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The Indigenous public servant is a relatively recent phenomenon — a product of the maturing of the programs of assimilation and the inception of the programs of self-determination. That the Indigenous administrative memoir is recent follows from this, but it is also relevant to point out that the genre Indigenous autobiography is itself not yet fifty years old. In this essay, I will tell you about three Indigenous autobiographies in which the authors (all male) have produced an account of themselves partly by reflecting on their times as a public servant. In each case, the theme ‘impersonality’ is prominent, but each time in a different way.
Charles Perkins wrote A Bastard Like Me (1975) early in his career as a public servant. Perkins recalled ‘as a compromise’ his accepting a research officer position in the Office of Aboriginal Affairs in 1968. He would forsake political activism in order to realise ‘the possibilities in the position … I knew that I was, in a way, being bought off’, but he welcomed the ‘administrative experience’ and the opportunity for influence (1975: 109). The first six months in the job he recalled as ‘degrading’: ‘People set out deliberately to show me where I belonged (or should belong), and to make me feel completely an inferior person and nonentity in Aboriginal affairs’ (1975: 109).
Before taking up the job, however, Perkins visited many countries in a three month trip abroad. He came to dislike many Australian diplomatic officials. Their duties included helping him, but ‘they regarded me as inferior in intelligence’ and he inferred that they looked forward to his moving on. ‘I came to the conclusion that most diplomats are professional liars, two-faced’ and too mindful of their own convenience to be effective servants of the Australian public. ‘I feel they live in a world of their own and regard others as bloody intruders’ (1975: 122). He found the Washington Embassy officials especially obstructive. One of them, he recalled, accused him of ‘jumping on the racial bandwagon’ (1975: 126). By the time he and his wife reached Moscow (travelling West to East) Perkins had come to think that ‘perhaps my reputation at other Australian Embassies had preceded me and they were fearful that I might embarrass them’ (1975: 138). Upon returning to Australia, he reported his displeasure to a debriefing attended by Paul Hasluck and by senior officials of External Affairs. The notes on that meeting are presumably in the National Archives and would make interesting reading.
Perkins commenced work with the Office of Aboriginal Affairs in March 1969. Although his position was junior, he was a figure of great interest (whether positive or negative) to senior political figures, as his book attests with its many brief anecdotes about conversations with people such as Gorton, Anthony, Bryant and Hasluck. It must have been difficult to reconcile the roles of national political figure and junior public servant. I suggest that we understand this specific difficulty as overlaying and exacerbating the trials that induction into the classical traditions of the public service imposes upon any person who is politically opinionated and politically active. Perkins writes — not wholly in criticism — that ‘the bureaucracy swallowed me up’ (1975: 157). He had to learn what he calls ‘paper warfare’: writing and responding to writing, and doing both within a large, opaque hierarchical establishment in which he was but one junior functionary.
As well, Perkins found the social environment of his work place cold, unfriendly and abounding in insults to his pride that were no less hurtful for being, often, unintended. ‘I had to cover it up by saying nothing and swallowing my pride’ (1975: 158). Though he conceded that he had always found it difficult to make friends, he also attributed his social difficulties in Canberra to ‘the typical impersonal nature of the public service’. ‘Impersonality’, he then remarks, is ‘one of the tragedies in the public service’ (1975: 159). Perkins suggested a way to overcome this systemic disaffection.
It would seem a good thing that public servants work elsewhere every ten years to meet the general pubic on a different level and to humanize them. It would do them personally a lot of good, their families, their work and the general public. Perhaps if superannuation benefits were extended to the public service and the private sector alike, people could move more freely. A lot would move out of the public service and make a great contribution to private industry if this were done (159).
The Department of Aboriginal Affairs could be improved by making it a statutory authority allowed to recruit Aborigines to senior positions, he suggested (1975: 194). ‘There are just too many whites in Aboriginal Affairs — unfortunately the good ones leave in disgust or disillusionment or get depressed’ (1975: 196).
By the time he penned these thoughts, the Whitlam Government had both raised the possibility of administering Aboriginal affairs in new ways and revealed to Perkins the inflexibility of the public service culture and of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs. As well, the Australian press continued to be, in his view, ‘anti-Aboriginal’ (1975: 182). Perkins thought that he had failed to live up to the expectations that other Aborigines had of him. Early in the Whitlam Government, he was promoted from clerk class 7 (third division) to Assistant Secretary (second division [now senior executive service]). He had not internalised the disciplines expected of a public servant. It was while on leave from that position that he wrote in A Bastard Like Me of his disappointment that he had been suspended in 1974 for making statements that the Government found embarrassing. ‘I knew that I was breaking public service regulations but the issues were too vital and the regulations therefore just had to go’ (1975: 196).
Perkins was not only at odds with the regulations about confidentiality of advice, he also thought that the department was hamstrung by its concern for financial administration. It did not allow Aborigines to make such mistakes as ‘some mishandling of funds or money seemingly wasted on special projects … The well-worn myth is that Aborigines are irresponsible with money. This is propaganda to deny Aborigines the right to make their own decisions’ (1975: 178). If Aboriginal people make mistakes and ‘suffer,’ then they will learn to be independent and confident, Perkins argued. (However, he did not concede that in the regime of strict financial administration about which he complained the Department had a way both to define ‘mistakes’ and to impose ‘suffering’.)