While these changes were proceeding, the discourse of ‘failure’ about past policies strengthened. Concern about social problems in Aboriginal communities is neither new nor confined to people or groups of any particular political persuasion (Hinkson 2007). However, by 2005, public debate about the ‘failure’ of self-determination, and suggestions that this had led to a form of separatism, were being escalated by those associated with right-wing think tanks and associations such as the Centre for Independent Studies and the Bennelong Society (Dillon 2005; Johns 2006), as well as by the Australian Government itself (Vanstone 2005).
When Minister Brough announced his ‘Blueprint for Action in Indigenous Affairs’ (Brough 2006a), his key messages were about giving Indigenous Australians equitable access to services on the same basis as other Australians, and removing barriers to economic opportunity. Asserting that culture should not ‘stand in the way of progress’, the Minister emphasised that individual, not community, decision making was critical, and suggested that the term ‘partnership’ would:
signal the beginning of a redefinition of relationships ... to a point where responsibilities between governments, Indigenous people and other Australians are better aligned to normal Australian life … We need to move beyond the fact that because a community is largely Indigenous that state and local governments relinquish their responsibilities for providing municipal and other basic services (Brough 2006a: 3–4).
Whilst such debates about treating Aboriginal people like all other Australian citizens, or treating them differently based on their group identity, have featured over decades of Indigenous policy (Attwood 2003), at this time the Commonwealth was clearly signalling that it planned to shift some financial responsibilities for remote Indigenous communities, which it had historically supported, to other jurisdictions. The broader strategy was three-pronged. In urban areas mainstream services would be improved to cater better for Indigenous people and improve their access to jobs. In remote areas the Government would be ‘working with other governments to improve standards of service and to open these communities to the broader Australian community and the market economy’ (Brough 2006a: 9). Some ‘priority communities’ would be the subject of ‘intensive intervention’ (ibid.), land tenure changes would be introduced, and ‘normal’ economic activity and home ownership would be encouraged. Thus, collective self-determination was being rejected and replaced by emphasis on an individual’s ability to choose a particular way of life (Brough 2006a; Dillon 2005), notably one which embraced the ‘mainstream’.[4] The ‘mainstream’ implied full engagement in a market economy. While for many Indigenous people who have experienced considerable exclusion from such economic opportunities this may be welcome, the features of Aboriginal life which marked out ‘difference’, such as communal land ownership and living on remote ‘homelands’, came under threat.
The Howard Government argued that communal land ownership was a key brake on economic development, that individual property rights were essential, and that reform of land tenure in Aboriginal townships under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) (ALRA) to allow ‘head leases’ was necessary. In fact, changes to this Act had already been passed to ‘provide more choice and opportunity for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory … and enable Aboriginal communities to operate like normal Australian towns’ (Brough 2006b). Some ‘intensive interventions’ were also already underway, generating controversy about land tenure arrangements (Scrymgour 2007). Commonwealth funding for Indigenous home ownership to all jurisdictions in Australia was also to require 99-year head leases on Aboriginal land (ATSISJC 2007b). As Dodson and McCarthy (2006: 26) concluded, the changes to the ALRA were ‘squarely aimed at drawing residents in remote communities away from real communal ownership of land and into individuated relationships with the wider economy’. The permit system, which enabled Aboriginal people to control access to their freehold land, was also to be changed, as it apparently ‘hindered effective engagement between Aboriginal people and the Australian economy’ (FaCSIA 2006: 4), an argument strongly disputed by David Ross, director of the Central Land Council, a major body that issued permits (Ross 2007).
If the first set of changes were designed to foster economic development on Indigenous land, the second tranche was to force greater Indigenous mobility to existing job markets. According to critics, Indigenous Australians were insular, indulgent, and needed to move into modern Australian society:
If people want goods and services that a modern economy can provide, they will have to generate an income in order to purchase them. In order to generate an income they will have to work. If work is not available where they live, they will have to move to find it (Johns 2006: 1).
Changes to labour market and income support programs that would affect individual behaviour were seen as the solution. In other words, Indigenous Australians needed to accept the tenets of liberal democracy and individual property rights, and fully embrace the market and modernisation. They were to be pressured to assimilate. The fact that many Indigenous people already living in close proximity to employment opportunities in urban centres remain poor and experience high rates of unemployment, seemed to be overlooked (Taylor 2006).
[4] Of course, self-determination for a people was never in conflict with an individual’s right to choose a way of life—indeed it was intended to strengthen the choices available to individuals within defined groups, whose rights have often been curtailed.