Vale Gerry Hand: legacy and contribution

 

Thou art not for the fashion of these times,

Where none will sweat but for promotion.

As You Like It, Act two, scene three.

 

On 15 November 2023, Gerry Hand, formerly a Minister in the Hawke Labor Government passed away (link here). Hand was Minister for Aboriginal Affairs from 1987 to 1990, and subsequently Minister for Immigration until 1993.

 

Hand’s political record is complex, and awaits a full scale biography to properly assess his legacy. In this post I focus on his contribution and legacy in the Indigenous policy domain.

 

Hand’s Wikipedia page (link here) is rather brief and incomplete, and in relation to his role as Indigenous Affairs minister, deals only with his relationship with Charles Perkins, Aboriginal rights activist and the then Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs appointed in 1984 by Clyde Holding, Hands’ predecessor as Minister.  Hawke and Holding were both influential right faction players, whereas Hand was a key factional player from the left of the ALP. All three were Victorians.

 

Following Hand’s death, Former Finance Minister Linsday Tanner, Hand’s Left faction comrade, and successor in his seat of Melbourne (now held by the Greens Leader Adam Bandt) published a short appreciation of Hand’s political contribution (link here). On his contribution to Indigenous issues, Tanner wrote:

 

Throughout his life Gerry remained passionately committed to the cause of Indigenous Australians, becoming an important influence on Bob Hawke, with whom he eventually became close after the bruises of their preselection battle had healed. He played a critical role in the establishment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and was central to the change of political mindset which later led to the 1993 Native Title legislation and the Bringing Them Home report on the Stolen Generations.

 

Even towards the end of his life it was impossible to have a conversation with Gerry without the discussion turning to indigenous issues and the old passions flaring up. As minister, he wore himself out travelling around Australia to Indigenous communities – once confiding that he had not slept in the same bed two nights in a row for 42 days – and in the process acquired the nickname “Old ‘No Promises’” from Indigenous community leaders, such was his commitment to avoiding the entrenched pattern of empty promises and no delivery that had blighted the area for many years.

 

Perhaps the best and most accessible introduction to the background to Hand’s time as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs is found in historian Peter Read’s biography, Charles Perkins: a Life (link here). Albeit written primarily from Perkin’s perspective, and definitely not from Hand’s, it gives an excellent overview of the times and the complex array of forces in play as Hand sought to drive policy reform within his portfolio.

 

In my view, Hand’s major and in some ways unrivalled policy reform initiative in the Indigenous policy space was his successful efforts to legislate the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).

 

Following the July 1987 double dissolution election, Prime Minister Hawke reshuffled his ministry, moving Clyde Holding from Aboriginal Affairs to Immigration, and appointing Hand as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. Importantly, Hawke also announced the intention to establish a statutory commission in the Aboriginal affairs portfolio.

 

It seems likely that Holding, who was close to both Hawke and Perkins, had negotiated this concession from Hawke on behalf of Perkins who had previously been Chair of the Aboriginal Development Commission, an existing statutory body with a narrow economic remit. Perkins likely missed the comparative autonomy an independent agency provided, and aimed to expand the ADC to encompass the DAA program responsibilities.

 

Prior to being appointed Minister, Hand had established close relations with the NT Land Councils who were at that time led by leaders such as John Ah Kit (link here), Patrick Dodson, David Ross and were in constant conflict with the conservative CLP Government in the NT. Within the Indigenous political pantheon, the Land Councils were in implicit competition with Perkins for policy influence.

 

Hand’s approach, relying on key advisers such as Rob Riley (who worked for Hand) (link here)  and the NT Land Councils more than his Department for advice, was to establish a much more ambitiously designed new statutory commission from the ground up, and importantly to incorporate a regionally based structure of elected regional and zone councils which then elected the national commission. This structure was phased in over a period of years, and the design and legislation of the new commission was both time consuming and hugely contentious. The LNP Opposition stridently opposed Hand’s proposals. It was ultimately legislated with Green Support after a prolonged and hard fought parliamentary debate in 1990. Hand appointed Lowitja O’Donoghue as the first Chair of ATSIC.

 

ATSIC survived until 2005, including almost nine years of the Howard Government. It provided a stepping stone for a generation of Indigenous political and policy leaders, a new cohort of Indigenous public servants, and guaranteed Indigenous interests a voice within the inner sanctums of the Executive Government as ATSIC replaced the former Department in its entirety. This was an uncomfortable role for many ATSIC commissioners as well as later Ministers, and the Commission itself faced continuing challenges to its internal cohesion. It mere existence was also discomfiting to the established interests who dominate the elite strata of power in Australian politics and society. ATSIC was dismantled when the ALP Opposition led by Mark Latham indicated the ALP no longer supported its continuance. Neil Westbury and I have, inter alia, outlined the history of ATSIC in some detail in our CAEPR Policy Insights Paper from 2019: Overcoming Indigenous exclusion: Very hard, plenty humbug (link here). In that paper, we seek to counter the accepted wisdom (at least in conservative quarters) that ATSIC was a policy failure and has nothing to teach us about effective policy in the Indigenous domain.

 

Gerry Hand was the driving force in the design and establishment of ATSIC. His most enduring legacy in my view is to demonstrate to the Australian people, and in particular the political class, that successful policy reform is feasible and possible in Indigenous affairs. The 42 nights / 42 beds referred to by Lindsay Tanner above related to the consultation process that Hand personally led and engaged in in relation to ATSIC, and was no exaggeration. His personal stamina and commitment was seemingly unbounded. In the aftermath of the Voice referendum defeat, with the nation heading into a period of policy uncertainty and confusion in Indigenous affairs, Hand’s legacy is worth remembering and promoting.

 

A second legacy, worth emphasising, is to highlight the creation of ATSIC as a concrete example of individual agency making a difference despite the structural and institutional challenges that substantive reforms inevitably confront. Pat Turner’s contribution to negotiating the path-breaking National Agreement on Closing the Gap is a similar example, and her stint as CEO of ATSIC in the mid-1990s would have been a primary contributor to giving her the experience that allowed her to deliver that outcome.

 

At a personal level, Hand was engaging, had a strong sense of humor, was committed to advancing the interests of ordinary people and workers, and had an amazing capacity for reading people accurately and insightfully after the briefest interaction. He was driven and focused, and engaged in (what I sometimes felt were) interminable discussions regarding policy objectives and political tactics, but which were designed to ensure that every facet of difficult decisions was considered. He was not a speaker of the Queen’s English, having started his career in the Victorian railway unions, and had an impressive facility in the argot of working class Australians. The relationships he formed and maintained, and the opportunities ATSIC afforded key Indigenous leaders have resonated over the decades since.

 

This short appreciation of Gerry Hand’s contribution to Indigenous affairs is not intended to be comprehensive, nor a hagiography. Undoubtedly I will have overlooked important contributions, and am perhaps not entirely independent. There is however no doubt that Gerry Hand was a significant figure Indigenous policy development at the end of the 20^th century. His contributions and legacy deserve more critical attention than they have received.

 

 Disclosure: In 1987/89, I worked as a consultant adviser to Minister Gerry Hand.