No Small Change by Frank Brennan

Author:Frank Brennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2015-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

For the Liberal–Country Party Coalition Government, Prime Minister McMahon made almost no mention of Aboriginal issues in his campaign speech. He said:

We have announced programmes for urban and regional development, the protection of the environment, the promotion of the arts, and the welfare and advancement of our Aboriginal fellow citizens.

This has been done in the last 20 months – and it is only the beginning. We promise you that the return of this Government will guarantee further constructive and, above all, responsible changes – not for the few, but for the benefit of all.32

By the time Labor came to office, ‘not a single “general purpose” lease had been approved’.33 The Coalition had failed to deliver any of their promised land reform. McMahon’s 1972 Australia Day address had effected no real change in land policy. But it had mobilised the Labor Party inside the parliament and the tent embassy protesters on the lawns outside. It had contributed to a change of government. During the brief two-week ‘Whitnard Government’, when Whitlam and his deputy Lance Barnard held all portfolios, the CAA kick-started major reforms. Dexter had been living in the United States during JF Kennedy’s first 100 days as president and knew that resolute action was possible with a new government rightly focused. Dexter thought the ministry of two had turned policy around 180 degrees in just ten days. They recommended the appointment of Edward Woodward, who had been the barrister for the Aborigines in the Milirrpum case, to conduct the promised royal commission on Aboriginal land rights. They settled the commission’s terms of reference, having to accommodate the ALP’s abandonment of an Aboriginal veto on mining activity on Aboriginal land.

The old Department of the Interior with its assimilationist culture was abolished. Dexter was appointed secretary of the new Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA), which had to absorb many of the old Interior personnel. He fostered good working relations with most Commonwealth and state departments. The old managers on remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory were recast as community advisers. Universal alcohol restrictions were lifted. Aboriginal residents were told they were free to return to country; there was no need for them to remain within the town areas of communities. This was the beginning of the outstation movement. The CAA recommended the establishment of a Bureau of Advice and Aid for Aborigines.34 Cabinet was told that ‘the local autonomy or self-determination of Aboriginal communities, as sought by the Government, cannot properly be fostered where all advice, community services, and development must be dependent on a department or departments’.35

In his three years as prime minister, Whitlam had three ministers for Aboriginal affairs: Gordon Bryant, Jim Cavanagh and Les Johnson. Only Cavanagh had a good working relationship with his senior bureaucrats. The CAA had expected Manfred Cross to be the initial minister, but Bryant scored the position, in part because of his longstanding involvement with FCAATSI, which included many left-wing union members and politically active urban Aborigines. Bryant never saw a need to

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