Our Muddle

This episode closes the series by allowing us to ponder the Uluru Statement from the Heart in relation to the texts that preceded it and the failed Referendum that followed it. The complexity and ambiguity of this short text exemplify the difficulties that now confront Australians when we come to think about this aspect of our national life.

The Commission, or ATSIC, was treated by its champions as a vehicle for self-determination. But the meaning of that word and its relationship with Indigenous sovereignty has been a lightning rod for the nation’s debates.

In this episode we venture outside Australia’s political culture to an international institution, the International Court of Justice, which has produced controversial ideas that have changed Australian politics. The most important have been self-determination and Indigenous sovereignty.

Australia’s first Indigenous Senator, Neville Bonner, rejected the idea of separate representation for Indigenous Australia in the most forceful terms, predicting that the result of such “separatism” would be “auto-apartheid”. 

In this episode we hear how Australia’s accidental Prime Minister, John Gorton, imagined how the new Federal powers created by the 1967 Referendum would be used. From today’s perspective, what is striking is the continued belief that a natural process of social development would move Australia forwards, obviating the need for political choices.  

Routinely misrepresented as the moment in which Australia granted citizenship to its Indigenous peoples, the political and practical significance of the 1967 Referendum was uncertain even to the actors who carried it through the official process. 

These petitions are a remarkable artefact of Australia’s unique political culture, combining a medieval form of communication, petitioning parliament, with an even more ancient style of articulating rights to land. 

In this episode we hear the Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck, articulate to the Parliament the meaning of assimilation and its role in his vision for Australia. The episode examines the beliefs and assumptions that underwrote this idealistic policy and the extent to which they endure today.