Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had not intended to eulogise the late Peter Howson, former member for Fawkner and Casey and first Commonwealth minister for Aboriginal affairs, because he had been so well commemorated by others, particularly the member for Higgins, but I find that his hand has reached out from beyond the grave. Over the weekend I belatedly read the January/February issue of Quadrant magazine, which contained an excellent, if provocative, article by the late member for Fawkner and Casey. It was a good summary of his critique of the last 30 years of Indigenous policy making—a critique which he had institutionalised in the Bennelong Society, which he co-founded with Gary Johns, and which has found at least partial support in the work of Noel Pearson, Warren Mundine, Marcia Langton and Wesley Aird.

Essentially, Peter Howson regarded the fate of Aboriginal peoples since the 1960s as a tragedy—a tragedy borne of sentimentality and largely misguided guilt. Up till then, he said, Aboriginal people, through education and employment, were gradually becoming full participants in modern Australia. Since then, he said, Aboriginal people had in many instances regressed into a separatist subculture marked by poor school attendance, high unemployment and high levels of domestic violence, with appalling consequences for their health and wellbeing. The essential problem, said Howson, was the view that Aboriginal people were different and should develop separately from the wider Australian community—a kind of benevolent apartheid based on a romantic conception of Aboriginal culture, notwithstanding that it had irrevocably changed in the wake of British settlement. I believe that Australia has been well served by Peter Howson in the parliament and also in his post-parliamentary life, where he used his status as a former minister to lend authority to a critique that was both shrewd and necessary.

It seems to me that Australia will best honour Aboriginal people and best acknowledge their place as the first inhabitants by extending to them the usual rights and responsibilities of Australians, in particular the responsibility to make a living or at least to seek work and make a significant contribution to their local community. In this regard, the Northern Territory intervention, with its emphasis on law enforcement and obligation keeping, should not be regarded as some kind of temporary interruption but as the overdue establishment of a measure of normalcy in places that were, in many instances, out of control.

In his final Quadrant piece, Peter Howson describes the now near universal practice of acknowledging country as a form of ‘self-abasement’. I should say that there are many circumstances in which it is quite fitting and entirely appropriate for this to happen, but it can easily in some circumstances become a self-affirming ritual for the right-thinking. If we are to acknowledge the original owners, why not also acknowledge all who have contributed to contemporary Australian society, starting with the Old Testament prophets? The best way to acknowledge Aboriginal people, for instance in this place, might not be through a traditional welcome but more through the presence of Aboriginal members of parliament in this chamber and in the Senate. In his final Quadrant piece, Peter Howson, I have to say, called on me to continue the struggle against the misguided policies of the Whitlam generation. I accept that challenge from the late member for Fawkner and Casey and hope that his spirit will not find me wanting.