Aboriginal Leaders Condemn Clashes After Australian Police Rescue Gillard
Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard
Luis Enrique Ascui/Bloomberg
Julia Gillard, Australia's prime minister, speaks at a luncheon hosted by the Asia Society in Melbourne in December, 2011.
Julia Gillard, Australia's prime minister, speaks at a luncheon hosted by the Asia Society in Melbourne in December, 2011. Photographer: Luis Enrique Ascui/Bloomberg
Australian indigenous leaders condemned clashes between aboriginal protesters and riot police that forced officers to rescue Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott in the nation’s capital.
Dozens of indigenous protesters banged on the windows of a Canberra restaurant where Gillard and Abbott attended a function yesterday for Australia Day, a holiday marking the arrival of white settlers in the country. The prime minister and opposition leader were rushed out of the building by security officers and spirited away in government cars to cries of “racist” and “shame” from the protesters.
The demonstrators were responding to comments by Abbott earlier in the day when he was questioned whether it was time to move an aboriginal protest camp, known as the Tent Embassy, that has been running for 40 years in front of the nation’s former parliament house. Aborigines remain the poorest and most disadvantaged group in Australian society more than 200 years after Europeans settled in 1788.
“It was a disgraceful situation -- I was shocked when I saw the scenes,” Warren Mundine, an Aboriginal leader and former president of the governing Labor Party, said today in an interview broadcast on Sky News. “They blew up a statement that Tony Abbott made that was very harmless.”
Abbott told reporters yesterday that the nation’s indigenous population could be “very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian.”
“I think it probably is time to move on,” Abbott added.
Riot Officers
Mundine said the opposition leader’s comments didn’t justify what happened later at the Canberra restaurant, where riot officers were forced to form a cordon to stop protesters from banging on the windows.
Television footage inside the venue showed Gillard’s security detail warning that the glass could break at any time and recommending the prime minister leave the scene. Gillard then asked that Abbott also be escorted out.
As Gillard was rushed from the scene she stumbled and lost her shoe. A member of the Tent Embassy later found the footwear and has offered to return it as an act of reconciliation, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.
Abbott told reporters today he was grateful to the prime minister and her protection detail for looking after them both in what was “a potentially ugly situation.” He defended his comments, saying he is “proud” of the steps toward reconciliation that have been achieved and that “any suggestion that Australia is fixated in the same place that we were in 40 years ago on this issue is just dead wrong.”
‘On a Journey’
Gillard told reporters today that Australia is “on a journey to genuine reconciliation” and said she had no concerns about her security yesterday. “I was always incredibly confident the police would do everything they needed to do,” she said.
The Australian Federal Police said it is investigating whether any offences were committed.
A group of aborigines from the Tent Embassy today marched to the front of parliament house, which was barred by police, and set fire to a national flag brought with them. They chanted slogans including “Who owns this land? We do” and “Always was, always will be aboriginal land.”
50,000 Years
Aboriginal people populated Australia at least 50,000 years before Europeans settled. There are about 400,000 indigenous Australians, who make up 2 percent of the population. Australia Day marks the date in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the first fleet of convict ships from Britain, landed in Sydney Cove, the site of the modern-day city. Many Aborigines and their supporters refer to the date as Invasion Day.
Gillard’s predecessor, Kevin Rudd offered the nation’s first apology to Aborigines taken from their families for assimilation with the white community, saying the policy was a “blemished chapter” in the nation’s history.
From 1910 to 1970, up to one-third of indigenous children were removed from their families and communities and placed in institutions, church missions or the homes of white Australians, according to a government-commissioned report published in 1997. The inquiry found many children lost their cultures, languages, heritage and lands, and recommended reparation be made.
Indigenous leader Mick Gooda also condemned the behavior yesterday, saying the reaction to Abbott’s remarks was “over the top and I don’t think it paints us in a very good light across Australia.”
“What we saw yesterday was images of violent confrontation that we don’t need,” Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, told Sky News.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Heath in Sydney at mheath1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net
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