Down but not out
07.02.2000
Murrandoo Yanner is the angry voice of young Aboriginal Australia, writes Tony Koch
JUST a year ago, I sat at the kitchen table in Murrandoo Yanner's comfortable home in remote Burketown, north of Mount Isa.
Yanner is not difficult to interview. Ask one question, and he launches into his response -- each phrase underlined with his trademark cynicism and passion. He can also be humorous.
The constant is that he is intelligent. He has piercing eyes set in a broad face. His body is wiry, perhaps even thin -- like an athlete in training. The noticeable difference is that it is scarred with the initiation marks of the Gunnamulla clan of the Gungaletta tribe.
He leaves one in no doubt that his is the angry young voice of Aboriginal Australia. But on this morning he was edgy -- even distracted. I asked if there was anything at all of which he was frightened.
He replied: ``Yes, brother -- that telephone. Every time it rings I jump three feet in the air. We've been getting a suicide here every 10 days, and it's 12 days since the last one. I just don't want the next one to happen.''
Yanner's ``constituency'' includes the appalling communities of Doomadgee and Mornington Island, and he explained that in the two communities in the past two months there had been eight suicides -- mostly young males, with one a boy just eight years old.
``He was my nephew,'' Yanner said. ``What on earth could possess a boy of eight to go and hang himself?''
These are the types of problems Yanner, as a leader of his people, faces every day. It's not all that pleasant living in Burketown, and even less so in Doomadgee or Mornington; alcoholism and violence abound on both communities. Hopelessness is on almost every face. There are no jobs. Houses are neglected and falling down.
Yanner, 28, offers these people some hope. He is educated, understanding and sensitive. He has no patience whatever with white interference -- those who would tell his people how to live their lives.
Every day for him is one of potential conflict -- with his own people, whites, bureaucrats, police -- whoever it happens to be that he has to confront on behalf of somebody who has appealed to him for help.
But now he faces big problems representing his people, although he views the latest events as only a temporary setback.
On January 21, the bureaucracy of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation wrote demanding that Yanner be forced to comply with the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act and resign from his position as co-ordinator of the Carpentaria Land Council.
The letter cited legislation stating that no Aboriginal person could hold a management position in an organisation funded by ATSIC if that person has been sentenced to more than a year's imprisonment.
In March 1997, Yanner was involved in a brawl outside Burketown's only pub.
THE District Court was told Yanner's brother, Bruce, was accused by the publican of being involved in a break-in at the hotel. Bruce reportedly left and returned with Murrandoo, where ``over a period of up to 40 minutes'' four people were assaulted -- the publican, his wife, a male nurse and a Telstra worker.
The Yanners pleaded guilty to assault and Murrandoo was placed on probation, as well as being ordered to do community service.
Local Labor MP Tony McGrady wrote to the Attorney-General, Matt Foley, asking that an appeal be lodged because he considered the sentence inadequate. He has since said he was acting on behalf of Mount Isa Aboriginal people who were upset at what they regarded as too light a sentence being handed down on Murrandoo Yanner.
Last December, the Court of Appeal changed the sentence to 18 months imprisonment, wholly suspended for four years.
That decision was handed down four days before the November ATSIC elections at which Yanner was supported by his own people to represent them as a councillor -- and ultimately as a powerful ATSIC commissioner.
But Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron -- no friend of the outspoken Yanner -- decided to torpedo Yanner's election to the board of commissioners and invoked the ATSIC legislation.
The Federal Court has the ability to veto that provision, so Yanner has appealed to that body. The hearing is set for next month.
And on Wednesday came the double whammy -- the move to also force him from the Carpentaria Land Council.
That effectively removed his last public platform.
VOCAL support for Yanner has come from ATSIC commissioner Ray Robinson who said Yanner was being victimised by people whom he had upset.
Another advocate is respected Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson who has supplied an affidavit in support of Yanner's appeal to the Federal Court in relation to his ATSIC disqualification.
And Doomadgee septuagenarian Wadgerabinna flew into Brisbane and announced she would be holding public meetings today to tell people of the dreadful living conditions at Doomadgee, and to support Yanner.
Wadgerabinna is well-known in north Queensland, and more recently was the oldest protester living in the ``tent embassy'' outside Parliament House in Canberra.
A decade ago she gained national publicity when she stood on Doomadgee airstrip and stopped the aircraft flying in the sly grog from landing. It earned her a bashing from local men, but she persisted.
It is obvious that Yanner is as much a victim of black and white politics as he is of the justice system -- and that does not imply that he is at all innocent regarding the assault charges for which he was sentenced.
Perhaps the real truth -- and the retribution -- has its roots in the stance adopted by the Carpentaria Land Council (led by Yanner) against the establishment of the Century zinc mine at Lawn Hill, which neighbours Doomadgee.
Yanner fought openly with federal and state governments over the mine, demanding that local indigenous people derive real benefits from it.
ATSIC backed the mine and was in open conflict with Yanner and his land council.
It is the contention of the Carpentaria Land Council that, because of this, ATSIC has consistently discriminated against the council.
So concerned was the council with this perceived attitude that it filed a complaint with the Federal Parliamentary Ombudsman setting out their grievances.
As far back as January 1997, ATSIC's Native Title and Land Rights general manager Brian Stacey wrote to the Carpentaria Land Council expressing the amazing view that the council was not a party to negotiations with Century, but that ATSIC would handle it.
That matter has not yet been resolved by the Ombudsman.
Should Yanner not be allowed to take up his ATSIC commissioner's position, it will be a matter of biding his time until he has complied with the legislation to re-emerge. That is ``five years from the time of his conviction''.
He is bitter and resentful now at the treatment he has received, so any enforced wait will hardly improve his view.
It is easy, as many politicians choose, to deride Murrandoo Yanner and summarily dismiss him as a ``dissident'', but that is neither correct nor honest. His is the most difficult constituency of all.
