Every mid-February, early in the parliamentary year, the prime minister stands in parliament to deliver the annual report on Closing the Gap. They always given an excellent, heartfelt speech.
Scott Morrison has today done the same. The speech he gave last year was one of his best.
And the speeches, no matter which prime minister of which party is delivering them, are always in service of explaining failure. Morrison is the fifth prime minister to deliver a Closing the Gap report, and every one has been the story of steady deterioration in performance — year after year after year after year.
As Guy Rundle pointed out in 2015, it’s a “ritual now as ancient as a welcome to country, the national reflection on why we have made no progress on Aboriginal conditions”.
In a couple of areas to do with life expectancy and mortality, the lack of progress is because outcomes for Indigenous Australians are improving, but not as quickly as for non-Indigenous Australians. But it’s a story of failure across other indicators.
For several years now, the government rhetoric has been about focusing on improving outcomes by empowering Indigenous communities.
For example, it’s been shown over and over again in Indigenous health that programs designed and implemented by Indigenous communities and Indigenous practitioners succeed where top-down programs designed in and implemented from capital cities fail.
Morrison has repeated the message today, according to parts of the speech dropped to the media ahead of the formal release of the report. “Closing the Gap was never a partnership with Indigenous people,” he says.
We believed we knew better. We don’t. I’m very hopeful that a new approach that’s more locally led and more collaborative will take us much further than the top-down, one-size-fits-all, government-led approach ever could.
That’s great stuff from the prime minister, and no doubt he means it. But Malcolm Turnbull said the same four years ago.
We need to listen to and draw on the wisdom, the ingenuity, the insights of indigenous people across the nation from the cities to remote communities … we have to redouble our efforts to ensure effective engagement between the government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to build trust and develop further that respectful relationship… to allow decisions to be made closer to the people and the communities which those policies impact.
The failure is not Morrison’s, any more than it was Turnbull’s.
It’s a collective failure of the federal government, one that goes back decades, and which seeks to remedy problems with deep and systemic causes.
There’s a good chance we’ll hear a similar, doubtless excellent speech, from Scott Morrison this time next year, reporting the same failures.
Day after day Alone on a hill
The man with the foolish grin
Is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him
They can see that he’s just a fool
And he never gives an answer
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning ’round
Well on the way Head in a cloud
The man of a thousand voices
Talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him
Or the sound he appears to make…
The question is, for how long will our indigenous neighbours be content to be the fool on the hill.
For as long as I’ve been politically aware, liberal and labor parties, state and federal, have steadfastly ignored just about every study, survey, investigation or inquiry into the welfare of our indigenous population.
In the 2000’s, the sacred children report was the first serious report I took notice of and thought, there you go, here’s a blueprint of how to go forward with actual community and aboriginal support. How naive I was. With an election in the winds, Howard cynically threw the Army at the problem and lost the election. Kevin Rudd gave a heartfelt apology, which turned out to be little more than crocodile tears if you compare words with action.
Subsequent inquiries have basically fallen on deaf ears culminating with the out of hand dismissal of the Uluru Statement by Turnbull. This latest diatribe from Morrison just adds to my disgust…
Praise where it is due – as quoted here, Morrison’s rhetoric is a vast improvement on Turnbull’s: “We believed we knew better. We don’t.” Turnbull: WE should “draw on the wisdom, the ingenuity, the insights” in order for US to fix the problems.
“The wisdom, the ingenuity” is patronising cant, and the statement concedes the aboriginal community no agency, just the right to advise.
At least as quoted here, anyway; and of course it remains to be seen whether there is a difference substance and actions.
All this white fella angst is touching. But therein lies the cause of the failure to ‘close the gap’. KPIs devised by white fellas, programs to improve those white fella KPIs devised by white fellas. Hand-wriging angst of privileged white fellas about the plight of black fellas that has been caused by us. The ignorant hypocrisy is maddening.
When are we white fellas going to twig that the entrenched disadvantage suffered by black fellas is not ever going to be solved exclusively by well-meaning white fellas. Fact is that black fellas, in the main, are not buying what we are selling – Capitalism. And they have refused that transfer for centuries. We just refuse to notice. That black fellas reject Capitalism is not surprising given that at the sacred heart of Capitalism is a religious reverence for private property. Everything about Capitalism is founded on that reverence. On the other hand, black fellas share no such reverence for private property.
How do we solve that fundamental problem? I don’t know. What I do know is that after 200 years of outright contempt, violence and oppression and then 60 years of white fellas making inept attempts to save black fellas by inducting them into Capitalism that has utterly failed, it is time to listen to black fellas. Just listening to black fellas and doing what they suggest will start ‘closing the gap’. And how are we going with that? Well, about 24 hours after the Uluru Statement from the Heart was released, Malcolm Turnbull heartlessly shot down any possibility of a constitutional voice to parliament; ie we asked black fellas what they want, and immediately denied what they asked for. Does Turnbull and the racists in the Coalition have any idea how damaging and insulting that was to black fellas? Regrettably I think – Yes! That was the objective. Now that has been followed by #scottyfrommarketing’s faux compassion in declaring white fellas’ continued failure. All theatre and no substance.
The stupidity of white Australia with respect to the circumstances of black fellas is topped only by the stupidity with respect to the obvious urgency to reduce greenhouse emissions.