First Australian indigenous member of federal parliament... the implications

Ken Wyatt, a long time compaigner for Aboriginal health, has become the first ever member of the Australian federal lower house of parliament of Aboriginal descent, as the Liberal Party candidate of the electorate of Hasluck. This is both a remarkable and sad achievement. Remarkable that an Aborigine will be part of Australia's main decision-making body, and for the conservative Liberal Party; sad that it has taken this long for this to happen. Wyatt's election has provided the Liberals with a trump card considering that Aborigines overwhelming vote for the Labor Party and deflects the latent racism that some of the Liberal Party's electioneering tactics and policies tend to feed off.

Hasluck, an electorate covering a wide-range of suburbs in the eastern part of Perth, Western Australia, was rather unique this election with the range of candidates. Namely, three were Aborigines! Ironically, the only main candidate who wasn't was the sitting Labor member, the party most Aborigines tend to support.

Aborigines in politics is quite a sore point in Australian political history. It must be first pointed out that Aborigines actually only make up 2% of Australia's total population. The electorate of Lingiari, which covers most of the Northern Territory (except Darwin) has the largest percentage of Aborigine voters, but at 43% of the total, they don't even make up a majority. Compulsory voting ensures that the Aborigines in isolated communities participate in the election process, however Aborigines were only given the vote (and citizenship or even be officially counted in censi) as recent as 1968.

The first member of the Federal Senate of Aboriginal origin was Neville Bonner, who served the Liberal Party in the 1970s and 1980s, while the second, Aiden Ridgeway served as a senator for the now-ineffectual Australian Democrats from 1999 to 2005. Taking into account Wyatt representing the Liberals, the irony is that despite massive Aboriginal support, no Aborigine has been in Parliament for Labor. The fact that Wyatt stood for the Liberals has come as a surprise to many, where the Liberals have been associated with policies against Aborigines such as dismantling the nationwide Aboriginal council ATSIC, and withdrawing the Discrimination Act to allow for the 'Intervention' in 2007, which saw the Authorities involved in a murky campaign of 'regaining control' of Aboriginal communities from the ravages of alcohol abuse, rape, child abuse and violence. While most of the actions of this campaign were conveniently far from the gaze of most Australians, some reports that filtered through reported of a situation much like a continuation of the past Australian government campaigns at 'civilising the natives' which has included officially-sanctioned kidnapping of Aboriginal children to be sent to schools and made to assimilate. The child victims of this policy, which continued up until the early 1970s, are called the 'Stolen Generation' and finally received an official apology from the Australian government under recently deposed Labor leader Kevin Rudd in 2008, after the previous Liberal government refused to apologise.

The lack of Aboriginal representation in Australia contrasts strikingly with the Maoris of New Zealand, where not only have there been many Maori members of parliament but even a Maori Party that holds the balance of power and is now part of the ruling coalition. There hasn't even been anything close to resembling an Aboriginal Party in Australia.

However, Wyatt's election to the House of Representatives is still no sign that the racism of the past is gone. Wyatt revealed that he has been receiving e-mails from voters stating that had they known what Wyatt was (i.e. Aboriginal), then they wouldn't have voted for him. The fact that people have these beliefs is not shocking, as judging by the very 'White-looking' image, above, the Liberal campaigners used for Wyatt's campaign posters, even they knew that the fact Wyatt is Aboriginal would be a turn off for Liberal voters.

As the song in the musical Avenue Q goes: 'We're all a little bit racist', but the extent that one feels they can express such racist thoughts freely and openly is the true measurement of how much a society is racist. These e-mails and comments made to Wyatt, and the apparent ease that these people were able to make them, highlights the main reason why Aborigines in Australia have not been able to sit in the parliament that represents their land.