Mal Brough, former Federal Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES: The man at the centre of the Federal Government’s intervention in Aboriginal communities with the strongest push ever to save the health, welfare and sexual life of indigenous children, Mal Brough, intriguingly is an Aboriginal descendent. His sister identifies herself as an Aboriginal woman and is married to an Aboriginal pastor of a Christian evangelical church. In The Bulletin on 10 July 2007 Julie-Anne Davies said:
There is little deviation in the way people—whether family, friends or political foes describe him. Unsophisticated uncomplicated, a fair dinkum bloke. This, it seems, is his X-factor.
Brough joined the Australian army as a private in 1979 after leaving school early. When he retired in 1988, he was a captain. Some who have known Brough since his early days in the Queensland Liberal Party will tell you he is a straight shooter, an impatient politician with bureaucratic double-speak, and a man whose army training and natural instinct demands action. I had a meeting with Mal Brough recently. I have known him since his days in the employment services and Treasury ministries. He got the employment services portfolio onto its best footing ever. Now as Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs he holds the poisoned chalice. It is almost the no-win portfolio, but he has gone into it with the commanding attitude of an Army captain. He first won an extra $1.8 billion out of Treasury for the chronically neglected and underfunded disability sector. Then his intervention into indigenous communities brought the Prime Minister as well as his department to support him. Reverend Rod Benson, Director of the Centre for Christian Ethics at Morling College, said of Mal Brough:
On June 21 Prime Minister John Howard, along with the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, announced that Australia was in the grip of a “national emergency” on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.
The crisis was brought to light by the release of the 15 June report entitled “Little Children Are Sacred”, arising from a Northern Territory Government inquiry headed by eminent Australians Rex Wild and Pat Anderson. Responding to the present crisis, Mr Howard announced that his Government would introduce a raft of strong measures aimed at addressing violence and abuse in Northern Territory indigenous communities. Reverend Benson said further:
The duty of care to the young of this country is paramount,” he said, “and nobody who has any acquaintance with that report could be other than appalled by … the cumulative neglect of many over a long period of time and frustrated in the extreme of the inability of governments to come to terms with an effective response to deal with this problem … Without urgent action to restore social order, the nightmare will go on—more grog, more violence, more pornography and more sexual abuse—as the generation we are supposed to save sinks further into the abyss.
Strong words with strong legislative measures to follow. Opponents have accused Howard of racism, paternalism and political opportunism. On the charge of racism, the Government’s heavy-handed approach to welfare reforms, scrapping the permit system, and compulsory acquisition of Aboriginal lands suggest a racially directed reform program because introducing similar measures to suburban Australia is unimaginable. On the matter of paternalism, the ideological tide seems to have turned in favour of drastic and draconian policy solutions. As Noel Pearson movingly said on ABC radio in June:
Ask the terrified kid huddling in the corner, when there’s a binge-drinking party going on down the hall, ask them if they want a bit of paternalism.
The Australian editorialised at the time:
Those who oppose the supposedly paternalistic intervention of outsiders are condemning many Aboriginal children to a living hell.
As for political opportunism, that is the nature of professional politics. Mr Howard has made an art of that during his last 11 years as Prime Minister. The Australian Government subsequently has passed five bills on measures for alcohol restriction, computer auditing to detect prohibited pornographic material, better management of community stores to deliver healthier and more affordable food, five-year leases on some communities to enable better management of investments and improved living conditions, land tenure changes for town camps, and removal of customary law as a relevant mitigating factor for bail and sentencing conditions.
The passage through Parliament of such wide-ranging legislation is a significant achievement. No wonder Mr Brough said that it was the most important moment of his political life. What have the churches said about all this? Some have offered cautious support and others strong criticism. Some church leaders are concerned because legislative and punitive measures alone are unable to deliver morality in accordance with acceptable community standards. The churches must pay careful attention and not only criticise but work towards solutions to the problems facing indigenous communities. 15 November 2007.
