Australians understand fire.
We know it as dangerous and destructive when it’s uncontrolled. We fear it, prepare for it and try to prevent it.
Those Australians who live in traditional Indigenous communities have a broader and more philosophical take on fire. Acknowledging its force, they also emphasise its essential role in regeneration and biodiversity, in preserving life as well as sometimes taking it.
When he spoke last weekend at the annual Garma festival, the first since last year’s referendum rejected a proposed Indigenous voice to parliament, Anthony Albanese drew on its carefully chosen theme: “Fire. Strength. Renewal.”
“I have not come back to this place of fire to rake through the ashes,” Albanese told those gathered at Garma. “I am here because my optimism for a better future still burns.”
He’d almost captured what his hosts meant with their fire reference – almost, but not quite. They’d already moved beyond the ashes and were talking about what good the scorching would deliver. Theirs was a statement of resilience and, yes, hope.
In his written welcome to Garma participants, the Yothu Yindi Foundation chair, Djawa Yunupingu, described fire as the foundation of life, giving strength, energy and power. He said it was in the people and of the land. Renewal, he said, was in both the land and the people.
“It is the goodness that rises in the country after fire has burnt the land and cleansing rains have come,” he wrote.
Yunupingu spelled it out further in a speech he gave just before Albanese gave his own, describing the pain of the referendum loss and the determination to renew and to rise.
“And prime minister, we want you to rise with us,” he said. “You told us you were serious and you were. You stood with us. Like us, you are hurt by the loss. But you are here standing with us again.”
Both Yunupingu and Albanese focused their addresses on practical change, on economic development and the importance of remote-community infrastructure – housing in particular, roads and other “building blocks of a modern society” – in addressing the still-appalling Closing the Gap targets.
The prime minister spoke about helping the people of north-east Arnhem Land “have ownership” of their future, on a foundation of economic empowerment. He highlighted the opportunities for local communities that lay in the critical minerals and rare earths of northern Australia.
Nobody mentioned that Djawa Yunupingu’s family, as traditional custodians of the Gumatj lands on the Gove peninsula on which Garma is held, were due in the high court in Darwin a few days later, where Albanese’s government is challenging a federal court ruling that the Gumatj are entitled to compensation for the minerals others mined on their land.
If Yunupingu thought there was any irony in the prime minister’s glowing talk of the possibilities of mineral wealth, he kept it to himself.
Albanese also recommitted himself to another ambition of the Uluru statement from the heart – makarrata, which he described as “that powerful Yolngu word gifted to the nation, for coming together after a struggle”.
His commitments and pledges were received generously. He was praised for keeping his promise to hold the referendum. If there were criticisms of how it was handled, they were not aired publicly. The whole event was conducted in a spirit of resilience, determination and magnanimity.
It wasn’t for another 24 hours – almost a day after Albanese had left – that it became clear the prime minister’s poetic framing of the makarrata definition was designed to mask him crab-walking away from a promise. After spending so much political capital on the disastrous voice referendum, it seems he’s not willing to spend any more.
The independent Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe is now accusing him of gaslighting Indigenous people and engaging in “dishonest doublespeak”.
“It’s condescending to everyone who believed in this government’s promises, which they are now clearly breaking,” Thorpe said in a statement on Friday.
In an interview recorded at Garma last Saturday and aired the following morning, Albanese told the ABC’s Insiders program that he considered the “coming together” was what the government was now doing with Indigenous people since the referendum. Consulting. Having a chat about the way forward. Nothing more.
He was asked about the Uluru statement’s reference to a truth and justice commission and the call from one of its architects, Pat Anderson, for that to be the next step, as the statement envisaged. He did, after all, commit on election night to implementing it “in full”, as Anderson would state clearly in a statement issued after the interview urging him to clarify his position.
“Well, that’s not what we have proposed,” Albanese said on Insiders. “What we’ve proposed is makarrata just being the idea of coming together.”
Actually, no prime minister, that’s not what you proposed. On 15 November 2021, in a statement that’s still on your website, you committed to a “makarrata commission” and you said it would “oversee a national process for Treaty and Truth-telling”.
You boasted that Labor was the only party committing to create it.
“An Albanese Labor Government will establish a Makarrata Commission as a priority,” your statement said. “This sits alongside Labor’s commitment to a referendum on a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament in the first term of an Albanese Government. As called for in the Uluru Statement, the Makarrata Commission will have responsibilities for overseeing processes for Treaty-Making and Truth-Telling.”
What’s more, you funded a makarrata commission in the budget.
So to suddenly say that’s not what you meant is disingenuous in the extreme and, frankly, an insult to anyone who took you at your word.
And another thing. The “coming together after struggle” is the short-form definition of makarrata. The late respected Yolgnu elder Dr G Yunupingu spelt it out in more detail in The Australian newspaper in 2017.
As he described it, it wasn’t just coming together after struggle but after conflict. In fact, it was a crucial part of resolving conflict and moving forward. And it involved the disputing parties being truthful about the wrongs that had been done.
“The leaders must always seek a full understanding of the dispute: what lies behind it; who is responsible; what each party wants, and all things that are normal to peacemaking efforts,” G Yunupingu wrote. “When that understanding is arrived at, then a settlement can be agreed upon. This settlement is also a symbolic reckoning – an action that says to the world that from now on and forever the dispute is settled; that the dispute no longer exists, it is finished. And from the honesty of the process and the submission of both parties to finding the truth, then the dispute is ended.”
In past times, it also required a leader of those who did wrong to come forward and receive punishment – often involving spearing – with the aggrieved parties then tending the wounds of the former nemesis, giving gifts and showing respect.
Makarrata is about real reconciliation: unvarnished truth, acknowledgment and restitution. It’s hard. It involves pain. It’s not a chat about what to do next.
The renewal that comes after the fire is important. In this context, that must take the form of economic development and greater effort to close the gap.
But it’s not the same as truth-telling or restitution.
It’s not the same as makarrata.
Choosing a more benign way to define it doesn’t change what was promised. And given that one of Albanese’s electoral vulnerabilities is in the creeping doubts being detected among some voters about his authenticity and identity – evident in a message the opposition is pushing hard, that he’s not what you thought he was, he’s not what he seemed – breaking such a promise would seem a dangerous thing to do.
Albanese wants people to focus on his other promises.
“You have endured setbacks and disappointment, yet you have met every challenge with courage and perseverance, optimism and grace,” he told the audience at Garma. “You have kept the fire burning. You have kept the faith. And my government will keep faith with you.”
Breaking a promise to limit political damage may just cause more of it. Pretending you haven’t broken one definitely will.
You could say it’s playing with fire.
