109
to exorcise the spectre of politicised Aborigines seeking their
rights. The machinery of nihilation used was that of associating
activism with black power and communism.
f
*
Bjelke-Petersen was reported in The Australian (2/4/82) as
informing State Parliament that there was a communist plot in
*
Australia, involving militant black activists, aimed at gaining
political control of Australia.
The Premier claimed that the object of the Aboriginal Land l:
1 ,
j і
Rights Movement was to create a separate black nation within Australia і⅛
1 t
and cause disruption and division within the Australian community. і 'l
The activists were dubbed puppets of the communist cause. 1
1 1
і I-
I
і ■
A report in The Advertiser (Adelaide 25/4/82) commented ∣
1 Γ
on an assessment that the operations of a team from the World
Council of Churches investigating Aboriginal conditions was a
’’communist operation” .
While such claims are seen as outrageous, they are not isolated.
They repeat arguments, methods of control,put forward over the
previous decade.
It can be argued that physical assimilation and political
assimilation are aimed at the same ends. The seeking of rights
was offensive in that it called into question the policies and
practice of mainstream society. Nevertheless, the very seeking
of rights led to a transformation of policy. Aborigines were
no longer to be segregated, but were to be contained by becoming
’part of a family’. Therefore, since a family has rights by
ascription, not by achievement, the seeking of rights in the political
arena points to the nihilation of such rights in the world of
meaning of mainstream society, and as such was an affront to that
I
{
I
I
I
I
I
society.
See Appendix XIII.
