Final report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation

Chapter 3 COMMUNICATIONS - PROMOTING THE VISION

The Council has been required by its legislation to promote, by leadership, education and discussion, a deeper understanding by all Australians of the history, cultures, past dispossession and continuing disadvantage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and of the need to redress that disadvantage. It has also been required to provide a forum for discussion on the issues of reconciliation.

Since it was established, the Council has undertaken a wide-ranging communications and public-awareness program to promote ideas and issues related to reconciliation, and to track community attitudes towards these issues. This program has involved five strands:

Media:
promoting reconciliation issues through the media, and working to improve cultural awareness and understanding of Indigenous issues and reconciliation within the media itself.

Resources:
producing a wide range of publications, videos and other educational materials, as well as promotional materials such as posters, stickers and badges, for both broad and targeted audiences.

Outreach:
distributing Council materials as widely as possible within available resources, using outreach mailing lists to include all major organisations and sectors of the community, as well as interested individuals.

Research:
commissioning social research into community attitudes on reconciliation and related issues.

Promotions:
organising public relations and promotional events for reconciliation and the Council's policies and views.

Over the course of its three terms, the Council completed a very large number of communications projects and activities, including ongoing media liaison and public relations; publication of its quarterly magazine, Walking Together ; other publications ranging from detailed reports and Learning Circle kits to accessible brochures, leaflets and a Streetwize Comic for youth; educational videos; and promotional materials such as posters, stickers and badges.

Many of these communications activities supported projects in other major areas of the Council's work, for example during major consultations leading up to the Reconciliation Convention (1997), and on the reconciliation documents leading up to Corroboree 2000. Promoting public awareness continued as a central task over the nine years, with a notable shift in focus through time from awareness-raising to promoting and supporting practical outcomes to realise Council's vision.

The Council especially emphasised the responsibility of the media, as the means of mass communication, to assist reconciliation through informed reporting and discussion of the process and its main issues. It worked with the media to promote cultural awareness and knowledge about reconciliation issues among journalists, and to assist informed and accurate coverage of these issues.

Council's communications program was guided by the strong belief that reconciliation could not be brought about by the Council alone, nor by governments and leaders alone, important though leadership in all sections of society was. Reconciliation had to take place in the hearts and minds of all Australians, and through people working together to change communities, workplaces, sectors and organisations around the country.

Therefore, the Council's communications strategy potentially had to reach out to all Australians but also had to target specific audiences, according to Council's priorities and projects at the time. Some Council materials had to address specialised audiences of committed, interested people, and stakeholders, opinion leaders and representative bodies. Others had to speak to much broader audiences and 'win hearts and minds'.

The Council had to promote its views and policies, but in turn it had to take account of the views of Aboriginal people, Torres Strait Islanders, and the wider community.

All of this had to be done within relatively limited resources which did not allow, for example, traditional advertising campaigns. Given this limitation, and the nature of the issues themselves, the Council's strategy was based around coverage in the media - mainstream, regional, Indigenous, ethnic, and specialist - combined with production and distribution of its own materials.

Regular social research helped to guide the development of new public awareness and education strategies, as well as the Council's work overall. The Council commissioned independent professional researchers to conduct all research into community attitudes.

Social Justice is what faces you when you get up in the morning. It is awakening in a house with an adequate water supply, cooking facilities and sanitation. It is the ability to nourish your children and send them to a school where their education not only equips them for employment but reinforces their knowledge and appreciation of their cultural inheritance. It is the prospect of genuine employment and good health: a life of choices and opportunity free from discrimination.

Dr Mick Dodson, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner (1993)

The Council also regarded this social research as part of its consultation responsibility, informing it of the views of the Australian community as a whole. (See further in Chapter 4.)

Research in 1991-92 established a baseline of community attitudes about reconciliation and helped the Council formulate its communication strategies. Further research was conducted regularly throughout the decade, including two major studies involving both qualitative and quantitative components, commissioned in 1995-96 and 1999-2000. These two studies are probably the two most extensive surveys ever conducted of community attitudes towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and issues related to reconciliation. The second study specifically surveyed both wider community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' attitudes about issues related to documents of reconciliation. For the first time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' views on a range of reconciliation issues were surveyed, including how they perceived the wider community.

The Council made the results of both of these major studies publicly available, taking the view that the research was 'holding up a mirror to the nation'. The Council believed that public knowledge and discussion of the current state of community attitudes was itself part of the reconciliation process, and part of Council's responsibilities in regard to public awareness and community education.

mediapic
Council members talking to the media after the Sydney People's Walk for Reconciliation, 28 May 2000.

Photo: Karen Mork.

The media

As vividly depicted in the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Australian media has often unfairly or inaccurately portrayed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the issues which affect them. The Council has also been conscious of how difficult it is to get positive stories about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the media. Good news perhaps does not sell and persistent negative images reinforce old stereotypes.

From its early days the Council implemented a broad range of projects aimed at raising the standard of media reporting on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues, and eliminating stereotyping of Indigenous peoples by the media. It saw the balanced portrayal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and issues by the media as paramount to improving understanding and progressing reconciliation.

The Council put considerable effort into briefing the media about reconciliation issues and fostering the development of awards for journalists reporting on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and reconciliation issues.

While it recognised that the mainstream media reached most Australians, it also recognised the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and ethnic media.

The Council developed a close working relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander media organisations which helped promote reconciliation issues in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Over the years these organisations also had an input into the Council's information resources.

Journalists from around Australia joined, 4^th from left, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Patrick Dodson, and Rick Farley at Dhanaya, Arnhem Land for a cultural-awareness training program.

Photo: Nick Hartgerink

The Council also targeted the ethnic media, acknowledging that people from non-English speaking backgrounds make up nearly 40 percent of the population and many may not have heard about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples before coming to Australia. It held special briefings for the ethnic media and also translated some Council documents into other languages for placing in these media, or for distribution as separate publications.

Throughout the Council's term, media interest in its work and issues affecting reconciliation remained high and coverage was generally positive. In general, interest and coverage increased as the Council and its spokespeople became better known, and especially over the last four years of its work.

The Australian Reconciliation Convention in Melbourne in 1997 attracted 150 accredited media representatives, including senior national affairs reporters, feature writers, photographers and camera crews servicing all major national television stations and radio networks, metropolitan newspapers and news agencies, and overseas media.

More than 500 media representatives covered both days of Corroboree 2000 in Sydney in May 2000, including the People's Walk for Reconciliation across the Harbour Bridge. SBS TV was host broadcaster for both days, broadcasting a continuous live coverage.

We all have to take responsibility for misinformation in the community. We can't just blame the media or uninformed commentators. We've been talking too much to th e wrong people, the people who don't need convincing. We have to start talking to the people who need to hear the facts, and we have to talk in simple, plain English and not in language people will define as ideological. In many cases we have to speak plainly in other languages as well - it's not just people for whom English is the first language who have discriminatory views about Indigenous Australians.

Zita Antonios, Race Discrimination Commissioner (1996)

Newspaper and magazine supplements

Council sponsored several major educational supplements in selected newspapers and magazines, with a high degree of success. Feedback indicated these supplements were well received by schools and the general readership. The launch at a business breakfast of one particular supplement, 'Sharing Our Future' in The Australian newspaper, involved the participation of the Australian Mining Industry Council, the National Farmers Federation, the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

In the early 1990s, Council entered a cooperative arrangement with the National Indigenous Media Association of Australia to provide information about reconciliation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and began establishing contact with other Indigenous media organisations.

In November 1993 it co-sponsored the workshop 'Koories and the Media' held by the South Eastern Indigenous Media Association Inc in Melbourne.The workshop examined the portrayal of Aboriginal people in the media and ways of improving the presentation. Other supporters were ATSIC, the Media and Arts Alliance, The Age , 3CR and Open Channel.

In the nation-wide consultation on the Draft Document for Reconciliation, The Koori Mail , The Aboriginal Independent (WA) and Land Rights (Qld) regularly published articles supplied by the Council.

In July 1994, Council arranged for 16 media workers to experience Aboriginal life in the Kimberley. The group - journalists from the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery and editorial managers representing major newspapers in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney - spent three days camping at Mount Anderson, a pastoral property north-east of Broome owned and run by Aboriginal people.

The aim was to give the journalists an opportunity to meet Aboriginal people in their own cultural setting and to obtain feedback about how Aboriginal people saw the responsibility of the media in reporting their issues.

The important role of the media in the educative process is obvious and I strongly urge workers, educators, managers and owners of the media (all two of them) to take this role seriously. ...I appeal to the media industry to recognise its responsibility in this area.

Senator Cheryl Kernot (1991)

The course was viewed as the forerunner of further media awareness visits, and as a model of cultural-awareness training for possible use with other professional people, such as lawyers, police, correctional service officers, teachers, doctors and health-care workers.

In 1995 and 1996 Council conducted two more three-day cultural-awareness courses for journalists. In October 1995, 14 journalists from around Australian attended a course in the homeland of Council member Mr Galarrwuy Yunupingu and the Gumatj people at Dhanaya Outstation, in far north-east Arnhem Land. The second course, in June 1996, was held at Lake Tyers in Gippsland, Victoria. Home of Council member Ms Marjorie Thorpe and the Bung Yarnda people, this former mission community operates with the help of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme.

Evaluating the courses, participants enthusiastically welcomed their value in breaking down misconceptions and addressing gaps in knowledge that many journalists have in common with people in the wider community.

The video 'Making the Grade', for use in training cadet journalists and in journalism and communication courses, was launched in April 1996 by the Editor-in-Chief of The Australian , Mr Paul Kelly.

Using a current affairs format, the video demonstrates that quality coverage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues requires thorough research, knowledge and understanding of the key figures, and a commitment to balance and fairness. The video was made by an Aboriginal owned enterprise and was presented by journalists Kerry O'Brien and Rhoda Roberts. It was distributed with accompanying print materials to communications and journalism departments in tertiary institutions and to cadet training areas of media organisations.

Commemorating the International Year for the World's Indigenous People, the United Nations Association of Australia introduced a special award into its Media Peace Prize for 1993. This was for a piece of work involving the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in one of the four peace prize categories - print, radio, television or children's media. The award, sponsored by the Council for eight years, has become a permanent category: Promotion of Aboriginal Reconciliation.

Following a letter from the then Chairperson, Patrick Dodson, to the board of the Walkley Awards, a reconciliation category was included in the Walkleys, Australia's most prestigious awards for journalism.

Rebecca Kickett and Melanie Parry distributing Council's information materials at the Australians for Reconciliation Stall at Mirrabook Youth Expo in 1994.

Reaching out to all Australians

Over the nine years, the Council produced a wide variety of public information resources aimed at enhancing public awareness of the Council's work and understanding of key issues. These included reports of conferences, annual reports, background and issues papers, leaflets and posters promoting the specific themes of the annual National Reconciliation Week, reconciliation calendars, videos and community service announcements. Posters, badges and stickers were always in high demand, particularly by schools and for distribution through the Australians for Reconciliation network.

Council's quarterly magazine Walking Together was first published in November 1992 and served as Council's major vehicle of regular communication with schools, peak bodies, sectoral organisations, MPs, local governments, community organisations, reconciliation groups and interested individuals. Its articles promoted discussion about the major issues of reconciliation as well as reporting on reconciliation activities across the country. Over its life its circulation climbed steadily to 75,000 per issue and 30 editions were published.

The title Walking Together rapidly became a catch cry for the reconciliation process, with some local reconciliation groups calling themselves 'Walking Together' groups, and many other publications and resources linking their titles to this theme. Its 30 issues now stand as a record of public engagement in reconciliation and the upsurge of the people's movement for reconciliation.

Council launched its homepage in February 1996. All Council publications, including the magazine Walking Together, became available through the website.

Launched on the same day as the homepage was the CD-ROM Justice and Equity containing 25,000 pages of information relevant to reconciliation, including the reports from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the High Court's Mabo decision, and all Council publications. The CD-ROM was distributed free to libraries, universities, and legal and community organisations. The contents of the CD-ROM were mounted on the homepage as a separate 'social justice library'.

Special projects recognising the significance of Torres Strait Islander culture and heritage included:

Council members joined a group of Australians for Reconciliation in the 2000 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney to publicise the forthcoming People's Walk for Reconciliation.

Photo: Karen Mork

Commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the Wave Hill Strike of August 1966 and one of its noted leaders, the Council initiated the annual Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, in association with the Northern Territory University. The Governor-General, Sir William Deane, accepted the invitation to deliver the inaugural lecture, Some Signposts from Daguragu , at Northern Territory University in August 1996.

In his lecture, Sir William identified eight 'signposts' of reconciliation, and provided a set of principles which illustrated the essential features of what he called a 'true national reconciliation'.

Other lectures in the series have been: Dragging the Chain 1897-1997 by Gough Whitlam (August 1997), These Things We Know To Be True by Galarrwuy Yunupingu (1998), Until the Chains are Broken by Patrick Dodson (1999) and an untitled lecture by Malcolm Fraser (2000).

All lectures have been delivered to large audiences and have received wide media coverage, prompting widespread discussion.

As well as submitting annual reports to the Commonwealth Parliament, as required under its Act, the Council also presented reports at the end of its first two three-year terms. While not a statutory requirement, Council believed that these term reports increased the Council's level of openness and accountability to both the Parliament and the Australian people. After submission to the Parliament, the reports were sent to organisations and people on its outreach mailing list and were available to any interested person. The two reports were Walking Together: the First Steps (presented to Parliament on 17 November 1994) and Weaving the Threads - progress towards reconciliation (presented to Parliament on 27 November 1997).

The Council is pleased to note that over its lifetime sections of the media have dramatically improved their coverage of both reconciliation and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. The newspapers especially have greatly improved their news coverage, feature stories and editorial comment.

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