Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The modest mandate of 1967
- 2 ‘Land ownership for Aborigines presents difficult problems’
- 3 Mediating the Yolngu
- 4 Voice and feet
- 5 North and south
- 6 A national indigenous leadership?
- 7 Clans and councils
- 8 ‘As nasty a piece of chicanery as I can remember’
- 9 Effectively Aboriginal
- 10 An indigenous public sphere
- 11 From James Cook to Eva Valley
- 12 The 1940s in the 1990s
- Conclusion: Beyond Howard, Hanson and Herron
- References
- Notes
- Index
3 - Mediating the Yolngu
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The modest mandate of 1967
- 2 ‘Land ownership for Aborigines presents difficult problems’
- 3 Mediating the Yolngu
- 4 Voice and feet
- 5 North and south
- 6 A national indigenous leadership?
- 7 Clans and councils
- 8 ‘As nasty a piece of chicanery as I can remember’
- 9 Effectively Aboriginal
- 10 An indigenous public sphere
- 11 From James Cook to Eva Valley
- 12 The 1940s in the 1990s
- Conclusion: Beyond Howard, Hanson and Herron
- References
- Notes
- Index
Summary
On 10 March 1971, the Liberal Party replaced John Gorton with William McMahon as their leader. Within two hours of McMahon becoming prime minister, Coombs was in his office ‘offering the Prime Minister a vision of a historical role for himself in Aboriginal affairs and the Arts. Mr. McMahon was sympathetic and attracted …’ For the next twenty months, Coombs, Dexter and Stanner sought to capitalise on that sympathy. The issue of land rights, in particular, came to define their success and failure.
The Cairns statement
Coombs' approach to McMahon is amply expressed in a letter written on 30 March 1971, summing up the CAA's ‘deep sense of frustration and disillusion’:
The work of the council has been restricted by the lack of a clear statutory or Ministerial authority, by an unsatisfactory statement of the responsibilities of the Minister-in-Charge in relation to Aboriginal affairs in the Northern Territory, and above all by an inability to place our conclusions and recommendations before the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The CAA had refrained from resigning ‘partly in the hope that the situation might change for the better, partly because of our profound identification with the case of the Aborigines, and partly because we feared that our resignation would leave them even more exposed than they are at present.’ Coombs assured McMahon of ‘a unique place in Australian history’ were he to demonstrate ‘personally and effectively his concern for the Aboriginal people’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Obliged to be DifficultNugget Coombs' Legacy in Indigenous Affairs, pp. 53 - 69Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000