Indigenous people failed by Abbott

Another prime minister has gone, this one the self-proclaimed champion for Indigenous people whose personal mission was to redress our country’s “national failure”.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott lauded Indigenous leader Noel Pearson as a visionary, a prophet. Pearson returned the compliment: Abbott was the “Nixon to China” conservative who would lead a nation to reconcile its history and write the missing words in our constitution: that we acknowledge and respect the original people of this land, its history and customs.

Abbott appointed Warren Mundine to head his hand picked advisory council on Indigenous affairs. He made a pledge to spend a week each year in an Indigenous community. He vowed to “sweat blood” for the cause. But words are easy.

We have grown used to the lofty pronouncements of our political leaders, sometimes augmented with tears. If words were solutions, my people would have already broken the chains of our history and been delivered from the margins to the mainstream of this country’s social and political history; our traditions and identity not just intact but enhanced.

But let’s take Abbott at his word — words like “lifestyle choices”. As prime minister he saw little future in small, remote communities. He backed a plan in Western Australia to shut them down. The government, he said, can no longer “endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices”.

It’s necessary to debate how we provide services and health care in remote communities, let alone the employment and education that are vital for all Australians, and more so for impoverished and isolated Indigenous people. Yet, the prime minister spoke neither of consultation nor cooperation, sensitivity to connection to land, history nor kinship.

Abbott’s “prophet”, Pearson, was less complimentary after those words. Abbott was leading a “deranged debate”, he was “disrespectful”, a man “casting fear” into people.

Warren Mundine — Abbott’s “friend”, who took him on a personal journey of understanding — now reminded him that this was not about choice, like a coastal tree-change. This was about a people’s very essence, their very culture. Abbott has never fully appreciated the essence of Aboriginal culture, not if we take him at his word. This is the man who in 2014 said white settlement was Australia’s “defining moment”, the moment “this continent became part of the modern world”.

Abbott, in so many ways, seemed forged of earlier times, a man from the past delivered here and destined to grapple with very modern challenges. A man bound by his history who just last month could stand at the grave of Eddie Mabo — the man whose legal challenge to uphold his native title overturned Terra Nullius (empty land) — and declare it a “sacred place’.

This is the nub of the failure of Abbott’s prime ministership. Here was a man confined by his view of his country, confronted by an Australian people who looked to transform their view of this country. The self-proclaimed “prime minister for Indigenous people” leaves a legacy unfulfilled. He spoke of closing the gap and redressing Indigenous disadvantage yet stripped half a billion dollars from spending on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. He spoke of his desire to lead a referendum to recognise indigenous people in the constitution yet leaves leaders like Pearson stranded between disillusion and hope.

We remain today as Indigenous people, at the bottom of every socio-economic indicator. We have the worst health, housing, education, employment; we die younger and we die still of diseases that no longer kill our fellow Australians. In a country as successful, as rich and tolerant and accepting as ours I can only ask why? I know it is complicated, yet I also know that if we wanted to cure it, we would cure it, just like we cured polio. Politicians write the laws and the laws are inadequate.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Award-winning journalist Stan Grant is from the Wiradjuri tribe of Australia and began working for SBS’s NITV in 2012 as the host of the channel’s flagship current affairs programme Awaken.