Protection Must be Color Blind

I first published the following in the Age in July 2009 following a trial of an indigenous man accused of raping a 12 year old tribal girl. His defence: it is acceptable in his culture. What do you think?

The original is published here.

The abuse experienced by many Aboriginal children raises questions about the role cultural issues play when it comes to safeguarding our most vulnerable.

FIFTY years ago my father, employed as a federal government patrol officer, removed from their parents Aboriginal children thought to be at risk of harm. Ten years ago I wrote an apology for that removal in The Age and called upon the Federal Government to do the same. Last year the Government finally did so.

Now the Productivity Commission tells us that Aboriginal children are six times more likely to suffer abuse than non-Aboriginal children. Last year an Aboriginal man claimed as part of his defence in a Queensland court that he saw nothing wrong in having sex with a 12-year old Aboriginal child as she "did it with everyone".

Yet if I were to call for that Aboriginal child to be removed from an environment in which it was felt that a 12-year-old girl having sex with an adult was OK, I would be accused of repeating the evils of the removals policy implemented by my father. Conversely, if I called for a 12-year-old white child in Melbourne to be left in an environment where she had sex with an adult, I would rightly be called perverted.

Where have we gone wrong? Let me make a couple of clear statements, and then look at some difficult issues.

If a child is at risk from the family environment, then the state should seriously examine the removal of that child regardless of the child's colour, race or religion. A child should never be left in an environment where he or she is susceptible to harm. These are easy statements to make, but how do we implement it?

When my father implemented removals of Aboriginal children in the late 1950s, his original papers show that he tried to do so with the best intentions of the child in mind. He tried to "remove them from harm". While policy implementation in the '50s had less of the racial overtones than removals of the 1930s, those racial overtones nevertheless remained. One of many big errors of the 1950s was that in determining "best interests" of the child or "harm" to the child, a European perspective was always used, not taking into account culture, identity and belonging.

So what do we do now for children at risk of "harm"? What is the culture that determines "right" and "wrong" in modern Australia — indigenous or otherwise?

Do we now have an "Australian cultural standard" that could help us determine "harm", "right" or "wrong" regardless of ethnic background? Can we use this standard to protect children regardless of race — or do we fear accusations of repeating past wrongs so much that we are frozen with inaction?

When I look up the word "indigenous" in the dictionary I find confusing alternatives. One definition says "of or from a place". I was born here, my father was born here, so was my grandmother. By that definition I am indigenous, but I am not Aboriginal. Another says "natural and not introduced". Well, as the cane toad was introduced, I suppose so was the white man. But regardless of my race, or heritage, I belong in Australia. I don't have anywhere else to go. 

My culture is the culture of this country.

Australia's culture is a mix and harmony of so many cultures, from that of Tasmanian Aborigines that predated the arrival of the mainland Aborigines in the last Ice Age, who in turn predated the arrival of the white man, who predated the Chinese, who predated the Greeks, Italian, later the Vietnamese, and now many from other countries as well. But do we have a universal Australian "culture" to which we all belong? Do we want an Australian culture?

I have worked in many countries for the United Nations and the Red Cross. I have seen people fight each other in wars over relatively small cultural differences, be it the Serbs and the Croats, both of whom are southern Slavs, the Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, the Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. I do not seek to dilute their cultures, but in my view more united them than divided them — yet they fought.

Now we in Australia have a challenge. Do we have a culture? Do we want a culture? Can this culture protect children? Or do we seek to differentiate ourselves in the name of protecting identity and history, be it Aboriginal tribes and peoples, newly arrived Islamic Australians, Irish, Italian, Greek, or my father at the Melbourne Scots in his kilt? Will we allow different cultural norms for different Australian communities, or the application of different laws to different races in the country as was practised in Australia before the referendum of the 1960s?

In my view each Aboriginal language that is lost to history is lost to me and my family as much as to indigenous communities. Each law lost through time, each cultural practice forgotten, is lost to me because it is lost to Australia and all her people, and I belong to her. I may have not been educated in the ways of all communities in this country, but all are part of me.

In the same way, all of Australia is part of each of us. It is time we say that with pride. It is time that we say, in the words of Bruce Woodley "I am, you are, we are Australian" and unashamedly say that our culture is a melting pot of many. Yet there is a fundamental minimum that we should not go below. And that fundamental minimum is the protection of children.

So, what is the "harm" that we protect children from? If my father's error of the 1950s was using a European cultural perspective when assessing harm, what cultural perspective should we use now? In some Aboriginal traditional cultures and laws, sex with a 12-year-old is acceptable, in others not. In European culture it is not.

Australia has another opportunity for us to debate who we are. The simple question of "when is a child at harm?" raises many more cultural issues that we must not only debate. It is a quandary we must solve.

Andrew Macleod is a Melbourne-born international lawyer who has worked for the Red Cross and the United Nations and whose own family was split by issues around the stolen generation.

  

For more information about the author, see here. For a list of recent blogs see here.

Bipartisan Liberalism

The major political parties based on employer versus employee no longer represents the conservative versus progressive division in Australia says Andrew MacLeod.

For most of the last 100 years the ideological framework in Australian politics has been one of worker versus employer. The workers and their supporters looked to the ALP, and the employers and their supporters looked to the Liberal Party. This was the framework of Australian politics for generations.

The shrinking union membership shows that Australian’s have changed even if politics has not.

The labor party platform until a few years ago had within it the ‘socialist objective’ that called for the nationalization of industry to the extent necessary to limit the exploitation of the workforce.

This framework had been out of date for some time when it was removed. The economic, legal and social tools available to government had created many other ways to limit exploitation than just the heavy hand of nationalization.

With decreasing unionism and the creation of other tools, many more debates in Australia are about general equity, fairness and social justice.

But social justice doesn’t belong just to the labor movement.

The philosophical liberalist tradition is about the freedom for people to attain their potential within a community while recognizing the need to look after those in genuine need. Liberalism can claim an interest in social justice too, not just those in the Labor Party.

But in Australia when one talks of liberalism, one immediately thinks of the Liberal Party. There is a confusion between the name of the party and the name of the philosophical tradition.

The problem is that the Liberal Party a conservative party and not a liberal one.

How does this play out in Australian politics today? Let’s look at some issues.

Take gay marriage. Under a liberalist philosophical tradition there would be sympathy for gay marriage. Under a conservative political tradition there would not. So what of the Liberal Party?

The current conservative leaning leadership has the Liberal Party objecting to gay marriage, even though many so called ‘wets’ from a liberal philosophical tradition would like to support the change. The Liberal Party is split along a conservative versus progressive divide.

Same in the Labor Party.

Many in the religious right of the Labor Party – especially from the catholic union base of the SDA union - oppose the gay marriage changes.

On the other hand many from a social justice but non-union background in the Labor Party support gay marriage.

You therefore have two unusual alliances forming within parliament: The pro gay marriage camp from both the social justice (non-catholic Labor Party) and liberalist (Wet Liberal Party) on one hand and the anti-gay marriage from the catholic Labor and Conservative Liberal sides.

Anti gay marriage is made up of some Labor and some Liberal. Pro gay marriage is made up of some Labor and some Liberal also. What does this mean for party politics?

There are many in the Labor Party who come from a non-unionist background but who joined the party on the basis of a belief in social justice. They are not so interested in the worker versus employer divide of the cold war days, but they are interested in social justice.

There are those in the Liberal Party who are philosophically also interested in social justice not the employer verses employee divide. So who to support or vote for?

When asking oneself which party to support, one cannot look at the moderates of the two parties as they are too similar to differentiate. One needs to look at the extremes of the parties and see which you are least uncomfortable with.

Lets take asylum. You used to be able to say that Labor was too easy and Liberal too harsh. Now they are the same.

I do not believe any of the three parties have the policy settings right on asylum, but I see so little difference between the Labor and Liberal Party positions, and see both parties’ language based on the same fear and hatred, that the social justice part of me cannot accept either party.

Likewise the social justice part cannot accept a policy that would encourage people to get on leaky boats.

I, like many Australians, am disillusioned at politics. I feel the Labor/Liberal divide no longer represents the ideological difference that exists in Australia today.

I no longer think the divide is Union or Boss, I believe Australia more debates conservative politics and liberalist politics of social justice. The problem is there are Conservatives in both the Liberal Party and Labor Party. There are social justice-liberals in both the Labor Party and Liberal Party.

Parties no longer debate different belief, they just debate power. They don’t inspire us to follow them, they try and scare us about the other side.  

No wonder people are confused. The truth is we don’t need just new leaders of the two political parties. It is not about changing Abbott or Gillard. What we need is new parties. We need a conservative Party and a Progressive Party so Australians get to choose on belief, not personality. Perhaps then we might get better government.

For more information about the author, see here. For a list of recent blogs see here.