Australia needs new standards on the rights of indigenous people

The United Nations has established the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which has a mandate to discuss indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health and human rights. The United Nations World Conference on Indigenous Peoples will be held in New York in September 2014.

The themes of the Conference are set out in the Alta Outcome Document

This could set a new standard for Australia as a whole.

There is still distinct disadvantage in Australia, Australian Options Magazine May 31, 2014 in Focus, May 2014 no 76 Dr Valerie Cooms* “……..With the enhanced involvement of the UN and the continuing relationship with resistance organisations, the Commonwealth had to not only address the suffering and treatment of Aboriginal populations, but also had to remove racist legislation from all Australian statutes (including its own). It was forced to commit to a program of land rights for Aboriginal peoples to address the disadvantage associated with the dispossession of lands by the colonisation process.[xviii] The UN also demanded Australia put anti-discrimination legislation in place. By 1975, the Commonwealth had removed its own discriminatory legislation, undertaken an investigation into a national land rights program by engaging Justice Woodward, and introduced the Racial Discrimination Act 1975as well as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Queensland Discriminatory Laws) Act, 1975.[xix] The latter was introduced specifically to over-ride the 1971 Queensland Act which the State Government had refused to acknowledge contained discriminatory provisions involving the confiscation of earnings and property of Aboriginal workers. Though, according to John Pilger, no federal government ever enforced the 1975 Act about Queensland.[xx]

While the Racial Discrimination Act was watered down to a conciliatory process, its introduction along with the engagement of Justice Woodward, the removal of overtly racist legislation cleared the way for the Commonwealth to have UN conventions ratified. The Commonwealth also established the National Aboriginal Consultative Congress (NACC) in 1973 and informed the public it would be advised by the representatives elected from across Australia.[xxi] However, the Federal Government failed to fund NACC’s secretariat or to take advice that it either could not address or did not agree with.[xxii] Arguably, the NACC was put into place to quieten the growing Aboriginal activism which was in constant contact with not only the UN but other international resistance organisations.[xxiii]

Indisputably it was the need to avert UN and international criticism in order to have conventions ratified that saw the Commonwealth remove or over-ride racist legislation and address the appalling treatment and condition of Aboriginal people in Queensland. Yet as clearly demonstrated here, the Aboriginal policies of all Governments were merely modified into more acceptable methods of colonisation that could avert international criticism.

In 2014 and with decolonialisation almost complete, the critical United Nations’ body is the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which first met in 2002.[xxiv] The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2007.[xxv] Only four countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, voted against. In 2009, the Rudd Government reversed the position that had been taken by the Howard Government and endorsed the UN Declaration.[xxvi]The Howard Government was based its opposition on claims that it allowed customary law to override legislative law. The current Attorney George Brandis said in 2009 that the UN Declaration had provisions ‘that go well beyond the rights recognised in Australian domestic law’. He said it conferred the right to seek compensation for land taken without permission and to veto projects affecting land, without providing recognition for the rights of third parties.[xxvii]

As the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner said The Declaration is the most comprehensive tool we have available to advance the rights of Indigenous peoples.[xxviii] The Australian Human Rights Commission in its Community Guide to the Declaration says that the preamble makes some key points including that

The UN and international law have an important role in protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples. Governments cannot avoid international scrutiny for the mistreatment of their Indigenous peoples. Professor James Anaya’s is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human

rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people. His 2010 report on the Situation of Indigenous peoples in Australia is a good example of international scrutiny. For example, Anaya says that the leasing scheme under the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing

Promotes individual land tenure to the detriment of traditional indigenous communal land tenure and diminishes indigenous control over lands that traditionally have been held collectively. In this regard, the individualization of lands could implicate threats to indigenous peoples’ cultural integrity and way of life, in addition to affronting their property rights. [xxix]

In a detailed review of the Northern Territory Intervention and after taking account of changes made by the ALP Government, he

reiterates the need to fully purge the NTER of its racially discriminatory character and conform it to relevant international standards, through a process genuinely driven by the voices of the affected indigenous people.

Self-determination, rights to ownership and control, cultural integrity and to free, prior and informed consent are some of the recurring themes of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The United Nations has established the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which has a mandate to discuss indigenous issues related to economic and social development, culture, the environment, education, health and human rights. The United Nations World Conference on Indigenous Peoples will be held in New York in September 2014. [xxxi]

The themes of the Conference are set out in the Alta Outcome Document named after the global preparatory meeting held in the Sami Parliament in Alma.[xxxii] The four themes are right of self determination and permanent sovereignty over lands, territories, resources, air, ice, oceans and waters, mountains and forests; UN system action for the implementation of the rights of Indigenous Peoples; Implementation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; Indigenous Peoples’ priorities for Development with free, prior and informed consent.

The final paragraph of the Alta Document is

We further call upon States to ensure the full, equal and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in the development of mechanisms to ensure that ecosystem based sustainable development is equitable, non-discriminatory, participatory, accountable, and transparent, with equality, consent and decolonization as important overarching themes that protect, recognize and respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and that are in harmony with the sacredness of Mother Earth.[xxxiii]

This could set a new standard for Australia as a whole. http://www.australian-options.org.au/2014/05/there-is-still-distinct-disadvantage-in-australia/