QLD: Church and state in historic clash
By Steve Gray01 Jan 2009 12:01 AM
Ed: Embargoed until 0001 (AEDT), January 1, 2009
The release under the 30-year rule of 1978 cabinet documents of the Queensland government show a Bjelke-Petersen government worried about the political aims of a church managing Aboriginal communities, and beset by Commonwealth government activities that Queensland saw as interference. Steve Gray reports.
BRISBANE, Jan 1 AAP - By 1978, Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen had hit his straps.
After a shaky start, he'd been in power for a decade. He had honed his populist, authoritarian manner and he'd identified a coalition of enemies he could drag into the political stoush as required - Canberra, southerners, Labor, protesters, greenies, pinkos, even churches.
Having survived, and then having consolidated his power, Mr Bjelke-Petersen - who was later knighted in the early 1980s - knew he could flex his political and philosophical muscle.
The Queensland cabinet had long considered a takeover of the management of the Aurukun and Mornington Island Aboriginal missions from the Presbyterian church, which had run them since their founding in 1904.
While there was criticism of the management of the reserves - now run by the successor to the Presbyterians, the Uniting Church - there were also objections to the church's philosophical and political bent.
Moves against the church began in 1977.
In February 1978, then Liberal Party minister for Aboriginal and island affairs in the coalition, Charles Porter, briefed cabinet in a lengthy submission.
"Over the years, the management of Mornington Island and Aurukun under the aegis of (the church) and particularly the philosophies promoted by the Reverend John Brown have been hostile to state government policies and programs."
Reverend Brown was the general secretary of the church's management body.
Mr Porter said much of the population of Aurukun was "dispersed" over the reserve "living in the bush under primitive conditions and consequently presenting a major health hazard".
This program was encouraged by the church under the philosophy of "Aboriginality".
"Mornington Island has similarly suffered from a lack of effective management," Mr Porter continued.
"It can also be expected in view of known moves that this island reserve will be the basis of a legal challenge to the state under the 'land rights' philosophies of the Uniting Church."
Mr Porter went on to decry the fact that, "the Aurukun and Mornington Island people are being given quasi political expectations (eg mining litigation - Aurukun, and projected land rights litigation - Mornington Island) which are flatly opposed to this government's long-standing policies ... the church's overall attitude to state policies continue to be one of outright opposition".
Mr Porter concluded that payment of management fees to the church would cease as of March 31, 1978, as part of a state government takeover.
The church would be left administering only to the spiritual needs of the local communities.
Payments duly ceased in March 1978.
In response, the federal government, under Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser, introduced legislation to give the reserves over to self-management.
The Bjelke-Petersen government responded by having the governor of Queensland rescind the reserve status of the land.
Eventually, Queensland and the commonwealth agreed that the state would introduce legislation for the former reserves to be managed by local councils.
These councils were later abolished and administrators appointed, pending local government elections in 1979.
In June 1978, Mr Porter made a further submission to cabinet, where he urged Premier Bjelke-Petersen to complain to Mr Fraser about, "intrusion by the commonwealth government into Aboriginal and Islander advancement in Queensland".
Earlier, in February, Mr Bjelke-Petersen had made an oral submission to cabinet which resulted in a decision "that no information of any kind is to be supplied to the (commonwealth) commissioner for community relations and that the parliamentary commissioner for administrative investigations and the director of Aboriginal and Islander advancement be informed accordingly".
The commissioner for community relations was the colourful former Whitlam government minister Al Grassby, and Mr Bjelke-Petersen would have no bar of him, or of any other interference in Aboriginal and Islander "advancement" in the state.
AAP stg/ahe/srp/cdh
