EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

 

Indigenous disadvantage awaits some tweet sorrow 

 

APOLOGISTS for Behrendt ignore the greatest national challenge.

Infamous as it's become, it was too much to hope that Larissa Behrendt's tweet comparing the heartfelt comments of Bess Price unfavourably with televised bestiality would be an isolated indiscretion. Readers and contributors to The Australian overwhelmingly supported Price, an Aboriginal community leader from central Australia whose stated agenda is to improve the lot of indigenous people. But, predictably, activists have ignored the substance and directed their fury at this newspaper for having the temerity to publish the story. Using a post-modern political map, any view challenging their own is labelled "right wing" and their own fringe positions are treated as mainstream. Yet in the real world there is virtual political bi-partisanship between Labor and the Coalition to learn from past mistakes and find meaningful solutions.

Anyone who has visited remote communities, or listened to people on the ground, would understand the time for intellectual parlour games is over. For the past 40 years, urban sophisticates have been conducting an abstract debate about land rights, apologies, treaties and separatism, providing an income for academics and reconciliation advocates but doing precious little to further the practical circumstances of indigenous Australians. Fortunately, some independent thinkers are prepared to contest the moralising mumbo-jumbo spreading like a virus from university humanities departments. In The Weekend Australian, Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson have contributed devastating critiques of Behrendt's muddled thinking. Former federal Labor minister Gary Johns and anthropologist Peter Sutton, a land rights campaigner in Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland, have written about the pernicious effect of the post-Whitlam orthodoxy, making a strong case for change. Recently we've seen testimony from women in central and northern Australia, like Price and Alison Anderson, who have seen too much violence, drunkenness and degradation, and been to too many funerals, to retain any confidence in whitefella dreaming.

Readers may be familiar with another failed experiment, an online opinion forum known as Crikey, which promised to level the playing field in the contest of ideas and democratise our national conversation. This week, on the most pressing social policy challenge of our time, Crikey offered the musings of Guy Rundle, a former comedy script writer. He writes from London incidentally, as far from the Tanami Desert as you can get, but he presumes to know much more about indigenous Australia than Price, a member of the Warlpiri community. Rundle defends Behrendt and the welfare/rights agenda, and accuses Price of being a patsy clocking up frequent flyer points. His main attack, however, is on The Australian for publishing a "beat-up".

Rundle's focus on what he imagines as this newspaper's agenda fails to divert attention from the paucity of policy solutions coming from what is commonly called the progressive side of politics. What does he propose, for example, on the challenge of improving school attendance, the first rung on the ladder to enable indigenous children to climb out of the welfare cycle and secure the opportunities for prosperity that Rundle's Australia takes for granted? The ABC's Deborah Cameron also decided The Australian was the story and enlisted the aid of a disgruntled former employee to construct a fantastic corporate conspiracy story in which our coverage of the Behrendt case was based not on its news value but upon the need to defend Andrew Bolt, a Herald Sun columnist being sued for racial vilification by Behrendt and others. This is facile, but given Cameron learnt her craft at The Sydney Morning Herald, she should not be judged too harshly for failing to spot the real story. That paper and its sister, The Age, have failed their readers by disregarding this topic and the crucial issues it exposes.

The response to the Behrendt story is another reminder of the crisis in policy debate in Australia. The universities, where many of our finest brains reside, have become detached from the real world, retreating further into the theoretical and away from the practical. The generational challenges of improving indigenous health, education, housing and employment should not be used as some proxy battlefield between the Right and Left urban elites. Rather this should be the focus of intense national efforts to identify the most practical solutions. Gough Whitlam's famous rebuke could equally apply to those who today wail about racist solutions to the indigenous crisis: Only the impotent are pure.

Hope and redemption at Easter 

 

JUDEO-CHRISTIAN tradition has shaped a progressive culture.

Whatever our beliefs about a young Jewish man from Nazareth who was crucified outside Jerusalem 2000 years ago and whose two billion followers today continue to believe he rose from the dead, the Easter message of redemption and fresh hope remains as important as ever in the 21st century. In Australia and New Zealand, the season is especially poignant this year, coinciding with Anzac Day on Monday, when we pay tribute to those whose heroic sacrifices benefit the greater good and reaffirm our belief in allies working in unity towards a safer, more peaceful world.

The rich symbolism and rituals of Easter, secular and sacred, help make the season more than just another extended long weekend, although Australians relish the chance to relax in the company of loved ones and enjoy the beach. The commemoration of the Last Supper, Stations of the Cross and the Paschal fire lit outside darkened churches as the Vigil Mass of the Resurrection begins tonight are powerful reminders of what lies at the heart of Judeo-Christian tradition. The yellow and white blooms, hot cross buns and eggs that are also so much a part of the season are welcome tokens of new life and fresh beginnings.

The Easter message inspires our forward-looking attitude to life, built on hope, that for 20 centuries has made enormous strides by encouraging our best endeavours to deliver progress. Backward-looking, repressive cultures fixated on past golden ages are not conducive to progress. An animist tendency that attributes everything that happens, for good or ill, to dark forces beyond our control renders us helpless victims of fate. The Easter message, by contrast, draws out the best in humanity. It urges us to forgive past wrongs, to be reconciled, to show compassion and, where needed, begin anew.

In contrast to the northern hemisphere, where Easter signals the arrival of spring and the end of the long, dark winter, it is part of autumn in Australia, bringing welcome relief from the ravages of summer. This year, the concept of Easter's healing redemption is especially pertinent as thousands of families continue the struggle to put their lives back together after a summer of natural disasters. As Cardinal George Pell says in his Easter message, our humanity is defined by how we grapple intellectually with the challenges of suffering and evil, or refuse to do so; but even more by what we do in response to catastrophes when they touch us or come close. Those who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods in the floods and cyclone that ravaged eastern Australia, in the Christchurch earthquake and further afield in the tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown in Japan last month found their courage and resilience tested to the limits in the face of almost incomprehensible suffering. At such times, societies bound by sound, solid values pull together and recover better than those wracked by discord and hopelessness.

We feel that the Reverend Niall Reid, moderator of the Uniting Church synod of NSW, drew too long a bow, however, in claiming that such catastrophes are the "inevitable outcome" of "unthinking addiction to economic growth" by powerful people "no more willing to contemplate a different way than they were when, for expediency's sake, they sent Jesus to the cross". Whatever we need to learn from the unfolding science of climate change, natural disasters were part of human experience before the time of Christ. The Easter message should not be hijacked by one side of politics.

Nor should the pursuit of economic growth be equated with sin. Soundly and ethically pursued, economic growth is essential for lifting millions of people out of poverty, creating meaningful employment, providing healthcare and education, funding philanthropy and enhancing human dignity. On that score, the Parable of the Talents makes interesting reading.

Viewed in religious or secular terms, or both, the Easter mysteries offer much to think about. Periodically, the human spirit needs time out from the everyday routine to regroup, enjoy a good glass of wine and a few chocolates, a good book or movie and the company of family and friends in order to return refreshed. Happy Easter.