Political Corrections

with Margo Kingston

New Aboriginal leaders are needed

It's time to stop messing around. ATSIC must be overhauled, the cover-up must end and a fresh, new Aboriginal body put in place to lead the fight for the safety of Aboriginal women and children.

When Evelyn Scott wrote last week that violence against Aboriginal women had become "a part of our tradition and culture and cannot be spoken about" and that "many women and children are cowed into helplessness by their menfolk" the end was nigh for ATSIC in its current form.

When senior Aboriginal women backed her dreadful confession and Australians learned that ATSIC was part of the conspiracy of silence and inaction, the end had come.

Now claims of sexual misconduct swirl around three senior Aboriginal male leaders, all members of the ATSIC hierarchy.

Now Reconciliation Australia, the replacement body for the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation, urges an end to the talk and the beginning of concentrated, concerted action to save Aboriginal women and children from endemic physical and sexual violence.

ATSIC should have led this debate for years. It should have been its top priority to expose the crisis and to shame white governments into financing solutions. Imagine a world where there is no safe house, nowhere to go if a mother or her child has been raped or bashed.

As Labor's spokeswoman on the status of women, Carmen Lawrence, told the Herald: "There's no refuges, there's no support from the legal system, and women are often exposed to the same players. These are the key reasons why indigenous women often shut up about it."

Yet rather than protect its children, ATSIC was largely silent. It has not denied a devastating claim by former minister John Herron that when he raised the issue five years ago the ATSIC board denied its existence, and that in 1999 deputy chairman Ray Robinson told him ATSIC would allocate a mere $200,000.

Yet in 1995 ATSIC agreed to pay Robinson $45,000 to pursue a private legal action against the Queensland Government for wrongful arrest, after he had been convicted of rape in 1989 (his second rape conviction) then acquitted at a retrial in 1992.

What business was it for ATSIC to underwrite this action, as well as top up his legal aid to defend the rape charge?

Robinson said last week on behalf of the ATSIC board that unanimously backed Geoff Clark that ATSIC "will support him in whatever legal course of action he should pursue in seeking remedy against the newspaper".

Maybe it is time for Aboriginal leaders who cut their teeth winning equal rights for Aboriginal people decades ago to step down in favour of young Aboriginal leaders with fresh ideas and a fresh commitment to further the interests of their people.

One thing is certain: this discredited ATSIC, which cannot see that the safety of Aboriginal children is its top priority, has lost its authority to speak to the Australian people on behalf of the Aboriginal people of Australia.

Email: mkingston@mail.fairfax.com.au