Building more than water tanks

Most of us with strong opinions on the rights and wrongs of Aboriginal Australia have never been in the remote places where these are most pronounced. As a new MP, I was in that position; so given the importance of Aboriginal Australia in our national story, I decided that I should become better informed.

That started in 1994 and 1995, spending a week each year in and around Alice Springs. It continued with regular week-long trips to outback Australia, as employment minister in the Howard government, especially to Cape York; and then as health minister, to the APY lands in South Australia, for which my departments had “whole of government” responsibility for coordinating federal services.

Early in 2008, after becoming shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, I called Noel Pearson, confessed that I’d visited dozens of Aboriginal settlements over the years, but had hardly spent longer than 18 hours in any of them, and asked if he would sponsor longer trips where I could actually be useful as opposed to being a glorified tourist. I was conscious of not being a “seagull”, the term I’d first heard years earlier in Wujal Wujal, to describe “white guys who fly in, shit on us, and then disappear”. What followed, in subsequent years, was three weeks as a teacher’s aide in Coen, 10 days as a truancy assistant in Aurukun, five days as a builder’s assistant in Hope Vale in 2011 and a long weekend (along with about a dozen business leaders) refurbishing the Aurukun school library.

Then as PM, I took about a dozen ministers and departmental heads to East Arnhem Land in 2014, and in 2015 to the Torres Strait, so that – for a week each year – remote Australia was not just the government’s focus but its main location. Although nothing can really substitute for fully-lived experience, immersion-even-for-a-week gives a far better sense of the reality on the ground than meetings and briefing papers, plus flying visits.

After leaving Parliament, what I had always intended to happen most years, was interrupted by COVID, and then the Voice campaign. So I was very grateful when Nova Peris, the first Aboriginal Olympic gold medallist, the first Aboriginal woman in Parliament and former Labor senator, agreed to have me visit Bawaka; a former outstation, described as “arguably the most iconic site in East Arnhem Land”, where her kinsman, Timmy Djawa Burarrawanga, is the traditional owner, and where her foundation is supporting a water project.

For six days last week, Nova ran the logistics while I joined Timmy, members of his extended family, project manager Bonface Mbege, plus the Australian boss of the global charity IsraAID, Yossi Eshed, helping local contractors on its first stage: building two outdoor showers, clearing for more campsites and for two large new water tanks, plus digging piping ditches towards the more secure water supply needed if Bawaka is to become a financially self-sustaining tourist destination.

With the Gove mine soon to close, tourism is East Arnhem Land’s main prospective economic base, which means places like Bawaka must be able to cater reliably for more than a mere handful of travellers at any one time. As well as better water, this means more reliable power, better sewerage and waste management; and above all, an all-weather road.

Like everywhere in remote Australia, Bawaka’s progress is bedevilled by the proliferation of separate programs, departments and governments, all with overlapping responsibilities and conflicting priorities, with no one really in charge. Then there is the land council too (just one for half of the NT) and internal politics that can further demoralise local effort. In remote Australia, people don’t fund projects themselves, or borrow for them, because there is no freehold title that can be offered as security. That is why almost everything depends on obtaining government funding which is subject to dragged-out politics, unlike a simple deal with a bank or business partner. Yet the world changes one person and one place at a time, and every example of local leaders and communities persevering through the bureaucratic labyrinth to comparative success, encourages others to think that they too might succeed.

No less than the rest of us, Aboriginal Australians need to see a better future beckoning: with good schooling, decent employment and consequent better housing. This is even more important at places like Bawaka where culture can yet be an economic asset rather than a block to engaging fully with the modern world.

It’s fitting that local Jewish donors are supporting Nova’s project; because no minority has been better at keeping a distinct identity, while also assimilating to the Australian way of life. It is precisely because Jewish Australians have been so successful at being simultaneously proud Jews and patriotic Australians that they are a suitable role model for any who currently feel that they’re trapped between two worlds or that they can’t really be Australian without surrendering who they are.

I have long believed that modern Australia has an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation, and immigrant character, starting with the settlers, who were then joined by people from all over the world. Today’s big challenge is ensuring that all of us, regardless of ancestry or cultural background, are part of Team Australia. Let’s hope last week’s effort, uniting the Nova Peris Foundation and IsraAID with a former PM putting in some “sweat equity”, might be a step towards more national unity.

Tony Abbott is a former Australian prime minister.