I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet. I pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. And on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full.
Anthony Albanese, election night, Saturday, 21st May, 2022.
Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.
We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.
Text from the Uluru Statement from the Heart, 2017.
It should have been straightforward. A new prime minister, rejoicing in his freshly-anointed government, ensures the very first thing he states in this new role is his, and his government’s, commitment to the Uluru Statement in full. Mere days ago, however, while attending the annual Garma Festival in the Northern Territory, Albanese’s rhetoric appeared to dance around this proposition.
Specifically, it was his statements on the Makarrata that were perplexing. Speaking on ABC’s Insiders, Albanese used many synonyms to highlight the “coming together” part of Makarrata, while downplaying the specific notion of a commission and a truth-telling agenda. It appeared to be a step back from the promise that he not only made on election night, but that his government had committed money for in the budget.
I was not surprised that voices from the Indigenous community expressed dissent, dismay and even outrage at the prime minister’s words. Quandamooka man and director of From the Heart, Dean Parkin, for example, quickly pointed out that the Uluru Statement was “very clear” on the need for a commission. As shown above, this is the case. The Makarrata Commission was considered an important enough item of business at Uluru to warrant its own paragraph. Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe was also scathing in her criticism, openly calling it a “broken promise”, while claiming that the government was more interested in listening to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (who has completely rejected a commission and truth-telling process) than Indigenous people.
When I heard Albanese’s words the other day, however, particularly his platitudes about “coming together”, and talking to “community organisations”, while he highlighted differences in urban and remote Indigenous communities in the same breath, another agenda sprung to my mind. Anthony Albanese was, in fact, reinforcing the Howard-era agenda of “practical reconciliation” by attempting to frame the commission as something symbolic as opposed to “real actions”.
If anyone needs a refresher, practical reconciliation goes something like this: so threatened was John Howard by the reconciliation agenda — that people may commit to inclusion measures in workplaces and the public sphere, and that thousands had marched over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a gesture of hope to support — that Howard moved the goal posts.
Making the symbolic gesture of apologising to the Stolen Generations for past government removal policies, for example, was not “practical”. Of course, white-washed history and Australian flag-waving remained fine gestures in Howard’s view. It really boiled down to Howard wanting Indigenous people to mould themselves into mainstream Australia, and for them to be happy about it, even while they still hurt due to the unfinished businesses of land rights, action on deaths in custody, Stolen Generation compensation, and so forth.
And so when Anthony Albanese is talking about us all “coming together” post-struggle, all I hear are echoes of assimilation. How exactly can Australia come together and work towards a more robust, genuine, inclusive and truthful tomorrow, if our government reneges on a proper Makarrata Commission?
Mere months ago, the majority of Australia confirmed that they know almost nothing about how this country was formed, what the purpose of our constitution is and what it contains. They also confirmed that they’re more than willing to cast a vote based upon powerful people preying on that ignorance and feeding voters lies. So what does that mean for the prospect of “coming together”?
I was not a supporter of the Uluru Statement. Throughout the entire process of the referendum, I remained an Indigenous commentator who was publicly an “undecided vote”. This was due both to my personal views on the referendum, and the sheer dismay I felt at how everything was playing out. My key argument, to this day, is that the Uluru Statement had the order of business backwards.
A country that has not been through a truth-telling process, and that hasn’t made moves to protect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights, has no business voting on whether we should be written into a colonial constitution that retains racist passages to this day, and that was specifically written to exclude, and indeed erase us.
For better or worse, the Albanese government delivered on its promise of holding a referendum on the Voice. It was a dismal failure, and regardless of what position individual Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people took, most of us felt utterly deflated when it was over given how horrifically racist the process was. If there was a slither of hope following the referendum, it was the fact that the Uluru Statement had two other items of business and that the government had committed to advancing this statement “in its entirety”.
Quashing the Makarrata Commission, and talking around the idea of what a process of “coming together” looks like, is not Albanese keeping the Labor Party’s election promise. It is backpedalling, and choosing a path that they are more comfortable with — one that is not too threatening, to them, or to the general public. It’s cowardly, and the only thing it does is reinforce the idea that Australia will never be ready to tell the truth about its own history and build a better future.
What Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person could actually say we get a better deal when a Labor government is in power? We don’t. The rhetoric remains the same. Until we have leadership determined to be brave, rather than reinforcing the status quo to retain their own power, we never will.
