As politicians seek to understand a post-Brexit, post-Trump world, the release of the 1992-93 Australian cabinet documents reminds us that there was a time when a different conversation going on between leaders and voters.
The year was 1993 and the Labor government led by Paul Keating had just snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, courtesy of Liberal leader John Hewson’s Fightback! package which proposed a goods and services tax. (And showing we voters are nothing if not contrary, John Howard won the 1998 election calling for a GST.)
Keating was trying to resolve a workable framework for native title during the Mabo debate, after the high court repudiated the idea of terra nullius – that Australia was a land that belonged to no one.
This came hot on the heels of the 1992 report into 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody in the 1980s. It was three years before Pauline Hanson was elected as an independent after she was thrown out of the Liberal party for writing a letter to the editor during her campaign which was reminiscent of her comments this year on reverse racism – claiming that Indigenous Australians get more than white people.
Hanson was to write in the Queensland Times in 1996: “How can we expect this race to help themselves when governments shower them with money, facilities and opportunities that only these people can obtain no matter how minute the Indigenous blood is that flows through their veins, and that is what is causing racism.”
Keating was interviewed on 17 June 1993 by 2UE’s talkback king, John Laws, and took calls from listeners worried about the implications of the high court’s decision.
Caller: “My question to the prime minister – I would like to actually ask him quite a few questions on Mabo, but just a very broad question, Mr Keating, why does your government see the Aboriginal people as a much more equal people than the average white Australian?”
Keating: “We don’t. We see them as equal.”
Caller: “Well you might say that, but all the indications are that you don’t.”
Keating: “But I think it was implied in your question that you don’t. You think that non-Aboriginal Australians – there ought to be discrimination in their favour against blacks.”
Caller: “Not whatsoever. I don’t see that at all. But myself and every person I talk to, I am not racist, every person I talk to.”
Keating: “That’s what they all say, don’t they? They put these questions, they always say, ‘I am not racist but, you know, I don’t believe that Aboriginal Australians ought to have a basis in equality with non-Aboriginal Australians’. Well of course that is part of the problem.”
Caller: “Aren’t they more equal than us at the moment with the preferences they get?”
Keating: “It is not for me to be giving you a history lesson, they were largely dispossessed of the land they held.”
Caller: “I think there is a question over that. I think a lot of people would tell you that. You are telling us one thing and expecting us to believe it.”
Keating: “Well, if you are sitting on the title of any block of land in New South Wales you can bet an Aboriginal person at some stage was dispossessed of it.”
Caller: “You know that for sure, do you?”
Keating: “Well of course we know it for sure.”
Caller: “Yeah. Well, going on to your last caller there, I think he had some pertinent things to say that you couldn’t answer either.”
Keating: “Yeah I know but you hold his view, don’t you?”
Caller: “Of course I do.”
Keating: “That’s part of the problem.”
John Laws: “Let’s clarify the view. What is the view?”
Caller: “My question in general, I mean is with regard just to the whole Aboriginal question, is why does the average white Australian feel that he is prejudiced against? Why? Because of the things your government does.”
Keating: “Like what?”
Caller: “The preferential treatment.”
Keating: “Are you challenging the high court decision? Are you saying that the high court has got this all wrong?”
Caller: “No, I am not saying that at all. I wouldn’t know who was on the high court.”
Keating: “Well why don’t you sign off, if you don’t know anything about it and you’re not interested, goodbye. You can’t challenge these things and then say I don’t know about them.”
John Laws: “Well, he’s gone. But you see sadly what you are hearing there is in some ways very typical of the feeling that exists and it may be a very unhealthy feeling but it exists there. What do you do to placate those people who feel that strongly, and they do feel, I talk to them every day, they do feel that they are being disadvantaged by what is being given to the Aboriginal people.”
Keating: “Well, what is being given to the Aboriginal people is at this stage limited land. Let’s say, before the Mabo judgment, limited land opportunities and some income support and social justice in education and in health, so there are commonwealth programs for health and social justice to deal with such things as diseases which particularly afflicted Aboriginal people, like glaucoma of the eyes, and infant mortality and all these other problems they had; we have tried to direct funding to deal with those problems, to extend educational opportunities to Aboriginal people.”
The Keating government lost the 1996 election, at which Hanson won the seat of Oxley – a seat that had long been held by Labor, including by its former opposition leader and governor general Bill Hayden.
• Cabinet records for 1992 and 1993, held by the National Archives of Australia, reach the open access period on 1 January 2017. Information about the cabinet records, and copies of key cabinet documents, including selected submissions and decisions, are available on the archives website
