Government attempts coup d'etat at ATSIC
ATSIC hits back

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) is under 
the most concerted attack in its history with the Howard Government setting 
up an agency with a brief to strip ATSIC of its funding. This agency has 
been put in place ahead of the conclusion of a Government-commissioned 
review of ATSIC and will essentially make any findings of that review 
redundant.

ATSIC's staff is to be cut from 1300 to 20, with those remaining to be 
moved on to a new board run by the agency, to be known as the Aboriginal 
and Torres Strait Islander Services.

The new board and all monies will be under the control of Government 
appointee Wayne Gibbons as chief executive officer. Gibbons is to replace 
the 18 elected board members and 400 elected regional councillors as the 
organisation's ultimate authority. In the lead up to the coup, which has 
bee n brewing since the Howard Government first took office, ATSIC Chairman 
Geoff Clark and ATSIC Deputy Chairman Ray Robinson released the following 
statement:

It's time the mainstream media and the Federal Government stopped using the 
(ATSIC) as the 'whipping post' for every problem in Aboriginal Australia.

It's time they got their collective foot off our neck and came clean on who 
is responsible for the Third World conditions in our communities.

ATSIC is not responsible for the provision of essential services in health, 
housing, education and employment.

The media know this but do not report it.

Why?

Minister Ruddock knows but rarely says a word in defence of this 
organisation.

All Indigenous people ought to ask themselves why the mainstream media and 
mainstream politicians want to white-ant ATSIC?

We have issued this statement because it is time our people stood up and 
got some real facts on the table.

We need to let it be known that mainstream State and Territory governments 
are happy to sit back and let us take all the public blame for their 
failures but privately let us shoulder more and more of their 
responsibility in delivering essential services to our people.

We ought to be asking why it is that the minister for ATSIC is happy to 
move, as he has done so often in recent months, against this organisation 
ands its leaders, based entirely on "perceptions".

What about facts, Minister?

We wonder why he had never moved to close down a detention centre, given 
the widespread perception among large sections of the Australian community 
that asylum seekers are treated inhumanly in those centres?

Despite 12 short years of existence, ATSIC has delivered more to the 
Indigenous people than any government, Federal, State or Territory, in 200 
years of colonial rule.

The current ATSIC model is the best we have. We need to unite to protect 
and build on it. Has one ATSIC critic ever put up a better model, which 
delivers more power to our people?

We urge all members of the ATSIC elected arm to categorically reject any 
move by Minister Ruddock or those working for him, to take any powers off 
the duly elected ATSIC Board ahead of his own review into the organisation.

We are happy to work with that review. We have stated so publicly.

For the Minister to now suggest he will move on separation of powers on the 
basis of "perceptions" before the review has even had time to canvass such 
a threshold issue is an insult to both the consultation process now under 
way with our people and to the review team itself.

We are heartily sick and tired of media reports suggesting a bitter feud 
between us is making ATSIC dysfunctional. This is rubbish.

ATSIC is not dysfunctional.

We have a number of political differences, as do most mainstream political 
leaders.

We are able to put them aside and work together to deliver better outcomes 
for our people.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in ATSIC knows that the first 
fully-elected Board of ATSIC got more work done at the coalface than any 
other before it.

We are honoured to have been elected as chairman and deputy chairman to 
that board and to have been re-elected to the current Board of 
Commissioners.

The first elected board recognised that we needed to make the States and 
Territories accountable for their failure in delivering basic services to 
our people.

The Commonwealth cannot.

We can.

That's why we put aside our political differences with them and signed 
essential-service agreements with every State and Territory government 
during the last term of the board. We will focus during this term on their 
implementation.

Aboriginal people are not concerned about what they read in The Australian 
or the Brisbane Courier Mail. Both newspapers sell few copies in our 
communities.

Our constituents are more interested in the fact that ATSIC has, time and 
again, been forced to step in and provide the services to their 
constituents because the Commonwealth, States and Territories have not 
accepted their responsibilities.

This is the real debate in Indigenous affairs.

The fact is the Commonwealth cannot make the funders of first resort — the 
States and Territories — accountable for their expenditure in providing 
basic services to their Indigenous citizens.

No one has to take our word for it.

They need look no further than the latest report from the Australian 
National Audit Office (ANAO) on ATSIC's management of the $860 million in 
grants it provides to Indigenous organisations around Australia to provide 
such services.

These funds are contained within the Community Housing and Infrastructure 
Program (CHIP) and CDEP, the two programs the mainstream media repeatedly 
suggest should be taken from ATSIC.

The report blows a huge hole in the central core of their logic.

The ANAO said ATSIC's financial management of more than $860 million in 
grants was sound.

It clearly stated the real problem for ATSIC was the fact that it was being 
forced into providing supplementary funding because the State and 
Territories would not accept their responsibilities in this regard.

The recent Commonwealth Grants Commission report into Indigenous funding 
made it clear that ATSIC's major program — CHIP — was the best-targeted 
Indigenous assistance program in Australia.

That program is now delivering housing and essential services to more than 
40,000 people in 600 communities around the country.

The Grants Commission also reinforced the fact that it was mainstream 
government programs that failed to meet the needs of Indigenous 
Australians.

The Australian National Audit Office has recently given ATSIC its ninth 
unqualified audit, yet our critics say millions of dollars are being 
squandered.

"Misinformed bile"

Why, then, are they not calling for the abolition of the Australian 
National Audit Office, or the abolition of the Commonwealth Grants 
Commission?

From our viewpoint all of their misinformed bile is reserved for ATSIC.

One only has to take a moment to realise those who lobby for ATSIC to lose 
its programs want less accountability, not more.

They want those programs taken from the most scrutinised agency in the 
country and handed over to the States and Territories, the least 
scrutinised in the country in terms of delivering outcomes for our people.

ATSIC is not perfect. Show us a Commonwealth, State or Territory agency 
that is.

But we are not dysfunctional.

There are due processes in place for dealing with the personal problems we 
both face.

Those processes should be allowed to run their course, or are we also to 
accept that the presumption of innocence is not something blackfellas can 
expect from the white justice system?

The media is free to attack ATSIC. But freedom of the press is a two-edged 
sward.

The media have a responsibility to report the facts, not lies and 
prejudices.

They can continue to white-ant ATSIC as much as they like but we call on 
all our fellow members of the elected arm to fight for more power for our 
people against those who wish to take it away.

The best way to start is to bring the real accountability debate in 
Indigenous affairs out into the open and to call on the Commonwealth 
Government to let the review and legal processes run their proper course.

ATSIC's programs provide it with the leverage it requires to get the 
Commonwealth, State and Territories to the negotiating table.

We repeat that leverage has, and is being, well used by ATSIC to forge 
agreements with State and Territory governments across the country.

Take those away and ATSIC loses its power as the only Commonwealth agency 
able to hold the States and Territories to account.

Now that would be a tragedy.

No one should ever forget that despite what the politicians and the 
mainstream media say, the recent ATSIC election resulted in a record 
turnout of more than 50,000 voters, record nominations and a substantial 
increase in new voters (7600 enrolled in 10 weeks).

ATSIC is clearly increasing its relevance to Aboriginal Australia.

Those are 50,000 solid reasons why we need to defend our record against 
those who, for their own reasons, continually seek to diminish a proud 
record of achievement on the ground for our people.