Role is not to question why
09.08.2003
The children were hungry and there was no food available in their homes
PRIME Minister John Howard's visit to the remote Napranum and Aurukun Aboriginal communities on Cape York last week was an important statement to the nation that the horrific problems affecting the lives of these people are being treated seriously.
He did not make any major announcements, but they will come at the end of this month when federal and state ministers have a meeting with him in Canberra.
The groundwork has been done by Employment Minister Tony Abbott, who has spent the past year studying the conditions on Cape York and visiting communities with Aboriginal lawyer and reform advocate Noel Pearson.
I first visited Cape communities 20 years ago as part of a media scrum with then local government minister Russ Hinze.
One experience has always stuck in my mind. On our way to the airport from one community where we had stayed overnight, we came across a young boy and his younger sister.
Our driver stopped the car and chastised them, and they ran off. I asked what the problem was and he explained that coconut trees had been planted along the roadway as part of a ``dress-up'' before the minister's visit.
A coconut seedling sprouts from the actual coconut, and these children were going along pulling up the coconuts and eating them. The children were hungry and there was no food available in their homes.
Any attempt to tell the real story about horror living conditions on these ``missions'' was all but impossible because of the government code of silence that operated, and the taboos about certain issues.
It was the late 1980s and early 1990s when things got so horrible they could no longer be hidden. That coincided with the introduction by the Bjelke-Petersen government of alcohol canteens on the communities, and the ensuing war-zone lawlessness.
Every so often there would be reports of ``riots'' when hundreds of drunken people began fighting, and police were powerless to do anything. Then the murder rates began to escalate, rapes and serious assaults became endemic.
The first ``official'' public condemnation of the situation really came from the courts, with judges expressing their dismay at the incredible examples of violence coming before them.
The media then had to take a lead, and taboos such as domestic violence and incest were revealed in all their stark horror.
Pictures were shown of the victims: the child rape victims, the women with battered faces and blinded eyes, men with knives and spears through their bodies.
The government reacted because of the public outcry, and people like Boni Robertson and Tony Fitzgerald investigated and lodged reports.
Leaders such as Pearson came forward and offered solutions, and again governments reacted positively.
But what has never changed -- particularly under the various state governments in Queensland -- is the threat to public servants if ever they speak out about what they witness every day in their work with the communities.
The nurses, doctors, police, teachers, welfare and health professionals -- they are the ones who have had to pick up the pieces.
I have had hundreds of conversations with such people, who would love to tell the truth but can't,, as to do so would jeopardise their careers.
Last week Dr Lara Wieland, who had spent three years at Kowanyama community, presented a letter to Howard setting out possible ways to give genuine assistance to Aboriginal people living in the region. She pointed out sensible things like the need to have health professionals permanently in communities to address the serious issues of alcohol rehabilitation. She also demonstrated that police numbers were allocated on a population basis, not on workload.
SHE told how she had reported cases of sexual abuse of children to the Families Department and they had not been followed up. Or if they had, the victim was still forced to live with the alleged perpetrator.
The State Government immediately flew into defence mode and Premier Peter Beattie, who knows Wieland personally, accused her of taking advantage of the ``emotional occasion'' of the Prime Minister's visit.
What made it worse is that he knows this woman is a dedicated professional who is totally honest and decent, and deserving of respect. She has lived with the problems every day, and her reputation among her peers -- and more importantly, among indigenous people -- is impeccable.
She doesn't play political games. Her only concern is for the people she has to care for: the residents of the remote communities.
The State Government's attitude to silencing any politically damaging comment from public servants such as Wieland is every bit as reprehensible and bullying as that of the Bjelke-Petersen administration which today's Labor people love to heap scorn upon.
This is particularly demonstrated in their scandalous attitude to cover-up through stymying access to freedom of information.
In the case of Wieland, the Opposition's call for the Crime and Misconduct Commission to investigate is proper and appropriate. If what she says in correct, it is clearly a case of official misconduct. In the meantime, she must wonder why she bothers.
And Beattie succeeds again in getting the message out to any concerned citizen who might be tempted to follow the courageous and selfless lead of Wieland: If you open your mouth in criticism of his government in any way, you'll very quickly get it filled with a jackboot.
