Enough is enough: a history of the Pilbara mob, by Noel Olive (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2007)

A colleague of mine was giving out autographed copies of this book by his father to people he thought might be interested. The author-father learned about the Pilbara through his work as a lawyer on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in the late 1980s and spent some time in the 1990s working as "co-ordinator" for one of the Aboriginal communities in the area.

The Pilbara is 1600 km north of Perth. The first white settlers arrived to set up pastoral ventures in 1863 and the history from then on is pretty shocking. A difference from the Israeli case in the last book that I read, is that at first the colonists made no attempt to separate the indigenous population from their land. In fact they needed the population to work the land. The Aborigines stayed on, in slave-like conditions, because the work enabled them to stay in contact with their land. However, if they happened to get fed up enough to try to leave, they would be brought back in chains.

In 1946 they struck. Two Aboriginal elders and a white man collaborated in organizing the strike (they planned it in great secrecy over a four year period!) and the white man helped striking workers to earn a living from mining. This in turn enabled them to buy some pastoral properties in the 1950s and, by providing some choice in the means of living, forced the owners to start paying wages.

The mining boom started in the 1960s and separation of the people from their land began in earnest as the Pilbara became well and truly globalized. The process was interrupted temporarily by the High Court's Mabo decision in 1992, followed by Wik in 1996. The first of these over-turned the concept of terra nullius, the second provided opportunity for shared title and shared usage to be established. The state and federal legislatures moved fairly quickly to nullify any implication that might lead to Aboriginal self-determination. Nowadays, as always, living means surviving.

The style of the book is a bit annoying. It's one of those history as a series of facts books and, perhaps because Olive is a lawyer, it is a book of advocacy rather than analysis. The facts hit you in more or less chronological sequence, but without much apparent rationale (other than moral outrage that is). The title is also wrong (and has been changed in subsequent editions) because it is not in fact a history of the Pilbara Mob ('Mob' in this context means Aborigines). Olive reproduces a little material from interviews he did and describes a tiny bit of local culture, but it is actually a story of white settlement in the region.

This passage, quoted from another book,* made me want to go there:

Western Australia's Hamersley Range sprawls across the ancient Pilbara plateau like a tribal scar, raised and livid. Rivers have torn open its flanks and iron-rich gravel spills like dried blood over the plains. Dusted with green-gold spinifex and sprinkled with white-stemmed eucalypts, the Hamersleys display colour with a savagery that borders on the surreal. It is a landscape unlike any other on Earth.

A walk into one of the winding gorges does nothing to dispel the feeling of unreality. Smooth pavements and sheer walls, composed of neat rectangular ironstone blocks, create the illusion of a rusting city. Water slides across terraces and chatters down stone steps into deep, still pools, shaded by giant fig trees and native pines, and birdsong echoes eerily. Geologically, this walk represents a step backward in time of almost 2.5 billion years. It is a journey that leads to the heart of a biological event that reworked the face of the Earth and changed the course of its history.

(I don't know what this biological event was, but I do know that people who are astrobiologists, interested in the origins of life, go up there to dig about.)

* The Voyage of the Great Southern Ark by Reg Morrison (according to Olive) or Maggie Red Morrison or Maggie and Reg Morrison or Reg and Maggie Morrison (according to Google). I need to get hold of a copy to find out who is the true author!!!

ETA: National Library catalogue says Reg and Maggie.

Don't know why I'm so wide awake tonight. Now we follow the French it seems. The beach, of all places, is the scene of the worst 'race riots' since 1860! Yesterday a mob of 5000 people attacked people of 'middle eastern appearance' on Cronulla beach - you might as well say 'in the playground'. The 'middle easterners' , in return, smashed cars with baseball bats. Last weekend it was 'Lebanese gangs' marauding on the beach. Today it has spread to Maroubra beach.

The PM dismisses the suggestion that it has anything to do with his foreign policy. But I know that when the cops raided numerous homes a couple of weeks ago, rounding up 'terrorist suspects' with live TV coverage, it was widely interpreted in the western suburbs as victimisation of Arab immigrants. One of the local Islamic leaders blames talk-back radio for whipping up racism against Lebanese immigrants. I blame reality TV - that American show where the cameras follow the cops as they round up the crims.

There is also a clear path, from Howard's decision to steal the votes of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, by shifting to a more anti-immigrant stance, to the widely experienced sense among non-white immigrant communities that they are not as welcome as they used to be. The 'war on terrorism' has shifted this antagonism particularly onto people of middle eastern descent who, like their French counterparts, are more unemployed than most..

I was one of 180 signatories of this letter to the editor. I didn't write the letter, I just received an email and added my name to the list. One of my former students just happened to mention my name in talking to the journalist who wrote today's article.

For an Ethics of Free Speech

Over the last few weeks, Andrew Fraser, an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Law at Macquarie University, has advocated racist views from a number of public platforms. His views fall squarely within the category of biological racism (see accompanying letter by Dr Robert Norton). He has claimed, amongst other things, that Africans are congenitally inferior in terms of their intellectual capacity and that they are naturally prone to violence. He has exhorted his fellow Australians to stop further African and Asian migration to Australia as he believes this nation is at risk of what he terms ‘national suicide.’

In the flurry of media coverage that Fraser’s views have received, both his supporters and many of his critics have sought to legitimate his views by accommodating them under the rubric of ‘free speech.’ Free speech, like motherhood or meat pie, is held to be one of the inalienable truths of Australian society. As a community of academics we wish to make the following essential points about the ethics and limits of free speech:

• The freedom to speak is not absolute. Racism, specifically in the form of racial vilification of particular groups is not ‘free speech’. It is a criminal offence under our laws and it cannot be sanctioned in any quarter.


• Some people are more free to speak than others. Free speech is not an abstraction. In practice it is exercised by some and not by others. The freedom to speak is enjoyed by those who have access – through linguistic, educational, institutional and economic power - to the various forums that either disseminate or silence our speech. Witness the number of column inches that Fraser and his supporters have received, in graphic contrast to the fewer than handful of articles in which the communities he racially vilifies have had the opportunity to respond (see, for example, The Australian HES 10/08/05).


• It is dishonest to suggest that free speech is equally available to all. Some of us are entrusted with the ability to speak authoritatively, and to be listened to, because of the roles we occupy in society. This is why it is imperative for other academics to denounce Fraser’s continuing capitalisation on his academic title and institutional affiliation. Fraser has no academic research history in the field of race and ethnicity studies.


• As much as sticks and stones, words break bones. The racist views advocated by Fraser have already resulted in physical as well as other kinds of violence. Sudanese-Australians, singled out for vilification by Fraser, have been violently bashed and attacked. In one instance in Toowoomba, a Sudanese-Australian family was driven out of town by the repeated assaults from neo-Nazi gang. The gang has warned that it will now intensify its race-hate campaign (The Australian 23/07/05).


• Free speech is not a matter for the individual alone. We can see the limitations of this position as soon as we place students, largely ignored in the debate, at the centre of the issue. We are not just dealing with the sentiments of an individual, but with the practices of a figure who exercises power and authority, vested in him by an institution, over students. His assessments help to determine their life chances in the future as well as their capacity to learn effectively in the present. How does a person who believes that people are unequally genetically endowed with intelligence and violence undertake to fairly and equally assess students who come from different parts of the world? If a teacher holds such views how can they treat students fairly on the basis of merit?

It is timely to begin to talk about an ethics of speech founded on principles of responsibility and accountability. An ethics of speech demands that as speakers we take responsibility for unequal relations of power and resources -- such as those that mark the relationship between a university professor and Sudanese refugees fleeing violence, poverty and persecution.

If free speech is to not to become the last refuge for race fanatics and hate mongers, in the context of an already volatile climate, it needs to be articulated hand-in-hand with an ethics of responsibility. Join us in denouncing the travesty of a ‘free speech’ free of ethics.

Something really weird is going on. The head of Corby's legal team said today that they would 'probably' accept the government's offer of senior counsel with experience in Indonesian law, but nobody has yet contacted them. The Attorney General responded this afternoon by saying that not only had they already contacted the legal team, they have been to visit Corby herself to make the offer. So somebody is lying.

My assumption would be that Corby is the relevant person to ask first, rather than her lawyers. But once again the lawyers seem to be trying to run her strategy without her intervention.

I've read a few bits of the judgement in the newspapers. It seems that the lawyers tried to establish an area of doubt over whether Corby actually owned the drugs or not. But the judge wasn't interested in that. He just said that they had failed to prove that somebody else owned them.

It is really unclear what all the publicity around her case has achieved. Maybe it saved her from the death penalty. A neighbour told me this afternoon that there are 126 Australians in various prisons around the world, several of them facing death and none of them are getting this sort of treatment.

(Pronunciation guide: cut the S off the front and pretend you are French).

This young woman (aged 27) is the subject of a national hysteria similar to the Teri Schiavo case. She was arrested a few months ago at Bali airport with 4 kg of marijuana in the unlocked zip compartment of her boogie board bag. Today she received the guilty verdict and a 20 year prison sentence - which, by Indonesian standards, is a light one for the offence.

I don't think anyone in this country knows the facts of the case. But of course that hasn't stopped anybody from forming an opinion, indeed a violently held opinion. The press, knowing full well how to tap into anti-Indonesian and anti-Asian feeling, have produced a crescendo of rubbish about it. Her defence was financed by a strange Gold Coast businessman who hired his own lawyers, for what motive nobody knows. All of them seem to have treated Corby like a child. We kept hearing interviews with them in which they said that she hadn't been informed of this or that because it would be too hard for her to bear.

The defence was based on the known fact that a bunch of baggage handlers at Sydney airport have been implicated in a cocaine smuggling racket. The coke was imported and their job was to keep it from the roving eyes of customs. There have also been other cases recently of baggage handlers tampering with luggage. One guy was arrested because he took a camel suit (!) out of somebody's bag, put it on and paraded around the tarmac in it. Obviously, the security in the baggage handling area is not great. But the Federal Police Commissioner was right (even if not exactly helpful to Corby) when he said her case was unsupported by evidence. It's a bit of a stretch to go from these cases to one where somebody puts 4 kg of marijuana in a bag headed for Bali.

In the middle of her trial, nine more Australians unhelpfully decided to smuggle heroin into Bali. They were all caught with the stuff taped to their bodies and the prosecution will be arguing for the death sentence. No question of mishandled baggage in that case.

One of the features of the Balinese legal system is that nothing is kept from the media. The judge had already expressed his view of the case many times before the verdict today. Or at least his view could easily be read between the lines of statements such as 'Every accused weeps in court, but tears have no influence on the case' and 'what happens in Australian airports has nothing to do with Indonesian law'. Another press-promoted rumour is that this judge has handled 500 drug cases and never acquitted anybody.

Corby's mother screamed and ranted at the judge when the verdict was delivered and had to be told to shut up by her daughter in the dock. The Indonesian embassy has had to be given extra security and the Greens are organizing a demo outside for the weekend.

The government has done everything it could to help her. They sent some guy from prison to tell his hearsay evidence about the smuggling racket because Corby's defence asked them to. Now they are sending two QCs to handle her appeal (their assistance was previously turned down by her defence team - who knows whether anybody ever asked her about it?). Both have experience in Asian courts. The government has also begun negotiations with the Indonesian government to start a prisoner exchange scheme - whereby she'll be able to serve her sentence in an Australian prison. I suppose the press-induced hysteria may have contributed to this somewhat active stance by the government.

The mystery remains as to whether she is really guilty or not. If she is, she is amazingly stupid (not implausible). Everybody knows what the penalties are like in Indonesia. Why would you put the stuff in an unlocked zip compartment - unless you figured already on the extremely risky strategy of blaming somebody else for putting it there? If she is innocent, the difficult thing to imagine, however, is the motives of the 'real' smuggler. Why on earth would they put stuff in an unlocked zip compartment of an innocent traveller?

On balance, for now, I'll go with the Indonesian judge. I think she's guilty as charged. The appeal should be interesting.

Today is a national public holiday - the one on which we are supposed to express our gratitude to the troops for defending our national safety. (Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps).

The day originated as a memorial to the Anzac troops who joined the British invasion of the Dardanelles back in 1915. 8,000 Australians died during that failed attempt by a total force of 70,000 to unseat half a million Turks from their defensive positions at Gallipoli. Basically, they were required to climb a cliff under heavy fire as part of the British Imperial campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The whole event was cooked up by one of history's Great Men, Winston Churchill, and how any of it affected Australia's safety has yet to be explained.

Churchill decided to use the Anzacs because they'd been training in Egypt due to a shortage of training space in England (from where troops were sent to the more important Western Front). See Naguib Mafouz' novel, Palace Walk, for an Egyptian point of view on the Australians' heroism in the face of Cairo prostitutes. According to Mafouz, the Australians were hated more even than the British because of the brutal way in which they excluded the locals from access to the red light district.

Anyway, off they went to die in large numbers for a British campaign that was in any case a complete folly. Unlike many on the Western Front, they did not desert - they couldn't really because they had only the sea behind them and the Turks in front. At least in France and Belgium one had somewhere to go - though most of those who did desert ended up in front of the firing squad.

After 8 months of fruitless dying, the invasion was called off and this whole schemozzle has somehow become a nation-building myth. The 'spirit of the Anzacs' is what this country is supposed to be all about. The men came home to cheering crowds and headed straight for the pub. The pubs had to be closed at 6 pm in order to salvage something of 'family life', but never mind, on Anzac Day they could drink all day, get in fights, bash the wife or whatever. This was the national spirit that these volunteers who went off to war for British Imperialism had saddled us with.

Later in that war, the then Prime Minister tried to introduce conscription. His attempt failed due to the massive popular campaign against it. The country was badly divided and that PM has gone down in history as the 'Labor Rat'.

Next came WW2. This is the only one we've been in where we can actually say that our national safety was threatened. When the Japanese took Singapore, we had to bring our empire volunteers hastily back from the Middle East. But even after that War, Anzac Day remained basically as a drink fest (of course you might go to the Dawn Service and join the marching parade, but as soon as that was over you went to the pub for the day). Several wars later, the Malayan Emergency, Korea and Vietnam, it was more of the same. In the 1960s, Alan Seymour wrote a scathing play about it: The One Day of the Year.

Since then we've taken on the role of peacekeepers and military service has become more respectable in the popular mind - to the extent that all those imperial wars we fought in now seem to be seen as peacekeeping operations. Young people have started turning out for the Dawn Service (I heard there were 20,000 this year in Sydney) and the parade. We have a new generation most of whom have never seen anyone go off to an actual war. Yes, even the Vietnam generation are grandparents now! Iraq won't necessarily put a dent in this new-found popularity because the numbers are few and, so far at least, no Australians have died there. Instead we have new heroes - one who died in East Timor, another in the Solomons, and 9 men and women who died in a helicopter crash during the earthquake relief on Nias.

Oh, and these days we also remember the thousands of Turks who died at Gallipoli (we can all agree these days that Empire is a Bad Thing and anyway there's the large Turkish community in Australia to consider). However, we're also outraged that the Turkish government is planning to build a road over our sacred Gallipoli sites - mainly in order to handle the thousands of tourists who go there every year to mark the occasion of an ancient imperial adventure. Even worse, they want to stop the New Zealanders performing their Haka since the Turks consider some of the hand gestures obscene! The Haka was certainly not performed at the original event - New Zealanders' embrace of Maori culture is much more recent than that. And goodness, we had a fight with the Kiwis over whether a pop singer should be allowed to sing at the ceremony. He was going to sing 'The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' - I mean how could they object to that?

So the meaning of Anzac Day is changing. Whereas it used to be an occasion for ageing warriors to get drunk with their mates while the rest of us showed respect for the national identity they gave us, it is now an occasion for children to be proud of their granddads' role in global 'peacekeeping' (or great-granddads since there are still 4 WW1 veterans alive), a time to do a bit of flag-waving at the parade and a new tourist destination, complete with (appropriate) entertainment thrown in. They still go to the pub though.

Anne Summers posted a reference to a report on the cost of divorce in Australia. After adjusting for child support payments, the report found that one year after the divorce the household in which the children are living is, on average, $5,100 worse off, while that without the children is $13,200 better off. No need to point out who gets the bad end of the stick on that one.

A mentally ill woman disappeared more than 10 months ago. She was found wandering in north Queensland, near Cairns somewhere. The police took her in and managed to deduce from her incoherent story, at least partly delivered in German, that she must be an illegal immigrant. She spent 6 months in a Queensland gaol while they sorted out what to do with her. For the last part of this period she was in the official custody of the Department of Immigration which eventually moved her to the Baxter Detention Centre for illegal immigrants in South Australia. She has languished there for the past 4 months. Apparently some other detainees thought she was ill and tried to draw her case to the attention of the authorities. It seems that the Department became aware that she needed psychiatric help as long ago as November. At the moment, for all we know, she's still in Baxter. Until a few days ago, her family had presumed she was dead.

I'm reminded of a book I read as an undergrad by Erving Goffman. I've forgotten the title, but it was a shocking condemnation of social attitudes to the mentally ill. Cases like that of the misdiagnosis (followed by horrible mistreatment) of Janet Frame also come to mind. So what has changed?

Further, what on earth is going on, in a country where carrying ID papers is not compulsory, huge numbers of legitimate residents speak English with a strong accent and are fluent in some other language, and there is supposedly a register of missing persons kept, yet the police can 'deduce' that a mentally ill person must be an illegal immigrant?