Eminent Aboriginal elder Patrick Dodson has lashed the Abbott government's decision to cease funding for essential services in remote communities, a move that has contributed to one state government proposing to close 150 communities.
Professor Dodson, known as the father of Aboriginal reconciliation and who authored a review of small communities known as outstations or homelands, for the NT government in 2009, said the move would make Aboriginal people refugees in their own country and threaten ancient living cultures.
WA Premier Colin Barnett said that his state might need to cut essential services such as power and water from more than half the state's Aboriginal communities after the federal government's decision to withdraw from funding these services in remote indigenous settlements from next July.
The South Australian government has also raised the possibility of closing up to 60 indigenous communities, which are home to more than 4000 Aboriginal people.
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has argued that the delivery of municipal and essential services was a state and local government responsibility, and the closure of any communities would be a matter for state governments.
But Professor Dodson rejected this argument, saying the emphatic success of the 1967 referendum, which gave the Commonwealth the power to make laws for Aboriginal people, reflected the nation's aspiration that the federal government provide resources to address the appalling living conditions faced by indigenous people at the time.
"I think that the Commonwealth has got a clear responsibility," Professor Dodson said.
Western Australia has accepted a one-off payment of $90 million from the Commonwealth to take over the responsibility, while the South Australian Labor administration has rejected an offer of $10 million, which is equivalent to three years of funding.
Professor Dodson, a Yawuru man from the Kimberley, urged Senator Scullion to work with state governments and Aboriginal people to find inventive solutions, such as using solar power to deliver energy.
"The Federal Minister has to understand that the states have got their own unique issues and problems," he said.
"[Mr Barnett] now has to face up to the reality that these citizens in Western Australia need to be dealt with properly and he needs a proper financial, strategic plan that copes with their cultural and social aspirations. For that the feds ought to give him a bit more time and help phase in a better budget to enable this to happen."
Speaking in state parliament this week, Mr Barnett said that of the state's 274 Aboriginal communities, more than 100 had an average of five residents, and another 70 communities had an average of 15 people.
"They are not viable ... it goes beyond water and power supplies," Mr Barnett said.
"What are the opportunities for young people? There is no work. There is no opportunity to succeed in life. That is the issue that has been forced upon us by the federal government decision."
He said people would not be forced to leave their homes, and no decisions had been taken about which communities might lose services.
Professor Dodson said the consequences of relocating people from their traditional lands would be disastrous, increasing access to drugs and alcohol and exacerbating social tensions, which would flow on to antisocial behaviour and incarceration.
"The immediate consequences would be to create an internal refugee problem for the indigenous people," he said.
"You'd have displaced Aboriginal people from their homelands or their traditional country, relocated ... on to lands and into places that are not necessarily country that they identify with or have an affiliation [with] … and to be mixed among peoples who they may or may not have good or lasting relationships with."
"There's some kind of assumption that by a process of osmosis, people will be absorbed into the mainstream of Western-life ways and be successful."
"We're talking about human beings who have come from a different culture, butting up a mainstream monoculturalist perspective on how you should live and making very little concession to the diversity and the distinction of other cultures in the main."
He said breaking people's connection to land would threaten the survival of Aboriginal knowledge and culture, because in towns people were restricted from camping, lighting fires, hunting and fishing.
"We've got to weigh up the odds and give priority to things we value and if we value anything about Aboriginal culture and tradition and languages, then let's put some resources to that."
"We value the arts, we buy all these paintings from overseas by some famous artists, hang them up on walls and maybe 10 or 20 people see them – we're talking about a living culture here," he said.
A spokesman for Senator Scullion said the Western Australian government had been discussing the closure of these communities with the Commonwealth for a number of years, long before the state agreed to take responsibility for municipal services in these locations.
"Providing essential and municipal services in towns and cities across Australia has always been the responsibility of state and local governments and it should be no different in indigenous communities," the spokesman said.
