Upturn: A Better Normal After COVID-19

By NewSouth

COVID-19 has resulted in changes none of us could have imagined, but what happens next? If you had asked most people a year ago, they would have told you there was no way that school children could shift overnight to online learning; that it was impossible for banks to offer mortgage holidays; impossible to double unemployment benefits; impossible to house rough sleepers or put a hold on evictions; impossible to offer wages subsidies and definitely impossible to get Australians to stay home from the beach and the pub. But we did it. In Upturn Tanya Plibersek brings together some of the country's most interesting thinkers who are ready to imagine a better Australia, and to fight for it. It is a compelling vision for a stronger economy, a fairer society, and a more environmentally sustainable future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Nov 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781742245096

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REMOTE COMMUNITIES

AND FIRST NATIONS

Being on Country is freedom. It’s not camping out, it’s about being totally alive. When we are surrounded by all human and non-human relations we are embraced by everything that makes existence possible. Together, we sit around the fire listening to the chatter and song of the animals and insects, we watch the sun and moon rise and set, and under the blanket of the Milky Way we are rejuvenated and safe, happy and at peace.

– June Oscar, reflecting on conversations with family while living on Country

JUNE OSCAR

In late March 2020, overnight it seemed, the world changed in ways previously unimaginable. The rapid pace of life as we knew it came to an abrupt stop.

I received a phone call telling me that the Western Australian Government was about to close the Kimberley region to the rest of Australia. If I wanted to get back to my hometown of Fitzroy Crossing to be with my community and my family, I needed to leave Sydney, now. And Fitzroy Crossing is where I am writing from. Thanks to modern technology and the freedom it brings, I can work from here, surrounded by my family and my country and culture in all its magnificence – the creeks and rocky ranges, the expansive savannah grasslands, the stories of our ancestors, our medicines, nutritious food, sacred sites and much more.

Nations everywhere went into lockdown and told their citizens to go home. So many people across the Earth have experienced this seismic jolt to life from home – being home-bound, a global phenomenon itself.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were facing the very real possibility that, if COVID-19 were to spread out of control within Australian borders, it could devastate us and our entire social and cultural fabric. We still live with that possibility.

The deadly impact of disease on Indigenous communities is both a historical truth, and today’s reality. Globally, First Nations are living with extreme vulnerabilities. Inadequate and overcrowded housing, limited access to health services and preexisting health issues are a toxic combination that heightens our risk, which we bear more than others, to infection and death. I’ve watched the confirmation of this truth with great distress in places like the Navajo Nation in the United States, where people are dying far too young and Elders are passing away before their time, taking with them a vast wealth of knowledge. At the time of writing, the Navajo Nation has the highest coronavirus death rate of any group in the United States at 177 per 100 000.¹

At the beginning of this pandemic, we were told this virus was the ‘great equaliser’, that it does not discriminate. We now know that is simply not true.

As I write, we are seeing that Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples, and many of the most marginalised groups, are dying at a far greater rate than others across the world. In the UK, official figures have shown that Black people are more than four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than others.² There is clear evidence that racism is the deadly force behind this inequality. The cumulative impact of discrimination over generations always makes culturally diverse peoples more socially and economically vulnerable, particularly in times of crisis. This is further compounded by racist acts in the present. In the United Kingdom, for instance, research shows that Black frontline health workers feel more pressure to work in conditions without appropriate protective equipment compared to other colleagues.³

Living in unacceptable conditions and working with unacceptable pressures is causing people to die, right now. At the time of writing, we are already seeing that the resurgence of COVID-19 in Melbourne is having an impact on Australia’s most vulnerable, particularly those living in the city’s public housing tower blocks in Flemington and North Melbourne.

Beyond this immediate impact, culturally diverse and marginalised groups will most likely feel the economic shockwaves – as we are often the first to be unemployed and the last to find work when recession hits. This virus has unveiled globally endemic inequalities etched along the deep fault lines of systemic racism and all other forms of discrimination.

As the pandemic laid bare a modern history of racialised inequality, the murder of George Floyd in the United States represented centuries of racial oppression, Black deaths and a seething collective pain. This time, the world has not turned away in denial. Instead, people in all their diversity – Black, white, Indigenous and non-Indigenous – are rising in solidarity, staring directly at injustice, and saying enough is enough.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is far from spontaneous outrage. It has been building for years. We are living within a global movement of racial reckoning determined to profoundly restructure the world around anti-racism, truth and justice, the embrace of diversity and a fierce commitment to equality.

For Australia, this moment has the potential to be one of historic reckoning too. In confronting our own history of entrenched racial injustices, Australia is being forced into truth-telling, long advocated by First Nations peoples as the only way to heal and move forward. Like most modern nation states formed during European colonialism, Australia emerged out of racist ideologies and the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The founding document of this nation, the Australian Constitution, enshrines these origins. Today it allows for the Commonwealth Government to make discriminatory decisions on the basis of race. From such sacrosanct legal texts, racism is normalised within the customs and practices of our society, and plays an insidious part in the decision-making of State institutions and authorities. We must change the Constitution to reflect our rejection of racial inequality.

Coming so soon after the bushfires of December 2019 and January 2020, COVID-19 and BLM have caused, I believe, a mass re-evaluation of Australian identity, our history and the type of nation we want Australia to be. This virus may not be the great equaliser for now. But like the bushfires, it’s made Australians vulnerable, and in doing so exposed our humanity and the values we hold in common. We value the health, safety and welfare of our people, communities and the places we live, and our environments, from our homes to our surrounding ecology, in all reaches of this land.

At the same time, many are questioning whether our current systems are up to the task of protecting these things that matter most to us all. What are the alternatives that allow us to invest in these values and steer our nation toward equality?

There is no doubt in my mind that the combination of these events and feelings have resulted in tens of thousands of Australians taking to the streets to condemn Indigenous deaths in custody and racism in all its forms. Right now, fierce activism is focused on a major re-structuring of the so-called justice system. The disproportionate rate of First Nations peoples incarcerated is both a representation and outcome of racial inequalities in Australia. But the reform agenda needed to achieve this, advocated by First Nations, runs deep, aimed at whole-of-societal reconstruction.

Ultimately, divestment from the current justice system is about serious re-investment in the health, wellbeing and safety of our communities: the first 2000 days of a child’s life, housing accessibility and affordability, access to good health services and education, and meaningful economic opportunities. Fundamentally, divestment is grounded in our self-determination. Although it is difficult to quantify the total expenditure on punitive interventions versus community-based work, in 2016 PwC Indigenous Consulting estimated that the total cost of Indigenous incarceration would be 9.7 billion per year in 2020, far outweighing investments in prevention initiatives.⁴ We are well overdue for a new way of working, a new way that both transfers resources and re-balances power, giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander control over all decisions affecting our lives. It is reforms grounded in such an approach that will help Australia build a stronger and more resilient nation as it recovers beyond COVID-19. I believe that the response to COVID-19 by all Australian governments, alongside community activism, is forming the conditions needed for this broader reform agenda. As sweeping measures have been introduced across our welfare, health and economic systems to save and protect lives, a space of possibility is emerging.

Like many other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in remote Australia, my family and I have chosen to see this period out on our homelands away from regional towns and larger communities. It is from here, my Bunuba country in the far north of Western Australia, that I have watched these events and measures take effect. From here, we’ve gained vital lessons that must be carried and applied beyond COVID-19.

Firstly, this unprecedented period finally caused Australian governments to respond to people who live on the margins, those whose lives are far too often overlooked. As part of this, governments recognised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were and remain at huge risk of an outbreak. In particular, they recognised the acute vulnerability of our remote communities.

At the brink of crisis, the prevailing policy doctrine that our remote communities were unsafe and unviable was discarded. It was our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, communities and organisations that took immediate action. They knew remote regions and communities had to be protected. Organisations like Congress in Alice Springs, Danila Dilba in Darwin and the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service rapidly disseminated culturally appropriate health information and then located and assisted our peoples back to communities, from the city streets, park ovals and the long grasses.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been supported back are those who are predominately homeless, but their families and sense of home remain in remote regions. Their marginalisation is largely an outcome of decades of systematic underinvestment in remote community infrastructure – housing, roads, telecommunications, services and economies.

This huge logistical effort, which could not have been achieved by mainstream organisations, has triggered the largest homelands movement seen since the establishment of remote communities and outstations. In Western Australia alone, 1000 people were supported back to communities, and a thousand more, like myself, made their own way back. Thousands of students also returned from boarding schools.

Returning to homelands may not be for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, most of whom live in cities and towns, but it is significant to us all. Like the BLM activism on city streets, this homelands movement is challenging Australia’s racist myths and persisting structural colonialism. In this case, the myth is that it’s unfeasible for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to live on Country and that our peoples and the services we rely on – from housing to aged care and health – are better off in the mainstream.

Wherever Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples live in urban, regional or remote Australia, it is our right to be able to access and occupy our traditional lands. And wherever we live, we have a right to access our own properly funded community-controlled services.

Throughout this period, being on homelands has proven what we have always known: that our homelands nourish us, keeping us safe and healthy, and in turn we care for the country, as has been the case for tens of thousands of years. Just a few years ago, the previous Western Australian Government was considering shutting many of these remote communities down!

At the beginning of this return, governments stripped back punitive compliance measures over our lives. I have watched how people have been afforded the space and time to make decisions on their own terms for the benefit of their families. With the suspension across the nation of restrictive obligations and financial penalties under the Community Development Program and, in parallel, the doubling of social welfare payments, many of our people were finally living above the poverty line and were far freer of unwanted government intervention.

Families chose, and most importantly, were able to, move to outstations and bush camps. Surrounded by the wealth of our Country, culture and our ancestors, people have had the time to reconnect, tell stories, hunt, and practise and transfer our knowledge between young and old. This engagement has reinvigorated discussions about Country- and culture-based ways of living. People are talking about the establishment of education and training facilities on Country, forming conservation estates and delivering cultural tourism, and how our knowledge can address climate change, develop healthy land management practices and enable all of Australia to live and work far more sustainably on this continent. All of these initiatives, which are grounded in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge, could contribute to the growth of viable and productive regional homeland economies. These are by no means far-fetched ideas. Many of them are already taking effect on a small scale.

As we have engaged in this way of life, I have felt a renewed sense of control and empowerment sweep across our communities. There is also anecdotal evidence that, while families have been on homelands, life has been calmer. There has been less fighting and drinking, and a reported drop in incidences of family violence.

Unexpectedly, COVID-19 restrictions have been a circuit-breaker for our remote communities. We have had a real opportunity to re-think what we deserve, by quite literally living the self-determining lives that we want and have a right to. If governments continue to invest in remote regions and what we are proving works, they can stimulate economies, creating real jobs for our peoples in emerging industries and essential services. The return on investment can improve housing and infrastructure, forming viable and sustainable existences.

The greatest fear among our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community leadership right now is that governments will walk away from an emerging relationship of trust and collaboration that has begun to take shape over this period. This landscape is rapidly shifting as I write. Governments have already re-imposed aspects of the punitive welfare system without engaging with our communities, and without, it seems, any consideration that these are the discriminatory systems that we are advocating against.

We should not, under any circumstances, be returning to these unacceptable conditions and structures. As governments deal with this global crisis, they have to heed the current activism and realise that there are no viable social, economic and justice systems for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to ‘snap back’ into. The systemic issues of poverty, severe overcrowding, low employment, poor health and education still exist; they haven’t gone away. Our lives remain on the knife-edge of crisis, perilously close to the disastrous outcomes of countries like America if a second wave of COVID-19 were to spread across this nation.

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, for Black and Brown people, and for all marginalised groups, whose lives matter, we cannot afford to let this period of large-scale societal and political change pass us by. From what I have seen and heard of the activism on the streets and in conversations within families and social media platforms, I know Australians are ready for structural and social change.

It is clear to me that Australia needs a post-COVID-19 recovery and reconstruction plan. If we are to progress toward a healthy, resilient, economically and environmentally sustainable society, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples need to be equal participants in Australian nation building. The building blocks are in place to do this. The work of Closing the Gap and the Uluru Statement should be elevated to formalise dialogue aimed at reaching agreement between First Nations peoples and the Australian nation state on constitutional recognition, inclusion and required structural change.

I believe this work must be driven by a new body – a national First Nations agreement making body. It is not for me to prescribe how this body would operate. But its aim would be national settlement for First Nations and Australia, and the process toward settlement would commence now with recovery from COVID-19.

It is only through resetting this relationship that we can respond to the grave injustices of the past and begin to rectify the persisting legacy of structural racism that has caused such severe damage in the present. A significant part of this relationship resetting should involve federal fiscal reconstruction, so that public and private investment can be directed at transformational change for our communities across Australia with the goal of overcoming structural inequalities.

This reconstruction must embrace the vibrancy and potential of our homelands. It must start with the development of our social and community infrastructure by rapidly upgrading and building houses and increasing the capacity of our health, education, training and employment support sectors. Alongside this must be substantial financing of culture-based economies and other forms of Indigenous enterprise to secure and improve our livelihoods on our traditional lands. Instead of being seen as remote and distant, our homelands and the wealth of our culture, country and knowledge systems need to be understood as a central component of Australia’s recovery.

There are precedents in history for uniting nations – both within and beyond borders – through post-war or crisis reconstruction agendas. Australia has engaged in serious reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of the Second World War, improving welfare measures alongside expanding employment opportunities.

It is time to do it again. In acting swiftly and following expert advice, Australia suppressed the curve of COVID-19 transmission and averted the immediate crisis that has hit so many other nations. Unlike others, Australia has been able to buy itself some time, but it should not rest easy. The urgency of the moment calls for political courage, foresight and imagination to pave the way in global leadership and set the standard for national reconstruction.

It is time to reconstruct a nation that reflects the humanity and diversity of its citizens and embraces First Nations societies and culture as foundational to Australian identity. This would be an Australia that does not deny the past but actively learns and incorporates our Indigenous knowledges into systemic change as the nation becomes just, equitable and fair. This would be an Australia that every one of us can proudly say we belong to.

JUNE OSCAR AO is a proud Bunuba woman from the remote town of Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. She is currently Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. June has been Deputy Director of the Kimberley Land Council, chair of the Kimberley Language Resource Centre and the Kimberley Interpreting Service, and Chief Investigator with WA’s Lililwan Project addressing Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. June was awarded an honorary doctorate by Edith Cowan University.

FOSSIL FUEL

FIXATION

‘The balance sheet is breaking up the sky.’

– ‘Blue Sky Mine’, Midnight Oil

PETER GARRETT

When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Australian shores, we were on the cusp of a new age. Turbo-charged by a hotter climate, massive bushfires had just scoured the land, confirming what scientists have long maintained, namely, that this continent is especially vulnerable to global heating.

Countless Australians were touched by the catastrophe, directly or indirectly. Homes, farms and livelihoods were destroyed in a season of hell. Some tragically lost their lives, and the toll would have been higher were it not for the monumental effort from firefighters and government agencies. Over a billion native species perished, billions more were displaced, some teetering towards extinction. As palls of smoke, like scenes from a disaster movie, draped cities already running short of drinking water, the climate crisis was literally in our backyard.

The speed, reach and intensity of the fires happened on the back of a one-degree rise in average temperatures. We are currently on track for a rise of three degrees or more by the end of the century.¹

For many of us, it is unthinkable that parts of the country could be unliveable in the future, but Aboriginal people in Central Australia, who have occupied the land for longer than can be imagined, are already contemplating that prospect. If we fail to act decisively, a three- to four-degree increase will accelerate environmental decline and push our political, security and social systems to breaking point. So can we make the change?

The discovery during the COVID-19 pandemic that we could see vast reaches of stars in less polluted skies, hear the sweet sound of birdsong and see more clearly the immediate natural environment, were some reminders of what we are losing. That is, the healthy waterways, oceans and forests, fertile landscapes, all the plant and animal species, and our thoughtful relationship with these that underpin life on earth.

The mantra that any pro-environment decision is a dangerous trade-off between the economy and nature, between ‘jobs and trees’, is still taken on face value in the halls of power and in many newsrooms. Yet there is no economic evidence for this view, and plenty of evidence against it. What the evidence tells us is this:

1With imagination, good policies, competent planning and strong laws, we can have plentiful jobs and a healthy environment. There is no better example than renewable energy, the use of which is now accelerating at a rapid rate worldwide.

2With the increasing severity of human-induced climate change, it is the pursuit of profits and maintenance of employment in fossil fuel–intensive industries that now directly threatens Australian lives and livelihoods.

Look no further than how Australia treats the Great Barrier Reef, recognised as one of the great natural wonders of the world. The coal industry contributes to the global heating now damaging the reef, with three mass-bleaching events in the past five years,² but in Queensland employs half as many people as work on and around the reef.³ Additionally, this natural treasure generates over $6 billion in tourism each year,⁴ and is worth over $60 billion to the economy.⁵ The figures speak for themselves.

There have been periods in modern Australia, usually when reformist Labor governments were in power at federal and state level, where major environmental challenges were addressed.

Australia was instrumental in safeguarding the Antarctic. In the latter period of the last century, there were extensive additions to the national estate, including World Heritage areas like Kakadu National Park and the North Queensland Wet Tropics.

The pioneering Landcare program, along with concerted community efforts to oppose destructive practices and rehabilitate damaged landscapes, show our values.