Bennelong Society Conference 2003:
An Indigenous Future? Challenges and Opportunities

The Hindmarsh Island Debate: Reflecting on the key issues

Chris Kenny

In the early days of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge saga, long before it had anything to do with Aboriginal politics, there was a famous headline in one of the Adelaide newspapers which dubbed it a 'Bridge to Nowhere.'

How wrong that headline turned out to be.

The bridge has been built---I have driven across it myself---and it leads to a place called Hindmarsh Island, which I must confess, not being much of a boatie or fisherman, I find a somewhat over-rated little island right at the mouth of the River Murray.

Still, apparently Hindmarsh Island doesn't need any spruiking from me---by all accounts it's proving very popular with holiday makers.

But that bridge has taken us to so many places other than Hindmarsh Island. Those involved in the saga or following it have been taken on a tortuous journey to the Federal Court, to the High Court, to State Parliament, to Federal Parliament, to a Royal Commission, to the upper echelons of national debate, to the halls of academia, to the bookshops and even to the far-away international media.

To enlist a far-too-obvious analogy, the Hindmarsh Island Bridge saga has had as many twists and turns as the Murray River itself. It has been just as murky. And like the Murray, it has had a great deal of trouble coming to any satisfactory conclusion.

But now it's worth looking back to see whether any of it has been at all worthwhile.

There is no simple answer to that question. Because there were so many aspects to this dispute.

But if we start with the basic proposition of the developers, Tom and Wendy Chapman, that is---getting a bridge built---the answer is clear cut. And it must be that the battle was worthwhile.

What many people fail to understand about this saga is that in order to proceed with their marina development on Hindmarsh Island the Chapmans were told by the planning authorities that there must be a bridge. So they negotiated a deal with the State Government to share the cost.

They received their necessary approvals after completing the necessary consultations and conditions---including consultations on Aboriginal issues.

They ran into trouble because opposition to the bridge arose, not from Aborigines, but from quite wealthy and well-connected non-Aboriginal residents who quite literally didn't want their view of the river spoiled by a bridge. They thought the existing ferry was quaint and they resisted change.

Fair enough. But when these objections were tested on their merits through various submissions and protests, the bridge won out. Environmentalists and the media were enlisted in the battle, as were elements of the local community and various politicians. All fair enough. But all to no avail.

But these protesters weren't easily dissuaded. When all their environmental and aesthetic arguments seemed lost, one said to the other 'Let's see if we can get some Aboriginals down from Murray Bridge to help us with our cause'.

That merely signalled the start of another phase in the protests, where the focus was on Aboriginal middens and graves. It wasn't until about two years later, after the Aboriginal heritage objections seemed to have failed, that a sympathetic female anthropologist said to an Aboriginal activist 'it would be nice if there was some women's business'.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Keating Labor Government's Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Robert Tickner, banned the bridge in May 1994.

Throughout all this, the developers of the Hindmarsh Island marina, Tom and Wendy Chapman, were going through hell. They went broke, saw their dream crumble before them, were evicted from their home, demonized by the media and lost many friends.

People like Tickner and Keating probably expected the Chapmans to give up and crawl away. Which would have left Keating and Tickner to claim a symbolic victory for the Aboriginal cause and soak up the adulation of the all too familiar Leftist cheer squad.

But the Chapmans showed uncommon resilience and through an unlikely chain of events, saw the truth exposed and, more importantly to them, saw the bridge built and their development proceed.

I gather from various articles I have seen, and some glossy advertisements, that it is all going extremely well. For the Chapmans, the other residents of Hindmarsh Island, people who have bought places at the marina development and the many businesses who rely on tourism in the area, there is no doubt that the Hindmarsh Island saga has been worthwhile.

But of course in the historical and political context, this saga is not about Hindmarsh Island, not about the marina development, and not about a bridge.

Because of the way Aboriginal claims were concocted in an attempt to stop this bridge, it has become an important lesson about the politics of Aboriginal affairs in this country.

In that respect, was anything achieved? Nearly a decade on, have we learned anything?

Have we just added some phrases to the Australian vernacular---where we now see chocolate biscuit tins labelled 'secret women's business' and racing yachts named 'secret men's business'?

Or was Hindmarsh Island, in retrospect, a worthwhile engagement in the cultural/political battles of our time?

Most importantly, did it achieve anything in the long struggle to develop a rational and successful approach to Aboriginal affairs, which after all is what's needed to improve the lot of Aboriginal Australians?

When I first became involved as a relatively skeptical and, yes, aggressive, journalist, it seemed rather simple to me. One reading of the initial reports by anthropologist Deane Fergie and Government-appointed reporter Professor Cheryl Saunders told me this bridge had been banned on the say-so of one woman.

There were serious doubts about the manner in which the claim had arisen and if it was a concoction, something needed to be done about it.

Of course the decision to ban the bridge was cheered from the cafes, the press gallery and the campuses. Skeptical, rational analysis seemed to have been suspended in favour of a kind of youth-group singalong, let's all love each other, 'kumbayah my Lord', spirit of reconciliation.

I find that sentiment easy to understand---I was once a long-haired, green, Left uni student and went on to work at the ABC. People saw some noisy, plausible Aboriginal activists claiming their culture was under threat from greedy capitalists. Why not ban the bridge and give the Aborigines a victory? What better way to demonstrate our commitment to reconciliation?

In the post-modernist age, where emotion rules unchallenged and everyone's version of their own truth is equally legitimate, it was a 'no brainer.'

One supporter of the secret women's business claim, a GP, rang me in the middle of all this and said that even if the fabrication claims were true, I shouldn't be running them! In other words, let's allow the fraud to stand---let's give the Aborigines a win.

But what would that have meant to the developers? What would that have said about the rule of law in Australia? What would that have meant to the Ngarrindjerri women who knew what was going on and decided to speak up? And importantly what would that have said for protecting the integrity of Aboriginal culture?

Looking back on the struggle, the ferocious media debate, the protests, the court cases and the vindication of the Royal Commission, I see the Hindmarsh Island saga as bringing into focus some important ongoing issues.

First, the obvious one. Aboriginal heritage claims such as this one under the Federal Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act were not being subjected to the rigorous scrutiny that was clearly necessary.

Second, the Australian community seemed incapable of debating Aboriginal issues in a rational and objective way. The Left too often stymied any sensible debate by resorting to emotional rants and vilifying their opponents as racists.

Thirdly, the Australian media couldn't deal with these issues either. The tabloids over-simplified the issues, but the ABC and the broadsheets---the so-called serious media---were only interested in joining the Left's emotional posturing.

Finally, Hindmarsh Island showed how Aboriginal Australians themselves, if they disagreed with the Aboriginal elite, could find themselves totally disempowered. Through my involvement over a long period with the so-called dissident women it became clear that there can be no lonelier place in the Australian political landscape, than to be an Aboriginal who disagrees with the agenda of ATSIC and the Aboriginal leadership it supports.

So, have we made progress on these issues? I'll share my assessments one by one.

Certainly Hindmarsh triggered action on the Heritage Protection Act. A review was conducted and changes incorporated into a Bill---and when it failed, another Bill. Neither Bill has managed to make it through the Parliament yet, so these efforts to institute a more sound, more accountable national system for assessing heritage claims have failed so far.

The oversight of the existing Act has been switched from Aboriginal Affairs to Environment---as a sort of interim measure I understand. Importantly, I think the very public experience of Hindmarsh Island will itself act as an ongoing warning and reduce the chances of similar episodes in the future---but we can't afford to be complacent.

When it comes to general public debate I think there has been a change for the better since Hindmarsh Island. Hindmarsh Island certainly can't claim all the credit, there have been a number of other factors.

But in Hindmarsh the Australian community came to see Aboriginal women challenging the popular Aboriginal view on an important issue. This was a powerful factor; one that many commentators found so confronting at the time that they simply chose to ignore the dissident women.

The brave stand taken by the dissidents has clearly made it easier for Australians to challenge the accepted wisdom or the elite view on other Aboriginal issues, such as the controversy over the so-called 'stolen generations' or the crucial matter of addressing domestic violence in Aboriginal communities.

Indeed we are increasingly hearing other 'dissident' Aboriginal voices---I would place Noel Pearson in this category as a person who to a certain degree has abandoned adversarial rhetoric in favour of a meaningful search for solutions.

I don't want to sound too dewy-eyed---there is still a mighty challenge to foster constructive debate in Aboriginal affairs. But there are signs of improvement.

This brings me to the media. When it came to Hindmarsh Island, the ABC and the broadsheets were astonishingly partisan. Of course this is one of the claims they made against me. However, I simply point out that I investigated the issue thoroughly, read the reports, tracked down all the key players, spoke to those who would talk, hounded those who wouldn't and when it became clear what had gone on, was happy to say so in straightforward language.

The ABC on the other hand, as soon as the fabrication claims were revealed, went on the defensive, running the argument for the proponents of 'Secret Women's Business', labelling the issue a clash of cultures, assiduously ignoring the dissident women and portraying my work as some king of political conspiracy.

Hindmarsh Island exposed the superficiality of the Australian media in a way I never thought was possible. Knowing all the details and being in contact with all the players, I had a fascinating insight into all this. I could watch people like David Marr and Stuart Littlemore, for instance, pontificating on this issue knowing full well that they could have known very little about it. Because I knew who they had NOT spoken with.

The dissident women we honour here tonight initially expected a media onslaught---but it never came to them. Very few journalists even tried to talk to them, to test their claims, to catch them out. If you really believed they were patsies, wouldn't a searching interview do the trick?

No, the media generally found their unpalatable truth too much to handle. It was easier to run some whingeing from the proponents and their supporters---and pretend this was about black versus white, rich versus poor, male versus female.

As dynamic and important as the Hindmarsh saga was, did the ABC ever get Four Corners to tackle it? Did The 7.30 Report ever set an experienced national reporter on to the story? Did news ever mount a detailed investigation? No, all too hard. All too inconvenient.

It's worth dwelling on this. Given the immense significance of this issue at the time and the countless hours of special pleading that the ABC broadcast---why did it never mount a serious investigation. I think the answer is obvious---they were worried about what they might uncover and worried about what that would say about all the ABC reporting that had preceded it.

So is the media any better on Aboriginal issues now? Probably not.

In general, it fails to probe. It tends not to consider that within an Aboriginal community there just might be as many different views as you might find in a non-Aboriginal community.

And of course, when it comes to terms like genocide and stolen generations---it's far more interested in emotional interpretations than in objective assessments.

Finally, the Hindmarsh experience also taught us a little about the folly of ATSIC. We saw how this organization, designed to empower Aboriginal Australians could actually have the opposite effect.

The dissident women were all upstanding members of the Ngarrindjeri community. They had been great contributors to their fellow Ngarrindjeri. But they were not in positions of power or influence. They did not hold any of the powerful elected ATSIC positions in their community.

These positions were instead held mainly by men, some of whom I noted had been elected with just a couple of dozen votes. With voluntary voting these posts are often there for the taking so long as you can round up some family and friends.

So when the dissidents took a stand to protect the integrity of their culture---to stop it being prostituted for an anti-development cause---could they rely on any help from ATSIC?

No. The full resources of ATSIC and the South Australian Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement were of course swung behind the proponents of 'secret women's business'. ATSIC became, for the dissidents, an instrument of oppression---a powerful organization that used its authority, finances and influence in the community to make life as difficult as possible for the dissidents.

After Hindmarsh, ATSIC is finally coming under some scrutiny. This has come about largely because of the personal difficulties of people in leadership positions. But at least it has finally become acceptable to ask questions about how ATSIC is run, who it serves and what mechanisms of accountability there ought to be.

So, in summary, the Hindmarsh Bridge saga was a struggle worth enduring. In the micro, it allowed a bridge to be built. In the macro, it helped transform debate in this country, it has helped to inject some realism, but the gains have been far from spectacular.

Hindmarsh still receives attention---even from those who want to believe it was a proud battleground for Aboriginal secret women's culture.

There are those who desperately point to the Chapmans' failure to win compensation through the Federal Court as some kind of proof that there was or might be 'womens business'.

In her recent book, the feminist 'Earth Mother' Margaret Simons buys into all sorts of New Age malarkey as she concocts a story about a white, male, conservative conspiracy.

But she does get one thing right---unlike most of the Left, Simons appreciates that Hindmarsh Island was a watershed event. She even recognizes how it undermined confidence in the Keating Government in the lead-up to the 1996 election.

Let me quote her on that election result. 'Robert Tickner's career was destroyed. He left politics.... He was generally regarded by commentators, and even by some of his former colleagues, as representative of everything that had been wrong with the Keating Government'.

With that paragraph and one reference to me as a 'handsome young reporter' I am almost tempted to overlook the silly, undergraduate conspiracy theory that is at the core of Simons' book.

In coming to the conclusion that the Hindmarsh saga played a constructive role in Australian public affairs, there is no doubt where most of the credit belongs. Certainly people like Ian McLachlan, the Museum anthropologists Philip Jones and Philip Clarke, a handful of lawyers and others made valuable contributions and deserve our admiration.

But for all the politics, all the anthropology, all the cultural wars and all the trauma---Hindmarsh Island is in the end a story of heroism. It is about the courage of the dissident women who saw their culture being abused and decided to do something about it.

They have gained nothing from their role except discomfort, vilification and the satisfaction of doing what they knew was right.

We are here tonight to honour two of the leading dissidents. But I want to stress that this should not be seen as diminishing in any way the contributions made by at least a dozen other dissidents who all, in their various ways, made crucial contributions.

I want to make special mention here of Bertha Gollan who died nearly three years ago. Bertha was a wonderful, feisty woman whose house in suburban Adelaide became a nerve centre and a haven for the other dissidents at the height of this affair. Bertha and her family played an absolutely central role in supporting the other dissidents, arguing the case in the media and just being around with a friendly cuppa when it was needed. We all miss Bertha.

Tonight we honour Dulcie Wilson and Dorothy Wilson, who I first met when I interviewed them together in May 1995. On that occasion I was very suspicious of them---and they of me. But over time---and a few helpings of Dulcie's scones---I came to know and trust them as two of the most honest and courageous women you could ever have the privilege of knowing.

Both were critical in the Hindmarsh revelations. They were the first to go public and it is no disrespect to the others to describe them as the leaders.

Dulcie I see as the matriarch of the dissidents---the person who provided the leadership and moral strength to get the dissidents' story out and keep them going during the tougher times.

Dorothy was the person who had the most information, who was in on the crucial anti-bridge meetings and saw the secret women's business claims evolve. Her forensic memory for people, places and detail and her absolute honesty were the qualities that underpinned the findings of the Royal Commission.

It is an honour and a privilege to see them recognized here tonight.

I can think of no better words to finish on tonight, or with which to honour Dulcie, Dorothy and the other women, than those uttered by Dorothy's sister Beryl Kropinyeri.

Beryl summed up the whole point of Hindmarsh Island when she sat at Bertha Gollan's kitchen table on the day the Royal Commission findings were handed down and said to those of us lucky enough to be there: 'Reconciliation starts with the Truth'.