Why there should be no aboriginal treaty. (Argument).

IN MAY THIS YEAR, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission published a booklet that spelled out just what is involved in its demand for a treaty. Entitled Treaty: Lets Get it Right, the booklet is targeted predominantly at white readers to persuade them to go one step further than reconciliation and enshrine in law what it calls the "distinct rights" due to Aborigines. It is written in the form of answers to questions frequently asked about a treaty. Although apparently designed to allay the fears of its readers, there are parts of the document that may well have the opposite effect. The booklet asks:

 
   Q: Is a treaty about setting up a "black state"? 
 
   A: Treaties in other countries have provided for indigenous 
   self-government. It is likely that Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait 
   Islander peoples would want to negotiate self-government in relation to 
   traditional lands as part of a treaty in Australia. 

In short, the answer to a black state is "yes".

The desire to use a treaty to establish a self-governing Aboriginal regime has been on the agenda of ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark since 1990, when he became deputy chairman of the secessionist organisation, the Aboriginal Provisional Government. During the period of the reconciliation process, the Aboriginal Provisional Government kept in the background. Nonetheless, Clark has held his position all this time.

Inside ATSIC, Clark has now set up a treaty think-tank whose key intellectual is the legal academic Professor Larissa Behrendt of the University of Technology Sydney, who has been a member of the Aboriginal Provisional Government since 1993. This organisation currently operates out of the office of its secretary, Michael Mansell, in Hobart. It calls for Aboriginal people to form "a nation exercising total jurisdiction over its communities to the exclusion of all others".

Within Aboriginal politics, the desire for a separate nation is a matter of considerable controversy, and there are many opposed to Clark and Mansell. Nonetheless, there is wide agreement among Aboriginal activists that the rationale for a treaty is the demand for indigenous "sovereignty".

Their argument is that the foundation of the British colony in 1788 did not extinguish the sovereignty of the indigenous peoples. Like the native title the High Court's Mabo judgment found had existed since colonisation, proponents of a treaty claim pre-1788 Aboriginal government and laws were never legitimately extinguished either, and should be restored. They want the treaty to complete what they call the "unfinished business" of colonisation.