Vale John Ah Kit

I woke this morning to the very sad news that John Ah Kit had died over the weekend in Darwin. My relationship with Jack was primarily professional, as I served as his department CEO from 2002 to 2005. We had crossed paths many times previously going back to the early 1980s when he worked as the CEO of the Northern Land Council and I was working for the Central Land Council.

Both the ABC (link here) and the Guardian (link here) have stories celebrating his life, his many admirable personal qualities and noting his pathbreaking achievements across four decades. I concur with their assessments.

As usual, I went for a walk this morning. In soft rain, I found my rhythm, and my mind turned to Jack and what his life meant and continues to mean. I remembered the times we had spent together, both relaxed and enjoyable, and stressful and pressured, as we grappled with the multiple issues that inevitably confront a cabinet minister in the NT. Others knew him better, spent more time with him, and are undoubtedly better qualified than me to comment on his life.

Nevertheless, I think there are some insights that I observed over the years working with him that are worth sharing.

He had an insatiable capacity to put his ear to the ground. He always knew what was happening from a community perspective, and he brought that knowledge to bear in his policy decisions. He understood intuitively that top down policymaking was inadequate in addressing Indigenous aspirations and policy challenges. 

He also understood the value of organised action in exerting influence. He had been a key player in the 1980s in developing the Federation of Land Councils, a loose alliance of Indigenous land councils that spent a lot of time lobbying the Federal Government on national land rights issues, and created the momentum that ultimately led to the High Court recognising the existence of native title in the Mabo Case.

These qualities and perspectives made him a formidable political operator (in the best sense of the word), someone who could find solutions to tricky issues, who was prepared to drive for substantive reform and tangible policies, and who understood that compromise with progress was preferable to ideology with stasis.

The sadness I feel for his passing relates to his personal qualities: his innate decency and lively good humour, and so much more. However, his enduring contribution to Territory and indeed Australian public policy is to be found in the institutional frameworks he was instrumental in improving as a key member of a reformist Labor Government out of power for over 20 years. And perhaps most importantly, in the track he carved that has created a much more inclusive environment in Territory politics than existed before he arrived. 

The full and considered history of those times is yet to be written. When it is, John Ah Kit will be recognised as a pathbreaking reformer and contributor to shifting the Territory into the 21st century.