The break-up of Australia
Keith Windschuttle
Quadrant
September 2000

In the concluding chapter of his recently published A Concise History of Australia, Stuart Macintyre reflects on the history of the Roman occupation of Britain. It lasted more than four hundred years but eventually the imperial capacity declined and the original inhabitants combined with waves of new arrivals to quickly erode Roman civilisation. All that remains today, Macintyre observes, are a few traces in historic sites and place names, "a thin slice of the island's multi-layered past". Macintyre wonders whether the British colonisation of Australia will be sustained so long and whether it, too, will be overlaid by the culture and practices of other peoples. He then goes on to discuss the recent Aboriginal cultural "renaissance", the rise of Aboriginal land rights and how the colonisers are now being forced to share the land with the colonised. He also talks about the incorporation of Asian peoples into the fabric of Australian life. He leaves the reader with the distinct impression that, just as the Romans were displaced in Britain, Aborigines and Asians will eventually supplant the colonisers of British and European descent in Australia.

As well as this concise history, Macintyre has also written the authorised history of the Communist Party of Australia and, when the party still existed, was himself a member. So it is perhaps not surprising that he can coolly contemplate a time when the current social order on this continent is deposed, if not by communism then at least by other forces. For most Australians today, of course, his scenario, while disturbing in itself, seems so remote that it hardly bears thinking about. Nonetheless, Macintyre deserves to be taken seriously because, far from being idle, his speculation is being increasingly expressed within intellectual circles that constitute what is known as "post-colonialism". This is a movement on the Left that embraces politics, history, cultural studies and the law. It is now institutionalised at both the national and international levels and is making increasingly confident attempts to influence policy on both planes. Among its strategies are the most far-reaching proposals for the reorganisation and even the eventual break-up of the Australian nation.

A central part of this program is the creation of an Aboriginal state. This is an issue that has gained renewed publicity in the media this year because of the revival, as part of the debate over reconciliation, of the notion of a treaty between Australia and its indigenous population. As several commentators have noted, a treaty is an agreement between sovereign peoples and so it bears the implication of the political separation of Aborigines from the rest of the nation. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation itself added weight to this interpretation when its declaration in May demanded the right to "self-determination". The election this year of Geoff Clark as chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Commission also attracted attention because in the early 1990s he was one of the office holders of the secessionist organisation, the Aboriginal Provisional Government (of which more below).

Before these developments, however, the proposal for an Aboriginal state had already advanced much further among the elites who influence policy in this area than recent media publicity has acknowledged. It has produced a wide range of academic and government papers and anthologies as well as two powerfully-argued books that have not so far been as publicly debated as they deserve to be. They are Aboriginal Autonomy by H. C. Coombs (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and Aboriginal Sovereignty by Henry Reynolds (Allen and Unwin, 1996).

Between them, these two authors have been the most influential and successful non-Aboriginals in Aboriginal policy making over the past three decades. Herbert (Nugget) Coombs (1906-1997), the economist and public servant, was Chairman of the Australian Council for Aboriginal Affairs and advisor to the Whitlam government during the first major phase of land grants to Aborigines in the 1970s. Henry Reynolds, the historian and political activist, was one of the brains behind Eddie Mabo's eventually successful claim for native title to the High Court in 1992. Like their authors, both books are politically driven, analysing the case for Aboriginal autonomy and sovereignty and urging political tactics to bring about the result. Although they approach the issue from different directions, both see the ultimate outcome as a separate Aboriginal state with its own government, economy and laws.

Despite his reputation as a public servant who could loyally serve both sides of Parliament, Coombs is actually the more radical of the two, both in terms of his critique of the current direction of Aboriginal politics and in the rationale he provides for Aboriginal autonomy. He is a scathing critic of both the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Commission and the Mabo decision. He thinks both serve white interests rather than those of Aborigines.

Coombs believes the representation of ATSIC as an Aboriginal organisation is the most debilitating aspect of contemporary indigenous politics. Although its board is elected by Aborigines, Coombs says ATSIC represents a continuation of the "double-speak" and "humbug" that has characterised government tactics throughout the history of Aboriginal affairs. He says the organisation was established in 1991 so that the government could give the facade of listening to carefully selected Aborigines. This created the appearance of consent while the government continued to make unilateral decisions. The creation of ATSIC, he says, was racist. "It is an expression of the racist assumption … that we, the 'superior' race, know best what is good for them, the Aboriginal people."

Rather than a legal breakthrough, Coombs regards the Mabo decision as a means of denying indigenous people title to land that has always been theirs. The primary purpose of the decision and the subsequent legislation of the Keating Government in 1993, he argues, was to validate earlier dispossessions and to ensure that remaining land continues to be subject to alienation by compulsion, especially in the interests of the mining industry. "What is being granted by Commonwealth legislative largesse," Coombs writes, "is an Aboriginal native title engineered to suit white proprietary interests." He argues that, because Aboriginal ownership of the land of the entire continent was never formally ceded to the British colonists, it cannot be extinguished by the colonisers but only by the Aboriginal people themselves and in accordance with Aboriginal procedures. So he calls for an "act of self-determination" through which Aborigines would decide whether they want to legally surrender their land to the Europeans who now occupy it and, if so, how much compensation they would want in return.

Coombs's critique of existing Aboriginal political organisation and his call for an act of self-determination over land rights might seem to border on the hypocritical, coming as they do from a European person who describes other Europeans as racist if they pretend to know what is good for Aboriginal people. He justifies his position by arguing that his proposals represent genuine autonomy, with all decision-making left in Aboriginal hands. Are, then, those Aborigines who now vote for ATSIC representatives and make land claims under the Mabo legislation simply dupes who are ignorant of their true interests and who suffer from an indigenous version of the old Marxist concept of false consciousness? Not so, according to Coombs.

Aboriginal politics are based on a gradualist agenda to regain their status, which means taking whatever reforms are offered by white society without actually endorsing them. "Historically," Coombs writes, "it has been Aboriginal practice to seize any opportunity to influence legislative and other government action affecting their interests, but to abstain from identification with its terms; to take what benefit can be gained, but to avoid providing legitimacy to externally established decisions." So no matter what concessions are made in Canberra, Aboriginal demands will not cease until they win back the continent and then decide themselves how much land, and under what terms, they will cede.

On the territory they decide to retain for themselves, Coombs argues, Aborigines will want autonomy. This means the ability to control their own political, economic, legal and cultural affairs. Instead of the European model of a national, democratically-elected council, the type of Aboriginal government that Coombs favours is what he calls "bottom-up federalism", that is, a federated organisation composed of elders from various different language or religious groups (what used to be called tribes) who meet to design and give effect to their own political agenda, beyond the influence of white hegemony. Aborigines should have a separate economy based not on capitalist notions of agricultural and mineral development, which Coombs regards as exploitive and environmentally degrading, but on "sustainable development". He does not provide any examples of specific economic activities that fit this description but instead says it means "stable populations, limited growth economies and an emphasis on small scale and self-reliance". For Aborigines, economic development "must incorporate activities under their own control, making use of their own skills and it must be compatible with Aboriginal concepts of just relationships between people and their choice of lifestyle". Western capitalism, he argues, does not come up to these standards.

Because of the destructive effects of the imposition of a British legal system onto indigenous customary law, Coombs wants a separate Aboriginal legal system that would have its own governing law council, community courts, customary notions of punishment, and prominent roles for elders and women. Aboriginal autonomy would also mean a separate education system. European notions of education, Coombs argues, are instruments of assimilation: "children are there to be changed; to unlearn what their parents and kin have taught them; to be weaned away from the loyalties that have made them Aboriginal." He still wants Aborigines to become literate in English and to be numerate, so he argues for a "two-way education" that incorporates aspects of Western education within a traditional Aboriginal framework and under Aboriginal control.

If Aborigines are to gain the package urged by Coombs and have their own political, economic, legal and education systems, all operating on territory that is Aboriginal as well, they will need to have a state of their own. Coombs's proposal, however, does not involve secession from the Australian Commonwealth itself. He argues that under the Australian Constitution, sovereignty is divisible between the Commonwealth and the States and that the Aboriginal autonomy he has in mind would represent a similar division of sovereignty. Hence the realisation of his plans would involve the creation of an Aboriginal state similar to the existing states. In some areas, however, he still sees Aboriginal government as less extensive than the states. He still wants Aboriginal schools, for instance, to remain formally part of state education departments and to be dependent on them for resources. Moreover, Aboriginal control of law and order would not preclude action by non-Aboriginal police in some circumstances, especially in "big trouble" such as homicide.

Coombs is well aware that if his proposals were to be implemented they would be the most radical political changes since Federation. To justify them, he begins his case with a long comparison between Aboriginal and Western culture to show the enormous gulf between the two. In doing so, he describes Aboriginal culture almost entirely in positive terms, except for the problems created for Aborigines by Europeans, such as high rates of crime, violence, alcoholism and unemployment. On the other hand, he portrays Western culture almost entirely in the negative.

In the West, he contends, people are alienated from natural resources and are controlled by a division of labour that isolates them from its purposes. "They are encapsulated into factories, offices, shopping centres, into suburban and city dwellings, with their peculiar forms of personal isolation and loneliness." According to the radical ecologist, Rene Dubos, Western man has become adapted to "starless skies, treeless avenues, shapeless buildings, tasteless bread, joyless celebrations, spiritless pleasures -- to a life without reverence for the past, love for the present or hope for the future". (Coombs is so impressed with this passage that his book quotes it twice.) Contemporary society, Coombs claims, is plagued by "social disorder, violence and escape through drugs and suicide, the breakdown of family and community, the disruption of local, national and international socially accepted order, and the widespread decline of concern for others". It is unconscionable to insist that Aborigines assimilate to this miserable lifestyle. Europeans are biologically maladapted to industrial society, he claims, but Aborigines are both genetically and culturally well adapted to life as hunter-gatherers. Coombs cites an anthropologist who has studied some of the few remaining clans of bush Aborigines and who assures us that, in contrast to the supposedly wretched existence of the Western masses, "the daily lives of the nomadic Aborigines are essentially harmonious and rewarding". Hence, solving the present problems of Aboriginal people involves the most deep-seated change possible. Coombs wants them to return to their pre-colonial lifestyle and to live in a separate society, embellished by only a handful of the trappings of Western civilisation.

Despite his claim that it is racist for Europeans to tell Aborigines what is good for them, it is plain that this is precisely what Coombs is doing himself. For most of his arguments do not originate within Aboriginal culture or tradition at all. Instead, they derive from Western intellectual history, especially the critique of modern, urban society mounted by the European romantic tradition. Ever since Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, European intellectuals have used the notion of primitive peoples living in harmony with a beneficent nature as a contrast to the allegedly corrupt complexity of their own civilisation. In the seventeenth century, the English poet John Dryden coined the term "noble savage" to refer to such "guiltless men". In the eighteenth century, the French radical Jean Jacques Rousseau portrayed "the celestial and majestic simplicity of man before corruption by society". Since Rousseau, this concept has been a staple nourishment of those revolutionary political movements -- from the Jacobins to the Khmer Rouge -- who have wanted to purge society of its failings and recreate the imagined purity of a community of perfect beings. Today, it is the underlying presumption of the "deep green" environmental movement that sees the Western way of life as its principal enemy. As my summary of his critique above suggests, Coombs adds to the concept of the "noble savage" a grab-bag of contemporary left-wing sociology, neo-Marxism, radical environmentalism and recent sociobiology. In other words, to solve the problems of indigenous people in the modern world, Coombs recommends not an Aboriginal program but that strand of the Western intellectual and political tradition that is romantic, revolutionary and utopian.

Coombs's proposals also derive from another visionary of European romanticism, Johann Gottfried von Herder, the eighteenth century German philosopher of history. Herder was the man who originated two of the most influential concepts of the modern era: cultural relativism and national self-determination. He said that people who constitute a language group, no matter how small and undistinguished, have their own culture, which cannot be judged by outside standards and which are authentic in their own terms - all cultures are equal but different. He also argued that all unique cultures deserve to determine their own destiny -- every culture should form a nation. Though Herder regarded himself a conservative, he let loose on Europe one of the most destructive concepts ever devised. It meant establishing a polity not on political principles like liberalism or democracy but on the bloodlines of ethnicity and race. Within a century, the wars of German unification were waged to enforce the idea that all German volkes must be affiliated to the German state. In the twentieth century, under Adolph Hitler, its logic led to both the Anschluss and to the extirpation of those who did not qualify as part of volk culture. As the editorial in the last Quadrant observed, Joseph Stalin cynically used the same concept to mollify the "autonomous" republics of the Soviet empire and to export socialist revolution around the world under the guise of national liberation. Today, the direct descendent of Herder's romantic nationalism is represented in the Balkans by the sinister euphemism of ethnic cleansing.

Although he appears oblivious to the intellectual origins of his proposals, Coombs is well aware they can entail violence. His book says if Australians fail to act on Aboriginal claims they might face the prospect of bloodshed from either external or internal forces. He reminds us of the international agreements to which we are bound and says that there may soon be a United Nations covenant on the rights of indigenous peoples. He warns us of the growing authority of the Security Council and other UN agencies "to impose policies on nation states and, where that Council thinks it necessary, to enforce them by sanctions including armed force". Moreover, if Australia fails to adopt the option of making legislative and constitutional change to meet Aboriginal demands, we will have to face the domestic consequences. "A refusal to use it," says Coombs, "could well be seen as justifying violent resistance by Aborigines to their dispossession."

Henry Reynolds's Aboriginal Sovereignty also derives from European romanticism, especially from Herder's arguments for nationalism, even though Reynolds does not mention Herder, either because he is unaware or unconcerned about the origins of his ideas. On the cover, the subtitle of his book is Three Nations, One Australia? His basic argument is that the Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 created a state but not a nation. This is because nations are ethnic and cultural formations rather than merely political structures and in 1901 the state of Australia contained three distinct ethnic cultures that precluded national unity. The three cultures were those of (a) the Aborigines, (b) the Torres Straits Islanders and (c) the Europeans and others who have arrived since 1788.

Reynolds argues that Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders each constitute a nation in their own right. He describes them as "entrapped nations" because they are contained within a sovereign state that is alien to their culture. He says they are not alone in this and that there is a worldwide movement among indigenous populations, or "first peoples" as they like to call themselves, to gain their liberation and establish their own political self-determination. Reynolds quotes the international jurist, Richard Falk, who argues that the majority of the indigenous peoples of the world have had an enormous juristic fraud perpetrated on them by their incorporation into sovereign states that do not correspond to "their ethnic, psychological and political reality". Falk urges a united movement among these people to gain their freedom.

Rather than a sense of loyalty associated with the natural sentiment of nationality, there exists a condition of political alienation in a variety of forms. Such circumstances pertain, to varying degree, to virtually every region of the world. The sooner that links and coalitions and bonds are forged between all those who are trying to struggle against the coercive mechanism of the state … the sooner will we be able to liberate the entrapped nations of the world.

Hence the demand for Aboriginal sovereignty, Reynolds argues, is not merely a local issue that will be decided within the confines of Australian political debate. In fact, Reynolds sees the best hope for the liberation of our two "entrapped" indigenous nations coming from the international arena. Unlike Coombs, he spends most of his book discussing the legal status of Aboriginal claims to land, the history of land legislation in Australia and Britain, and the connection between these and international law and politics. His hope is that the Aboriginal claim for self-government will be decided by an international legal tribunal and will be backed by the authority of the United Nations. The Australian political system will then have no choice but to accept the outcome, on pain of earning the kind of international pariah status accorded to South Africa before it ended apartheid. Reynolds is a less militant advocate than Coombs but his strategy is far more politically feasible. It is this agenda that lies behind the move by ATSIC in July this year to establish a permanent lobbying office at the UN centre in Geneva.

Since 1985, the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations has been compiling a Declaration on Indigenous Rights. An initial draft was published in 1994 and the final draft is expected to be passed by the UN General Assembly in 2002, the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People. Reynolds quotes a number of the 45 articles from this Declaration to show that its central theme is the right to self-determination. He says indigenous people are confident the UN will support them on this issue because it has already accepted the Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, whose Article 27 says that political autonomy is essential for the preservation of cultures and traditions. He supports this with a United Nations paper on discrimination against indigenous people, which argues:

Self-determination in its many forms is thus a basic pre-condition if indigenous peoples are to be able to enjoy their fundamental rights and determine their future, while at the same time preserving, developing and passing on their specific ethnic identity to future generations.

Reynolds acknowledges that the precise form indigenous self-determination should take is a contentious issue, even among its UN supporters. One of the main options is that of secession. He quotes a wide range of scholars and activists who want indigenous people to break away completely from their existing sovereign states and establish independent nations of their own. Reynolds notes that these activists are currently in a minority and that their nascent nationalist movements have to overcome the jealousy of the existing nation states, which will not easily tolerate them. Hence "bloodshed, chaos and suffering" are on the cards.

Nonetheless, Reynolds goes on to give a wide range of arguments in favour of secession. He is an astute political operator and so ignores the large number of tomes written between the 1950s and 1970s advocating national liberation along Marxist lines. Instead, he confines himself to more currently acceptable arguments, especially those from the mainstream liberal tradition. He quotes the American political philosopher, Allen Buchanan, whose book Secession (1991) argues that "a general presumption in favour of liberty" carries with it a presumption "in favour of the right to secede". Such a right, Buchanan argues, is the "logical extension of liberty". It bears a presumption "in favour of a principle of toleration thought to be central to the liberal point of view". Reynolds also reproduces arguments from philosophers who adopt a communitarian standpoint and who claim that, to preserve communal prosperity and well-being, any "encompassing group" should have the right to determine the status of its territory. He also cites political scientists and philosophers who argue a more general claim in favour of small, self-governing communities, "a multiplicity of small states" and the dispersion of authority widely over "nested territorial units". Reynolds concludes the case for secession with a long quote from the classic liberal, John Stuart Mill, who asserted: "When a sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members of the nationality under the same government, and a government to themselves apart."

In applying the argument for secession to Australia, Reynolds quotes the former ATSIC Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Dodson, who denies that indigenous people have ever accepted that the Australian state has the power to govern them. Dodson has called for the establishment of independent political and legal systems so that indigenous people can pursue their own economic and cultural development.

Reynolds also discusses the proposals by the Aboriginal Provisional Government for separate statehood and secession. The Aboriginal Provisional Government was formed in 1990 by a number of prominent Aboriginal activists, including Bob Weatherall, Michael Mansell, Kevin Gilbert, Jack Davis and Geoff Clark, the last of whom has for some years been its deputy chairman. "We must stop talking sovereignty," Clark told an early conference of the organisation, "and start acting it." As chairman of ATSIC, Clark has been the most important voice behind the recent revival of the idea of a treaty between Aborigines and Australia. Given his prominence in the Aboriginal Provisional Government, Clark's use of the term "treaty" should be read as code for the next stage in the push for secession.

The Aboriginal Provisional Government currently operates out of the office of Michael Mansell, its national secretary, in Hobart. It calls for Aboriginal people to form "a nation exercising total jurisdiction over its communities to the exclusion of all others". It says it is entitled to all crown lands, which it estimates amount to about half the territory of the Australian continent. When established, the economic base of its nation would come from taxation, royalties and lease payments from mining companies, graziers and others who now make their living on Aboriginal land. The Aboriginal Provisional Government calculated in 1994 that these taxes and rents would provide it with revenues of at least $6 billion a year. Subtracting the current $2 billion the Commonwealth annually provides for Aboriginal welfare (no longer payable to the people of an independent nation) would leave them $4 billion a year in front. "It would mean for the first time in two hundred years," writes Mansell, "that Aborigines would no longer be the poorest people in the country but probably would be, in comparison with Australians, the richest."

To gain independence, the Aboriginal Provisional Government calls for a dual strategy, both domestic and international. Domestically, it seeks the political unification of existing land-owning communities to form a "developing Aboriginal nations territory". It does not provide a map of the territory it wants to govern but, given the land Aborigines have gained since 1975, it is clear that the initial borders would encompass most of the Northern Territory, much of the north of Western Australia and large tracts of South Australia. Internationally, the Aboriginal Provisional Government expects support from the United Nations and the International Labor Organisation. If Australian governments resist further Aboriginal land claims, the tactic will be to seek international trade sanctions of the kind that were effective against South Africa.

As well as this strategy, Reynolds discusses in some detail other proposals for Aboriginal self-government that have been made in the last decade. These include the report of a Queensland government review committee, Towards Self-Government (1991), which asserts: "Whatever the legal situation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people do not regard any powers to govern which they exercise as being 'derivative', or originating from any mainstream government." He also quotes extensively from the report of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Constitutional Convention (1993), which, while it declares it does not want to break away from the Australian Commonwealth, nonetheless calls for a treaty between Aborigines and the Australian government. "Under the treaty," the Convention states, "Aboriginal governments should be an independent and higher source of authority than the Federal Constitution."

In the end, after canvassing the full range of the debate, Reynolds himself backs away from secession and comes down on the side of an arrangement similar to that recommended by the Northern Territory Convention. He rejects the call by John Stuart Mill for "a government to themselves apart" and supports instead the concept suggested by his subtitle: there should be three separate nations but they should be joined under the one state. This means that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people should have self-government of the kind now enjoyed by the six States, but under the overall political umbrella of the Commonwealth. He agrees with Coombs that, instead of the representative democracy on which the politics of the other states are based, the Aboriginal state should be constituted by "bottom-up federalism", with rule by a congregation of tribal elders. Reynolds will no doubt be very satisfied to see that the declaration of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation published in May this year endorsed a similar model to his own, asserting: "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the right to self-determination within the nation."

Reynolds argues that his solution is most likely to be achieved first in the Torres Strait where island leaders have already agreed to commit themselves to achieving regional autonomy based on free association with Australia, on the same lines that the Cook Islands have with New Zealand. Once conceded in the Torres Strait, of course, self-government would be hard to deny elsewhere, in the same way that the Mabo decision about native title on one of these islands set a precedent for the rest of the Commonwealth. For the Aboriginal state on the mainland, Reynolds says that "practical models" already exist in the examples of the Cocos Islands and Norfolk Island. He says the agreement between Australia and Norfolk Island concedes most of the things sought by Aborigines.

The 2000 to 3000 permanent residents have their own parliament, raise their own taxes and control all those things accorded to the state governments in the Constitution and many of the powers exercised by the Commonwealth. If effective autonomy can be conceded to the Norfolk Islanders, in recognition of their cultural and historic distinctiveness, there can be no in principle objection to the same rights being extended to indigenous communities.

Reynolds claims that, ultimately, Australia has no choice in the matter. The die was cast, he says, when Britain decided to plant a colony in an already inhabited land. "The heroic attempt to create a state which contained only one homogeneous nation was, in the long run, doomed to failure." There is "no acceptable alternative scenario" but to support the ethnic and national aspirations of indigenous peoples and to allow them to achieve political, cultural and economic autonomy within an overarching Australian Commonwealth.

There are, no doubt, many non-Aboriginal Australians who will agree with Reynolds and who will find his proposals not only reasonable but also perhaps the best solution to what seem the intractable problems of the quality of life of Aboriginal people and the relationship they should have with the rest of the population. We live, after all, at a time when there are a number of experiments in devolution around the world that are bound to influence Australian opinion. Scotland and Wales have regained self-government and in Canada a large part of the Northwest Territories was last year devolved to the Inuit people to form the indigenous state of Nunavut. The model Reynolds recommends, especially in light of the precedent of Norfolk Island, will seem sensible enough, and thus politically saleable, to many Australians.

However, despite Reynolds's claim that there can be no objections in principle to his proposal, let me make a number of complaints about it. As I indicated earlier, none of the ideas discussed here have their origins in the culture of either Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island people. Neither indigenous culture ever developed, on its own, the notion of either the state or the nation, let alone the ideas of autonomy, sovereignty or self-determination. These concepts derive from the European political tradition. They were first applied to indigenous politics by white radicals in the 1960s and were taken up by the then new Aboriginal political elite, most of whom learnt them not at the feet of tribal elders but at university. Because this Aboriginal elite has become so vocal and articulate, its members are the ones who today command a disproportionate degree of the attention of Australian politicians and the judiciary, as well as the international committees and tribunals. They are also feted by the metropolitan media, most of which now share the romantic assumptions of Coombs and Reynolds.

However, their case has so far assiduously avoided the question of whether the rest of the indigenous population actually supports them. It is revealing that neither Coombs nor Reynolds bolster their arguments with any evidence about whether they do. In fact, there are two pieces of evidence that, prima facie, point the other way. As the editor of Quadrant, P. P. McGuinness, has observed in a number of recent articles, at the last census, in the majority of Aboriginal households, one of the adults was married to or cohabiting with a non-Aboriginal person. Moreover, when asked about their religion, about seventy per cent of Aborigines profess Christianity. So while some Aboriginal leaders and many white radicals denounce assimilation as racist and genocidal, the rank and file nonetheless continues to assimilate. These facts would appear to pose a major difficulty for the Coombs and Reynolds thesis that Aboriginal culture is so alienated from mainstream Australia that it compels separation. Neither author, however, acknowledges this, nor makes any attempt to offer any counter evidence or to explain these facts away. It is no wonder that both are against democracy in Aboriginal politics and prefer decision-making to be left to elders. If this issue were put to a vote of the rank and file now, it would probably be defeated.

Moreover, just as it is wrong to apply concepts derived from European romantic radicalism to Aboriginal culture, it is also a mistake to impose other European political models if the aim is to preserve the rest of Aboriginal culture intact. Neither the British nor the Norfolk Island devolutions are comparable to the Aboriginal situation. For example, before it joined England to form Great Britain under James I in 1603, Scotland had been an independent kingdom for 750 years and had adapted its culture and laws to that of a complex, highly developed polity. Even after the union, the Scottish legal system retained its independence down to the present day. Although the Norfolk Island community might be small it is nonetheless constituted by the same British cultural inheritance. Aboriginal culture and laws, however, were never in all their long history applied to social groupings more extensive than that of the clan or the tribe. Aboriginal society has no institutions that have experienced the administration of a complex society and that have stood the test of time. To properly serve a society of this kind, institutions need to have evolved to the role.

If, as Coombs and Reynolds insist, Western models are not appropriate for Aboriginal government, then there is an institutional void at the core of their plan. To expect indigenous culture to adapt overnight to the problems of running a state of potentially hundreds of thousands of people from different religious and language groups, managing billions of dollars of revenue and expenditure, over a territory larger than any country in Western Europe, is to ask the impossible. It is to set it up to fail, that is, to either break down completely or end up as the personal fiefdom of an ideological faction or family cabal.

For different reasons, the Nunavut model is also inapplicable to Aboriginal self-government. Indeed, were Nugget Coombs still alive he might well argue the same. The Inuit of Nunavut have independence and self-determination in name only. The Canadian government still controls all natural resources except game on federally owned lands. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is responsible for law enforcement. The federal government is responsible for providing all the infrastructure required for resource and mineral development, as well as producing and distributing electric power throughout the territory. The Canadian Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has greater decision-making power than the Inuit assembly.

My most serious complaint, though, is about the likely post-establishment political consequences of an Aboriginal state. Given the enormous sense of grievance expressed by those demanding indigenous independence, and given the fact that this demand in Australia is part of an international movement that carries a momentum and influence of its own, it would be naïve to imagine that, once established, an Aboriginal state would be content to remain subsumed by the Australian Commonwealth for the foreseeable future. Ironically, for someone who has spent most of his academic life exposing the downside of British imperialism in Australia, the relationship proposed by Reynolds is essentially an imperial one. The Australian government would rule two satellite nations, each constituted by its own ethnicity and culture and each, as the Queensland and Northern Territory reports attest, denying that its powers were in any way derivative from the Australian government or the Federal Constitution. It would be a relationship that positively invited the emergence of an anti-imperialist movement to demand complete liberation, especially given the attractions to its politicians of independent nation status. Since the past fifty years have seen international relations very favourably disposed towards anti-imperialism, there is little doubt that, once launched, a secessionist movement would make many friends around the world. As a source of internal division and conflict, it would be unparalleled.

It is also wrong of Reynolds to claim that there is no acceptable alternative scenario to his scheme. On the contrary, the history of the West offers a very clear alternative. This can be seen if we reconsider Stuart Macintyre's claim that the British colonisation of this continent will eventually be eradicated by the culture and practices of other people, just as the Roman colonisation of Britain was itself obliterated. Macintyre has chosen a very poor example to illustrate his thesis. For it is not true that the influence of Rome was swept from British history and remains nothing but a distant sliver of that nation's past. Imperial rule from Rome ended in Britain in the fifth century, it is true, just as imperial rule from Britain ended in Australia in the twentieth. Were Macintyre more conversant with the early history of Europe, however, he would have known that the cultural influence of Rome never, in fact, ended at all. The Germanic tribes who overthrew the Western Roman Empire took Rome's place in Britain and in the rest of Western Europe. In what was once known as the Dark Ages between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, these tribes -- the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Normans, Franks, Lombards, Goths, Vikings and others -- were converted to Christianity. The best recent account of this process is Richard Fletcher's The Barbarian Conversion (1997). Fletcher emphasises that it was not only the religion that attracted them, but also the Roman culture that came with it.

The conversion of 'barbarian' Europe to Christianity brought Roman and Mediterranean customs and values and habits of thought to the newcomers who were the legatees of the Roman empire. These included, for example, literacy and books and the Latin language with all that it opened up; Roman notions about law, authority, property and government; the habits of living in towns and using coin for exchange; Mediterranean tastes in food, drink and costume; new architectural and artistic conventions. The Germanic successor-states which emerged from the wreckage of the empire … accepted Christianity and in so doing embraced a cultural totality which was Romanitas, 'Roman-ness'.

Britain was an integral part of this process. Its post-Roman civilisation was constructed on a foundation of Roman law, government, culture and religion. The same is true of every other country that constitutes what is now known as the West. With its colonisation of Australia in 1788, Britain, in a very real sense, brought the cultural inheritance of Rome and its successors to this continent.

One of the reasons the Roman Empire has had such a long historical reach is because it was always a composite culture. Rather than impose a monoculture on their subjects, the Romans picked the brains of those they conquered and adopted their best ideas and practices. Early in their rise, they took from the Greeks their notions of philosophy, literature, art and government. Later, they took their religion from the Jews. Two of Rome's most influential heirs and successors, Britain and the USA, have been so materially and politically successful largely because they have adopted the same approach, complementing their own cultures with the best ideas they could find, whatever their national origin.

Surely, this is the example that the Australian branch of the Roman inheritance should be setting indigenous people. We should be urging them to complement their ancient cultures with the best that has been thought and done in Western civilisation. By "the best" I especially mean the liberty, equity and prosperity of the prevailing Western political, legal and economic systems. By remaining part of the Australian community, Aboriginal people have these features of Western culture available to them on tap. Difficult though it obviously will be, the most likely resolution of their existing social problems lies in discovering how best to take advantage of the Western cultural presence.

Instead, over the last three decades, the most influential white activists have advised them to do the opposite. By encouraging Aborigines to create the kind of closed, self-focused society devised by Coombs and Reynolds, we are saddling them with the very worst of our own intellectual traditions: the romantic, revolutionary and utopian strand of Western political thought and practice. Unfortunately, over these same three decades, many highly educated Aborigines have been seduced by the rhetoric of this showy package. Today, some of their leaders believe they are on the brink of fulfilling its dream for their own people. One useful service we might perform is to point out that this is improbable. Throughout the history of the West, this intellectual tradition has invariably generated disappointment, futility, bloodshed and tragedy. It is hard to believe that its Aboriginal version is any more likely to produce a different result.