Hobart Mercury - September 4, 1999
Author: GEORGIA WARNER

Not just a black and white blue

SURE, he had blue eyes and fair skin. But, says Michael Mansell , as he was growing up in Launceston in the 1950s it didn't take long to learn that his name was always going to set him apart ``as one of the niggers''.

He flunked second-year high school and became a factory worker in the 1970s. By his own admission, he did not understand the way educated white people spoke.

He knew little about the world outside the small, close-knit and outcast Aboriginal community he had grown up with - and which according to the prevailing opinion of the time did not even exist. In the 1970s, people such as Mr Mansell were not considered Aborigines because they supposedly became extinct when Truganini died in 1876, he said. ``We were worse,'' Mansell said. ``We were niggers and hybrids and half-castes.''

It was a view that prevailed until the early 1980s, when Premier Robin Gray's Liberal state government took the Federal Government to the High Court to challenge its use of external affairs powers to block the proposed damming of the Franklin River and caves significant to Aborigines.

Counsel for the State Government argued in court that the caves could not be of special significance to Tasmanian Aborigines, because the Tasmanian Aboriginal race was extinct. This was rejected.

Michael Mansell and the Aboriginal people have come a long way since the late 1970s when the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) was formed and Mr Mansell found his vocation as an activist for his people and later a lawyer.

But despite the advances - their recognition by governments as Aborigines, the successful land-rights campaign that has delivered parts of Tasmania back into Aboriginal hands and the millions of dollars that flow into the state to help Aborigines - the movement is now facing its greatest challenge from within.

At the heart of the schism is a great irony that it not lost on Mr Mansell. The movement is becoming a potential victim of its own success in rallying Tasmanians to its flag.

So successful have Tasmanian Aborigines been in promoting their cause that there are now thousands more Tasmanians who class themselves as Aborigines.

Yet, says Mr Mansell, there are many imposters - whites posing as blacks. And it is the bitter debate about who is Aboriginal, who should benefit from the wide range of assistance offered, and who should administer it that is threatening to tear the Aboriginal movement in Tasmania apart.

The sub-text to the issue of Aboriginality is that while the TAC and its opposition, the Grassroots Aboriginal group, agree that there are people who should be recognised as Aborigines, they argue over the rules and how they should be imposed. And the Grassroots group are conducting a vigorous campaign against the TAC and some of its officials - and particularly Mr Mansell - over its administration.

Mr Mansell says he could never, in those early days, have predicted the black rights movement would one day result in ``the absurd self-identification of more than 15,000 Tasmanians as Aboriginal''.

``I always thought there would have been about four or five thousand Aborigines in Tasmania back in the 1970s, and I reckon that number would not exceed 6000 now,'' he said.

``At the time, there was some census statistic showing less than 600 Aborigines. As that started to climb to 3000 and then 3500, I thought it was a better reflection of the true number of Aborigines in the state. Crikey yes, has that ever changed.''

According to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), Tasmania's Aboriginal population more than doubled to almost 14,000 between 1991 and 1996, compared with a 1.4% population growth for the state.

Today, Mr Mansell says there are at least 15,000 people claiming Aboriginality in Tasmania, compared with just 36 in 1966 and 2942 in 1976.

ATSIC says Tasmania's 1996 Aboriginal population was 37% more than projections based on the 1990 census, and grew more than twice as fast as the national rate of increase.

But it is not only a Tasmanian trend; the ACT recorded an 84% jump in its indigenous population between 1990 and 1996.

Mr Mansell - as well as his Grassroots critics in the Tasmanian Aboriginal movement - both agree the present population statistics are absurd. They say that while some of the increase can be attributed to genuine Aborigines finally gaining the courage to identify as such, many of the newcomers are white imposters.

DOUG Maynard is from the group of Aborigines who call themselves Grassroots and who grew up on Cape Barren Island. In the 1950s, he moved with his family to Penguin, on the North-West Coast, under a government policy of assimilation.

``We were the only Aboriginal family living in Penguin at the time, we were known as the Maynards from Mission Hill,'' Mr Maynard said.

``Kids at school used to call us gollywogs and niggers and insulting things like that . . . there used to be fights and all sorts of things.

``Now, some of these same people are coming up to me in the street and saying: `Hey Douggy, did you know Im an Aborigine now.' I'm angry and insulted by this. They were never Aboriginal. It makes a mockery of my family's identity as Aborigines.''

Mr Mansell and his Grassroots critics agree most of the imposters are only in it for the money.

Indeed, there was never any friction or debate about Aboriginality in Tasmania before there was money around, Mr Mansell said.

``Before dollars were around, the only Aborigines in Tasmania were those unable to escape the fact,'' he wrote in 1995.

He said others who now said they were Tasmanian Aborigines might be genuinely mistaken in their new-found identification. But there was a third theory, too. ``A lot of poor whites out there, a lot of them wanted to be Aboriginal,'' Mr Mansell said.

``I think they felt sympathy with our circumstances. They have been around for a while to watch the struggle of the lowest down-and-out people who were starting to gain some credibility and standing in the community.

``It is nice to be part of something that has some standing, and I don't think there was another avenue for them. And then when they found that the procedures of ATSIC were so damn loose, some of them manipulated that to their own financial advantage. There is no question of that.

``And that was initially done by a few, then by their brothers and cousins and friends of friends. Now you have the absurd self-declaration of 15,000 Aborigines in Tasmania, which is more than twice the number there really is.''

Mr Mansell said money was an obvious motive, although he added that there were no magic pots of money for being black.

``I know of nobody who has become a millionaire out of it,'' he said.

There is significant funding for Aborigines today - $2.2 billion nationally. But not even ATSIC or the Department of Aboriginal Affairs can quantify it state by state because it is distributed through a vast array of federal and state departments. It is believed to be about $10 million in Tasmania.

There is Aboriginal funding provided through both the state and federal health and housing departments, the departments of education and employment, local government, the arts, justice and and sport and recreation.

The TAC has an annual budget of about $6 million, used to fund its legal service, community school, health and dental services and a variety of cultural and other programs.

ATSIC spends about $5 million a year in Tasmania, some of which goes to the TAC and $3 million of which is distributed by the state's ATSIC regional council to organisations successful in applying for funds.

``Oh yes, there's money around for being an Aboriginal,'' said a senior TAC staff member who did not want to be named.

``You'll find most of these people are down on their luck a bit and there is money around for all sorts of things, like setting up their own Aboriginal organisations, and then applying for Aboriginal grants. It is not a bad line of business.''

However, Mr Mansell says to look at figures in isolation serves only to further entrench a perception that Aborigines are well off.

He said Commonwealth funding for Aborigines represented less than 1% of the federal funding made available to the rest of the Tasmanian community every year.

The Aboriginal medical and legal services were stretched to the limit.

While there were special incentives for Aboriginal employment and education, these were no different to similar programs offered to the wider community, he said.

And the whole debate about Aboriginal funding, and who was and wasn't entitled to it, would never have become a problem in Tasmania had it been left up to Tasmanian Aborigines to administer, Mr Mansell said.

Instead, he said, the Federal Government introduced, through the departments that provided these services, a definition so loose it was bound to create turmoil.

Brian Mansell, a Catholic Schools Aboriginal education officer, said Tasmania's burgeoning black population first aroused his suspicions in the early 1980s.

But he said the community had to be careful not to deny genuine Aborigines their identity.

``We had to be very be careful not to put people through the same situation we had been through of not allowing them to be who they were,'' he said. ``We have no right to do that.''

He believes that early tolerance has now compounded an already divisive and controversial problem as groups like the TAC attempt to crack down on the surging number of paper or tick-a-box blacks.

The TAC has begun denying services to some clients until they can provide further evidence of their Aboriginality; sparking an outcry from those who have been using services for years, only to have that access suddenly denied.

It has also funded two landmark legal battles in the Federal Court, challenging the Aboriginality of candidates who stood for the 1996 ATSIC regional council elections.

While Justice Ron Merkel ruled that two candidates - one who was elected, and another who who became an ATSIC regional councillor when a vacancy arose earlier this year - were not Aboriginal, Michael Mansell does not consider the result a victory.

He has predicted further chaos when the next round of ATSIC regional council elections are held in October - because he says the Federal Government has ignored pleas for greater scrutiny of the Aboriginality of voters and candidates.

But the crackdown does not just target the white imposters.

Even those who can provide definitive proof they are descended from an Aborigine are not necessarily going to be accepted by the TAC, or the wider Aboriginal community, Mr Mansell said.

Tasmania's ATSIC Commissioner Leonie Dickson, said she accepted that finding an Aboriginal ancestor was probably enough for most people to qualify for Aboriginal funding provided by government departments such as ATSIC.

But she said the dramatic influx of newcomers over the past 10 years did get up her nose.

``It isn't their fault, but they come to us like they feel they are owed something,'' Ms Dickson said. ``I know that if they have a family tree, that's fine.''

``But the difference is, we have been Aboriginal all our lives, we've been there, done the hard yards, suffered the government policies and finally started to get somewhere.

``And the new people start to identify and they are coming in and getting them anyway.

``We've opened the door to them. I get a bit shitty about that.''