. In tandem with another symbol invented the same year – the black, red and yellow flag – the black power activists’ tent reminded white Australia it was built on shaky foundations.

Ever since 1972, the embassy has only occasional impinged on wider conscience. Paul Kelly’s monumental The March of Patriots covered the Keating and Howard eras in great detail but made no mention of the embassy, even though the embassy became permanent just after the elevation of Keating as PM. Aboriginal affairs were a telling difference between Keating and Howard and deeply affected their tenure as prime ministers. Yet there were similarities too. Both men were affronted by the notion there was “another Australia” outside their jurisdiction though neither was foolish enough to raise in public the notion the “ambassadors” should be removed.

It was not politicians but judges who changed the law during Keating and Howard’s time. The Mabo and Wik judgements ended the fiction of terra nullius and helped forge a proper agreement over native title. 200 years of wrong could not be righted but some compensation was needed. Keating offered an apology in his 1994 Redfern speech but was hamstrung by his own side (corrupt WA Labor Premier Brian Burke had killed Bob Hawke’s Land Rights proposal in the 1980s). Keating was voted out in 1996, but not before getting a Mabo agreement through parliament over the objection of the Coalition.

Howard inherited Keating’s Stolen Generation Report that documented the extent of Australian 20th century interference in Aboriginal affairs. Ever conscious of the power of symbols, Howard could not bring himself to apologise. His later NT intervention was paternalism writ large masked under a pretence of preventing sexual violence. Despite the scale of the response (which the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments have been unable to undo), there was never a sense they were dealing with equal partners. The prospect of a treaty similar to Canada and New Zealand seems as remote as ever.

The embassy supporting that Treaty celebrated two notable anniversaries last week. The embassy has intermittently existed on the lawns since Australia Day 1972 and permanently since Australia Day 1992, so it either 40 or 20 years old according to taste. These anniversaries are appropriate moments to examine its worthiness. My view is that the overwhelming evidence suggests the “other Australia” still exists and therefore the indigenous protesters that live on the site are right to seek diplomatic relations. In all key life indicators, indigenous people lag behind the rest of the population thanks to two centuries of massacres, paternalism and benign neglect. As a defeated people since colonial times, they are under no obligation to accept white Australian rule as a fait accompli.

The howls of protest that accompanied Tony Abbott’s claim the embassy's time may be over, reflect a deeper concern that as Prime Minister he would not advance Aboriginal interests. He might also, despite the denials, be prepared to use his power to shut it down "occupy-style" using the media-generated confected rage against the “riot” that apparently caused the prime minister to trip over and lose a shoe. The Courier-Mail front page called it a "day of shame" without saying who should be ashamed. “Australia Day 2012 will be remembered for scenes of a terrified looking Ms Gillard being dragged away to safety,” the paper thundered. Whose fault was it? They didn’t say.

Instead they hinted at it. They said police clashed with protesters from the nearby aboriginal tent embassy and the two leaders were shoved into Ms Gillard’s bulletproof car and taken to “a safe place”. Police seemed to have overreacted in the way they escorted the politicians from the premises. Gillard and Abbott were at the Lobby restaurant presenting emergency services medals when “100 protesters surrounded the building”. Alerted by Labor apparatchiks (who presumably knew Gillard was there also), they came to protest against Abbott. Marxist march participant John Passant said witnesses reported that during a speech a woman interrupted to say Abbott had said the Tent Embassy should be moved on. "He was 50 metres away with his twin in racism, Julia Gillard,” Passant said. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. When protesters made the 50m journey to the Lobby, they banged on the glass walls. The chants started as “Shame, shame!” and “Racists, racists” and then became a steady “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.”

They were protesting an answer Abbott gave in a doorstep earlier that day. A journalist (unnamed in the press transcript) asked him: “Is the Tent Embassy still relevant or should it move?”. Abbott responded by saying he could understand why the embassy was established but a lot had changed for the better. “We had the historic apology just a few years ago, one of the genuine achievements of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister,” Abbott said. “We had the proposal which is currently for national consideration to recognise indigenous people in the Constitution. I think the indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian and yes, I think a lot has changed since then and I think it probably is time to move on from that.”

No one asked the obvious follow-up question: Did he mean dismantling the tent? We don't know because the media circus moved on to Albanese’s Hollywood faux pas and the embassy answer hung out there to dry. Gillard’s people were on to the political implications quickly. The implied answer, Abbott might act as PM to “move on” the embassy, took little time to filter out.

Gillard’s media adviser Tony Hodges told Unions ACT secretary Kim Sattler and Sattler told the demonstrators. When they got to the restaurant, there were unedifying scenes of Aborigines clashing with police but no evidence to suggest violence was intended on Abbott or Gillard. It was the mob violence that wasn’t. All they wanted was for both leaders to talk to them. The prime minister’s security detail took a different view. In this risk averse culture they took the view she should leave quickly. On camera Gillard accepts their advice and asked them whether they should also inform Abbott. She is then shown on camera letting Abbott know they were "in it together".

Instead of confronting the protesters, the prime minister was dragged unceremoniously away. The footage showed the politicians, their security detail and news cameras with the protesters well back. World media were entranced by the footage particularly the fairytale angle of the “lost shoe”. Behind her, Abbott was also ushered away quickly without any wardrobe malfunctions. Abbott walked away without injury while Gillard lost not only her shoe, but her dignity, her press officer, her backroom probity and the political high ground. Abbott was able to say, “At the very least the Prime Minister should be offering an apology to everyone who was in that awards ceremony." But he did not clarify what Gillard had to apologise for except perhaps for incompetent staff who did not think through the consequences of their actions. Hodges paid the penalty and Abbott should stop playing put upon. He would have known fully what mischief his statement could cause on the Australia Day anniversary.

Meanwhile the 40 year sovereignty battle associated with the embassy has been damned by association. After the “riot”, influential voices like Bob Carr, Warren Mundine and David Penberthy have called for its abolition. None have attracted the opprobrium of Abbott but perhaps they should have. The time has not yet come to fold up the tent. The eyesore has not been treated. Sorry day has come and gone but the justice of sovereignty is no nearer for this continent’s oldest and most misunderstood inhabitants. Until it happens, they will remain aliens in their own land.

To each their own: Happy Australia Day

There is an ad for Telstra’s Internet service doing the rounds that shows a grandad and grandson flunking a teacher’s question about what Australia Day represents. Their answers of “a long weekend” and “watching the cricket” drew a sharp face of rebuke from the teacher. While we never get to hear the teacher’s answer why we should celebrate the day, the implication from the ad makers is clear - get Telstra Broadband and you’ll find out the answer on the Internet. But is that true? I looked on the Internet today and found no consensus on what today’s Australia Day holiday actually means.

The first site returned on a Google search for Australia Day is the frothy-looking government site. It does not really explain the meaning of the day except to exhort people to "celebrate what's great". It does have a history page which tells us the Australia Day holiday is a recent tradition. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that Sydney almanacs referred to 26 January, 1788 as First Landing Day or Foundation Day. The word “Australia” did not enter the national vocabulary until 1826. In 1888 Tasmania’s Mercury celebrated “the centenary of the occupation of the country by the British people”. But generally other states resented the focus on NSW and Australia Day did not become a national holiday until 1994.

Nor did the occupied ever never fully accepted the occupation. Aboriginals still call 26 January Mourning Day. Today Prime Minister Rudd knocked back the suggestion from the new Australian of the Year Mick Dodson that there should be a national conversation on changing the date of Australia Day. The Sydney Morning Herald (and most TV news reports) went with Rudd’s sound bite response: “to our indigenous leaders, and those who call for a change to our national day, let me say a simple, respectful but straightforward no.” However those media neglected to say why Rudd wasn’t changing the date. A look at Rudd’s address at Canberra’s Australia Day citizenship ceremony shows he mostly ignored the issue: “There’ve always been controversies about national days. But this is not the point. The central point is what we then resolve to fashion as a nation?”

Andrew Bartlett was quick to point out that the real reason why Rudd wouldn't join the debate was to avoid being wedged. “Calls to change Australia Day are manna from heaven for right-wing radio shock jocks and history warriors,” said Bartlett today, “so it’s no surprise Kevin Rudd wants to shut down debate on it straight away and get us all back to pondering how bad the economy is.” Rudd’s political radar looks smart if the Sydney Daily Telegraph readers’ debate on the topic is anything to go by with many entries skirting racism as they vigorous supported the 26 January date.

Seeking more dispassionate information, I turned to the second Google entry on Australia Day: the supposedly NPOV (Non Point Of View) Wikipedia. Here I was particularly interested in one sentence: “Australia Day has become a symbol for adverse effects of British settlement on Australia's indigenous people.” This is true; it would not matter if you did move the date, it would remain a symbol of adverse effects. As I’ve written before, European settlement was always going to have a negative effect on the earlier settlers. The French arrived in Sydney Harbour the same day as the First Fleet. Sooner or later, there would have been a European Invasion Day to mourn.

Ron Barassi says we should move the date to 27 May to commemorate when Aborigines got voting rights in 1967. But that would put another holiday in the already crowded six week zone that has Easter, Anzac Day, the Queens Birthday (loaded with symbolism itself!) and for us in Queensland, the Mayday holiday. If you must move it, find an excuse to place it in the long dead zone of the second half of the year (there are no national holidays between July and Christmas).

But the fact that people are still looking for a “peg” to hang Australia Day on, is proof positive that its current celebration is not tied to its historical meaning. The end of January may be a good time to have it, given the local climate. Despite the current and dangerous fad for drink-fueled ultra-nationalism, there really is no single national imagining or agreement of what it means. The granddad and the kid on the ad got it right, for them Australia Day is indeed about watching the cricket or having a long weekend. It could equally have been celebrating Chinese New Year or a barbecue or a day at the beach or the park or the Havaiana Thong Challenge or whatever else all the other 21 million citizens did. But you don’t need the Internet to tell you that.

Bennelong Time: Australia Day

On a sunny day in Adelaide, Australia’s cricketers held the upper hand against India on the third day of the fourth test despite the surprise retirement announcement of wicket keeping great Adam Gilchrist. It was a double national celebration at the Adelaide Oval, possibly the most aesthetically pleasing sporting ground in the world. Not only was it Australia Day, the 220th anniversary of the first European settlement landing in Sydney Cove, but it was also Republic Day in India. That holiday celebrates the day in 1950 the constitution of India came into force and India became a truly sovereign state some two years after it gained independence. While both Australian and Indian celebrations are artificial constructs, the mood was happy in Adelaide and elsewhere. Any excuse for a celebration is a good one.

However for the original Aboriginal settlers of Australia, today is the Day of Mourning when their traditional way of life was ended. Ironically their day celebrates its own special anniversary, being the 70th anniversary of the first organised protest against the treatment of Aboriginal people around Australia.

In 1992 then PM, Paul Keating made a speech in the Sydney suburb of Redfern that seemed to herald a new era of white-Aboriginal relations when he recognised the issues started with non-Aboriginal Australians. Redfern was not only a suburb where Aboriginals lived it was also “[j]ust a mile or two from the place where the first European settlers landed”. Yet just over three years later Keating's vision was comprehensively rejected. John Howard was elected on the manifesto of making white Australians feel more comfortable about themselves. His attitude is reflected today in the advice of such bloggers as Iain Hall today to “enjoy this day without shame.”

But the story has more to do with positive recognition than negative shame. It was never in doubt what was going to happen when 18th century Europe collided with the Neolithic society it encountered in Port Jackson on 26 January 1888. If the British hadn't started it, it would have been the job of the French fleet of Comte Jean-François de Galaude La Perouse who by astonishing coincidence entered Sydney Harbour that same morning 220 years ago.

But it was the First Fleet of Governor Arthur Phillip who had the honour of starting the colony. Phillip was a doughty 50 year old experienced Royal Navy officer. He was smart enough to know that the original landing point at Botany Bay six days earlier was unsuitable for a settlement. And so they jettisoned the Bay discovered by Cook in 1770 and found a harbour 20km to the north of incredible beauty. His ships brought a cargo of a thousand men and women and they found fresh water in what is now Sydney Cove from a creek that ran through gum trees and trickled over mudflats into the saltwater cove.

But Phillip and his fleet knew they weren’t coming into an empty landscape. On the way into the harbour, they were alerted to the firestick farming practices of the native population. Four days earlier, a landing party on the ocean side encountered an armed and vociferous group of locals. As Phillips later described it to the admiralty, the native’s “confidence, and manly behaviour made me give the name of Manly Cove to this place”.

Sydney Cove also had its manly natives. Sydney was the home of the Eora people. They lived in the region for tens of thousands of years having slowly migrated south from the landbridge with Asia. Eora simply meant “the people” and that is how they described themselves to Phillip. They would have had advanced notice of the European arrival from messengers bringing news about the Manly encounter. However they did not offer any opposition to Phillip and instead were very friendly.

British soldiers who had served in the Americas such as Watkin Tench called them “Indians”. While the natives chanted, the convicts were rowed ashore and ordered to cut down trees, clear the ground and pitch tents. North shore natives helped the crew catch fish. But while Phillip named the cove for the British home secretary Thomas Townesend (otherwise known as First Viscount Sydney), the Eora had their own names for the area. Sydney Cove was Warrane which was protected by Tallawoladah (now The Rocks) to the west and Tubowgule to the east. Tubowgule now has a different Aboriginal name Bennelong Point and is also the site of a half-decent Opera House.

The point is named for Woollarawarre Bennelong, a wangal man, from a clan name meaning ‘west’. Wangal territory ran from Parramatta to Darling Harbour. Although kidnapped by Phillip and not immune to Stockholm Syndrome, Bennelong proved to be a clever and wily politician who played a double game in his relations with whites. Phillip kidnapped him in 1790 in order to gain an insight into the Eora mind and calm the increasing tensions between the old and new settlers. Although he learned English and struck up a personal friendship with Phillip, Bennelong escaped after five months. He took part in a spirited resistance against the whites. It is likely he organised the spearing of Phillip in a ‘payback’ exercise for the kidnap. Phillip refused to blame his black protégé. He was rewarded in December that year when Bennelong and his kinsmen and women came in peacefully to Sydney Town, devastated by the newly introduced disease of smallpox.

When Governor Phillip returned to England in triumph in 1792, he took with him Bennelong. At first the young Aboriginal man enjoyed his stay in London, dressed as a dapper gentleman in a ruffled lace shirt and fancy waistcoat. He met mad King George III, heard debates in parliament and swam in the Thames. Newspapers treated him as a “merry fellow” and a celebrity who was “delighted with everything he sees, and courteous to those who know him”. But after seven months he wanted to go home and returned to Sydney broken by the coldness of British weather.

On board HMS Reliance his lungs gave him trouble but he was well enough to teach words of his native tongue to the future explorers Matthew Flinders and George Bass. But Bennelong was a beaten man. When he got home he abandoned most of his white ways except for one – alcohol. He took seriously to drink and violence and was frequently wounded in payback battles. Bennelong died in January 1813 (almost 25 years to the day of the first settlement) at James Squire’s orchard in Parramatta.

Bennelong’s legacy today lies mostly in his name. As well as the famous building on the point that bears his name, he also survives in the nation’s most volatile federal political seat (in inner West Sydney) that in November saw sitting Prime Minister John Howard famously defeated by Labor’s star media recruit Maxine McKew.

But Bennelong’s people have not done so well as his name. Australia's indigenous population has suffered a genocidal history that caused the Aboriginal population to drop from 300,000 to 70,000 in the 134 years to 1920. Australia Day remains a tainted holiday until white Australia remembers the act of recognition in Keating’s Redfern speech. It also requires an act of imagination: As Keating said, “We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through 50 000 years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation.” Happy Australia Day.