Howard government worked with Canada to oppose UN declaration on Indigenous rights

The Howard government fought strongly against recognising the right of Indigenous peoples to “self-determination” and worked secretly with Canada to try to change a draft UN declaration, newly released cabinet papers show.

The cabinet papers from 2003, released by the National Archives on Monday, show that some Australian government departments held concerns about potential impacts of the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, but Australia’s talks with Canada on amendments were being pursued with “no Indigenous consultation about the process or its product” as such input would be “premature”.

John Howard’s government ultimately opposed the declaration when it was adopted by the UN general assembly in 2007, with 143 countries voting in favour and just four – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States – against. The prime minister said the decision “wasn’t difficult at all”.

It wasn’t until 2009 that the Rudd Labor government finally pledged Australia’s support, but even now critics say the country has yet to fully implement the declaration in domestic law.

The cabinet records show how the government wanted to change the wording of the declaration from “self-determination” to “less problematic terminology” such as “self-management”.

Australia’s representative had told a UN working group in December 2002 that there was uncertainty about what a right to self-determination would involve, and that some commentators had argued it could entail “a right to secession”.

The Australian government position was that it could not support a concept that might “threaten its territorial integrity or political sovereignty”.

Australia’s delegation said it could not “accept an absolute right of Indigenous peoples to determine their own political and legal institutions” because in a democracy this could “only be done through negotiation and with the agreement of the state”.

In a submission to cabinet dated 30 May 2003, two senior ministers seemed to acknowledge Australia was relatively isolated in its position.

The then minister for Indigenous affairs, Philip Ruddock, and the foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, briefed their colleagues on Australia’s “continued separate, parallel negotiations with Canada to develop a complete alternative text”.

“While we have, in accordance with Cabinet’s decisions … continued to push for alternative language to the right of self-determination in our discussions with Canada and other like-minded states, and in the Working Group, it is increasingly apparent that our position attracts little support from even the like-minded states,” Ruddock and Downer wrote.

They said Canada, New Zealand and the US “share our concerns to varying degrees about the potential implications of the term, but their response is to qualify its meaning, rather than reject its usage”.

The resources department told ministers the self-determination wording “should be addressed to minimise any impacts of the draft declaration on access to resources in Australia”.

The environment and heritage department was worried about another part of the draft declaration that said states “shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands and territories of Indigenous peoples”, as this could create significant “obligations and constraints”.

One of the attachments presented to cabinet was a draft alternative text developed by Australia and Canada, which queried proposed language emphasising “the need for demilitarization of the lands and territories of Indigenous peoples, which will contribute to peace, economic and social progress and development, understanding and friendly relations among nations and peoples of the world”.

Unnamed Australian and Canadian officials added the comment: “[General sentiment about indigenous contribution to world peace is good, no need for specific reference to “demilitarization”].”

Ruddock and Downer told their colleagues in 2003 some of the issues were “theoretical rather than practical” because a number of structures, such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (Atsic), “already constitute particular Australian forms of self-determination”.

However, the Howard government introduced legislation to abolish Atsic the following year – a move cited in 2023 by campaigners for an Indigenous voice to parliament to be enshrined in the constitution, to protect it from sudden axing. Voters rejected that proposal in a referendum on 14 October last year.

Ruddock and Downer told their colleagues in May 2003: “Atsic has not yet been informed of the alternative drafting process with Canada, and hence there has been no Indigenous consultation about the process or its product. However, such consultation is premature at this stage and could be unproductive given the current state of Atsic.”

In November 2023, parliament’s joint standing committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs – chaired by the retiring Labor senator Pat Dodson – called for a national action plan to implement the UN declaration.

He dismissed some of the earlier concerns about it, saying: “The [declaration] reaffirms the rights of Indigenous peoples, but it also guarantees that the realisation of these rights must preserve the integrity and unity of the nation state – that is, the unity of Australia.”

The independent senator Lidia Thorpe has demanded the declaration be enshrined in law, telling parliament it could “do so much more for our people than the voice ever could”.