Australia's Aborigines lose political voice

Link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041105/325/f60n3.html

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's Aborigines have lost their only voice in parliament.

Although 23 indigenous candidates ran in Australia's October 9 national elections, none was successful and the only sitting black senator, Aden Ridgeway, lost his seat, electoral officials announced this week.

The loss of a black political voice comes on top of the strained relationship between Aborigines and Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government, which has refused to apologise for historical injustices against Aborigines.

The failure of Aborigines at the ballot box has prompted calls for race-based seats for Aborigines to give a parliamentary voice to one of the most disadvantaged groups in Australia.

"The need for an indigenous connection to the parliamentary process is absolutely imperative," said Aborigine Patrick Dodson, one of Australia's most respected black leaders.

"It can be done by either dedicated seats, or by the parties pre-selecting Aboriginal candidates, or by Aboriginal people themselves forming some kind of party with a broad-based alliance," Dodson told Reuters in an interview.

Reserved seats are available for Maoris in New Zealand, while Sweden, Norway and Finland have separate assemblies for the indigenous Sami people. Canada's newest territory, Nunavut, has a government that is predominantly indigenous Inuit.

But Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone said Australia would not introduce race seats.

"I'm not in favour of indigenous-specific seats, nor am I a supporter of such models for any specific group," Vanstone said.

Australia has about 450,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, accounting for about 2.5 percent of the population, but they live at a serious disadvantage, with Aborigines likely to die 20 years earlier than other Australians.

The government has targeted practical measures to improve health and education, but remains at loggerheads with black leaders over spiritual issues, such as a formal apology for past injustices and cultural ties to the land.

Howard has axed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, which was responsible for delivering services to black communities, saying the experiment in an elected black body had failed because of its failure to improve living standards.

Aborigines have had voting rights since 1901, but only two have been elected to the national parliament, Ridgeway and Neville Bonner, who was a senator from 1971 to 1983.

No Aborigine has ever sat in parliament's lower house, the House of Representatives, where the government is formed.

Ridgeway, who will leave parliament after six years when his term ends on June 30, 2005, warned of the lack of a voice on indigenous issues if no Aborigine sits in parliament.

"I think that there's a special obligation to keep raising issues on the national agenda, otherwise it would become the great Australian silence," Ridgeway told Reuters.