Indigenous Day Speech, delivered by Stewart Levitt at Black Business Conference, University of Queen

What right does the Australian Government or the State Governments for that matter, have to exercise dominion over Australia's Aborigines?

It is effectively just through the occupation and adverse possession of their land and the imposition of our will over the Aboriginal population that White authority is claimed.

When the colonies negotiated for Federation, there was no Aboriginal representation. The Commonwealth Constitution specifically excluded any power to make laws for the good government of Aborigines and the situation was only changed by the 1967 Referendum. However, Blacks could not and did not vote in the Referendum and the arrogation of power over Aborigines occurred without their consent.

We can only speculate that the 1967 Referendum, which was propounded in order to ensure that Aborigines could be subject to Commonwealth Legislation and counted as Australian Citizens in the Commonwealth Census, was at least, in part, motivated by the Menzies Government?s desire to ensure that The National Service Act (1965) was extended to cover Aborigines as well.

After all, Black enlisted men in the U.S. were being despatched in their hundreds of thousands to die in the rice paddies of Vietnam - Australian White males were being conscripted - but the Aborigines were being left out. It is hardly surprising that the Referendum was passed in time for Aborigines to be consigned to do battle against the Viet Cong.

It is very convenient for Governments to try to take context out of an examination of the Status Quo. That is what the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Mal Brough, has attempted to do with respect to child abuse and domestic violence.

Forget that indigenous culture in Australia, however socially advanced, was at an earlier stage of pre-industrial development than comparable indigenous cultures in Africa and North and South America. The exposure of Aborigines to European civilisation has extended over a much shorter period, than in comparable scenarios where colonialism had confronted native culture.

For most of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Whites exploited Aboriginal child labour. White paedophilia went unprosecuted because the law required that there be proof of the victim?s age in order to prosecute, and proof of age was difficult to establish in Aboriginal communities where birth records were not kept and Aboriginal oral testimony was not accepted because Blacks were 'heathens' who could not swear an oath.

Whites introduced venereal disease to the Aboriginal population, where it was previously unknown, along with opium, liquor, cigarettes and other poisons.

Former Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Senator John Herron, submitted on behalf of the Federal Government to the Inquiry into the Stolen Generation in the year 2000, that:

"The treatment of separated Aboriginal children was essentially lawful and bengin in intent' It is impossible to evaluate by contemporary standards, decisions that were taken in the past."

It is true that the obsession at the time with the protection of property rights, rather than with civil rights, was even greater than it is now ? hence the deportation of British convicts for what might by today's standards, have amounted to petty economic crimes.

As the Member for Claremont in the Queensland Parliament stated in the Queensland Parliamentary Debates in 1901:

"What a curious thing it is ? that the Minister believes in a minimum wage for Aboriginal Niggers, but will vote against a minimum wage for Whitemen like himself."

However, there are important distinctions.

Throughout most of the 19th Century, you could kill a Black man with impunity, at least North of the New South Wales-Queensland border and for most of the 19th Century, within New South Wales as well.

For most of the 19th Century and a good part of the 20th Century, the prospect of a Whiteman being prosecuted for raping or molesting Black women or children was minimal, certainly in Northern Australia.

Blacks, particularly in Northern Australia, were virtual slaves throughout most of the 19th Century and the majority of the 20th Century.

Despite The Racial Discrimination Act, 1975, Aborigines were denied Award wages in Queensland between 1975 and 1986 and indeed, prior to 1975, were paid much less than the minimum wage, if they ever received a wage at all. Confined to government reserves, settlements, and missions, their money was appropriated to trusts and then misappropriated by the police or Missions or misapplied to be spent on public works, which for the White population, were paid for by revenue collected from taxes.

Black amenities, such as they were, were paid for in Queensland from the proceeds of the embezzlement of Aboriginal wages and benefits due to them.

Well into the 20th Century, Aborigines were denied basic labour rights.

In 1957 on Palm Island, seven men went on strike, and they and their families were then arrested and taken in chains across to Townsville, en route to Woorabinda. Where were the trade unions?

In 1957, infant mortality on Palm Island was 15 times the Queensland State average but money was taken from child endowment, owed to Palm Island Aborigines, to build infrastructure on the mainland in Townsville.

Today, White Australians can live the Australian dream, buy their own homes with a mortgage and obtain gainful employment with the benefit of a background of First World education, and access to high-standards of medical and dental care.

In Palm Island today, Aborigines cannot buy their own land. They rent poor quality Government housing on land which has been classified as Crown Land, though the Blacks have lived on that land for decades and they are second, third or even fourth generation residents. There is only one store, a Government-owned and operated store, which charges 'Harrods' prices and a fish and chip shop, which charges 'Michelin' prices. There is no cinema or club. There is a small hospital facility where you would be taking your life in your hands if you were seriously ill. The 'Grieving Room', is a prominent feature of the hospital facility on Palm.

There are very few flights to and from the Island and the ferry costs 'a mozza'. Even subsidised residents? fares to Townsville, 60km away, approach the $100.00 mark.

The police, an almost entirely White police force, have had an atrocious record of fraud and misappropriation as custodians of Aboriginal wages.

In November 2004, under the watch of Sergeant Chris Hurley, who arrested him, Cameron Doomadgee died in police custody.

The Coronial Inquest into the death of Cameron Doomadgee has been adjourned, pending an appeal against Chris Hurley's Complaints Record being admitted in the Coronial Inquest.

There were serious credibility questions surrounding the Police Autopsy Report.

White police on Palm Island presided over the death of Cameron Doomadgee who was arrested for doing something that everyone on Palm Island does, including the police, namely swear.

It was called a 'public nuisance'.

The police were supposed to protect the Palm Islanders. Aboriginals in the Government settlement on Palm Island had worked for nothing or next to nothing for close to a century. Their wages, such as they were, and child endowment payments, had been taken from them by the Queensland Government.

The police station and barracks on Palm Island, had been paid for many times over by the Palm Island Aborigines, with their blood, toil, tears and sweat.

In November, 2004 Cameron Doomadgee was killed in the police station.

According to Aboriginal Lore and tradition, ?smoking? or burning the site or scene of a tragedy is a traditional rite.

On November 26, after a week of public expressions of anger over the police failure to explain the death of Cameron Doomadgee, the police station and barracks were burned down.

Not one police officer was injured. No person was injured.

The police station and barracks were there ostensibly to protect the population of Palm Island, which was overwhelmingly Aboriginal. Queensland authorities failed to protect the Aboriginals or to provide them with anything like equal access to rights and benefits enjoyed by other Queenslanders.

In jurisprudential terms, according to Enlightenment political theory, Democracy depends upon the observance of a social contract between the Government and the people. Australian Governments have committed gross breaches of contract against Palm Island Aborigines since European occupation of the Island.

The right to rule over Palm Island Aborigines has been forfeited by the Queensland Government, as was manifest from their conduct in the face of the burning of what the Queensland Government perceived to be Government property.

Over the ensuing hours and days, the Island, which contains sites sacred under Aboriginal Lore, was effectively occupied by paramilitary police.

Alleged rioters were shot with stun guns in front of their children, who in turn were held at gunpoint when police forcibly entered their homes, smashing open and kicking down doors.

The idea that snipers would be deployed against fellow Australians is inconceivable to White Australians, south of the border. Even after the Cronulla riots, there were no reports of snipers training their sights on Sydney's beach-goers, whatever their origin.

The fact that the protection of property appropriated by the Crown, even gerry-built Palm Island property, was placed on a higher plane than the value of Black lives by the Queensland Government on Palm Island in 2004, speaks volumes.

In this country, Aborigines with their pre-industrial culture, were beset by trespassing colonists who forcibly evicted them from their hunting grounds, pushing them into more arid areas. When the Blacks poached cattle and sheep for food, they were rounded-up and killed by White possies, assisted by native police whom they had forced into White service.

Thereafter, Aborigines were either forced onto missions, government settlements or onto reserves - or slaughtered if they came into conflict with White settlers.

This was the Aboriginal tragedy, right up into the second-half of the 20th Century.

Those of us who can point to our own home lives, parenting and nurturing, as being the source of our own success, can hardly blame those to whom we have denied their own heritage and with whom we have failed to share ours, for their poor adaptation to our social order.

Aboriginal social development has been disrupted from generation to generation.

Post-war scholars have studied the children of Holocaust victims, who have appraised the effect of the persecution of European Jewry on the lives of the next generation.

But the elimination, dehumanisation, enslavement, denigration and abuse of Aborigines has continued over many generations in Northern Australia, without let-up, in some areas, to the present day.

Elsewhere, the emancipation of Aborigines into mainstream society, is a relatively recent advent, spanning only the last 35-odd years of the 220-odd years since European settlement.

Even today, crimes against Aborigines, particularly in North Queensland, are much less likely to be vigorously investigated and diligently prosecuted with appropriate charges being laid and sentences being imposed, than crimes committed against Whites.

Public attitudes towards Aborigines, particularly in Northern Queensland, are so hostile and prejudiced, that there is a real question that Blacks can be tried fairly by White juries.

With this background, we have recently established The Errol Wyles Justice Foundation, which has now obtained registration as a charity in New South Wales, for the purpose of building bridges of understanding between Aboriginal Australians and those who administer the system of criminal justice, by providing strategic representation to put the blow torch on social evils and historical injustice.

It is only by building confidence in the legal system, that Aborigines can accept the dominion of Western Government, without being dogged by the feelings of violation and despair, suffered by a people under occupation.

Stewart A. Levitt