Applicability Of The Key Australian Values For Indigenous Australians
Australia’s state of politics and policies are consistently unable to reflect the values that we supposedly uphold. We believe that we have a liberal, representative democracy; the freedom to make individual choices within this; and an egalitarian attitude and culture that allows equality of opportunity. However, these values fail to exist in substantial, tangible manifestations as they seem to only be applicable to white Australians.
The lack of Indigenous acknowledgement in politics and policies undermines the very presence of the liberal, modern democracy that Australians so profoundly value. Australian democracy requires participation and engagement, however, as Maddison and Strakosch (2019) argue, Indigenous people are seldom regarded as participants in “unique sovereign politics”. Subsequently, the settler-colonial framework that underpins our politics is perpetuated, ensuring a truly representative democracy cannot flourish. Historically, the sovereignty of white Australia is enforced through policy, to ensure the “assimilation of the other” to one, monocultural identity. Contemporarily, this is enacted through the lack of recognition in political institutions and structures of democracy, such as limited Indigenous representation in Parliament, and the absence of Constitutional acknowledgement of Indigenous people. Therefore, these entrenched racial attitudes indicate that the representative democracy that is supposedly a fundamental Australian value does not translate into corporeal actualities.
Collective freedom is similarly a value that fails to eventuate into a reality. Individual autonomy is enshrined as a crucial component of being Australian, however Miragliotta, Errington, and Barry, (2014) claim that our belief that unimpeded individual freedom is available to everyone is erroneous. Indeed, the settler-colonial framework that underwrites our identity ensures that Indigenous cultural and social freedoms are consistently compromised in favour of maintaining a singular, white monoculture. Indigenous people do not conform into this uncompromising White national identity are deemed as ‘other’ and are often vilified and ostracised in society. Historically, this is evidenced in the land reserves that restricted physical freedom to a regulated space, and the Stolen Generation policies that were designed to eliminate Indigenous cultural expression. This signifies that the freedom that we imagine as being ubiquitous and indiscriminatory in reality, does not eventuate.
The belief in equality analogously fails to translate into a discernible existence. Equality as a principle is held in such high regard by Australians it is arguably the cornerstone in the foundation of Australian identity. However, Miragliotta et al (2013) proposes that Australian egalitarianism is a “myth”. Indeed, the idolized notion of a ‘fair go’ is often discussed in theoretical ideals but in actuality, equality of opportunity is not reflected in any perceptible outcomes for Indigenous peoples. By refusing to acknowledge the social and economic inequality Indigenous people face through practical measures such as policy, state institutions maintain a “collective amnesia” regarding the treatment of Indigenous Australians, allowing the continuation of the colonialist view of Indigenous Australians as lesser. Thus, institutional refusal to express equality on the basis of cultural and racial differences negates the very existence and truth of this value in Australian society.
Therefore, through state determination to maintain a settler-colonial vision of identity, the key Australian values of democracy, freedom and equality become non-existent, and for Indigenous Australians, produce the antithesis of what the claim to provide.
