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Statehood and future development

Key ideas:

• The background to statehood in the NT;
• Recent overtures to put statehood back on the agenda;
• Statehood and its role in future development.

Statehood and future development

As we have seen, for many years the Territory was ruled directly from Canberra. With self-government came the right to make laws in the Territory, however these can still be repealed by the federal parliament. Statehood is not only a symbolic recognition of the rights of people who live in the Northern Territory, it means that Territorians will gain constitutional and political equality with the rest of Australia.

1998 Referendum

For several years there has been discussion about full statehood for the Territory. A referendum was held on this issue in 1998 which failed. This was a shock to both the Northern Territory and Commonwealth governments, for opinion polls showed most Territorians supported statehood. Under the Australian Constitution, the Federal government may set the terms of entry to full statehood. The Northern Territory was offered 3 Senators, rather than the 12 held by each of the founding states. It is thought this, together with a perceived arrogance by then Chief Minister Shane Stone, lay behind the reluctance to vote yes in the referendum.

Consultative process

Chief Minister Martin has said that after 25 years of self-government, the Territory was ready to achieve statehood. She has promised full community consultation in the process and said the move would not be hijacked by politicians looking for a place for their names in the history books.

The pathway to statehood will be guided by the people and will follow a timetable that is flexible to meet the community's wishes (Martin 2003).

Statehood and development

With statehood come a responsibility to get the governance of the Northern Territory right! The Chief Minister made this explicit in her statement about the future of statehood in the NT. Her statement highlights some key issues that need to be addressed properly in the process of achieving statehood. Basically it is the need to ensure the structures of governance and the underlying assumptions behind them will provide an appropriate basis upon which the future of the Northern Territory can depend. So much depends upon the foundational mindset that is expressed in the constitution we develop and the principles it foregrounds. Is it culturally inclusive, does it allow for the the development of the Territory in ways that are going to be socially, culturally, economically and environmentally sustainable?

What we consider to be 'progress' in the Northern Territory, sociologically, economically, environmentally, politically, is driven by the way we conceive of development and how we see it occurring. Our concept of development is a major driver of political decision making in the NT and at a federal leve. As Peter Jull suggests, the way we think about the development of the Northern Territory and the structures we have in place (or might like to put in place) need to be rethought if they are going to be effective for the 21st century.

So what does development really mean?

In general terms, development describes a process through which the potential of an object or an organism is released, until it reaches its natural, complete or fully-fledged form. Development has a great deal to do with the achievement of potential, if you are developing something, it is getting better — increasing in size and/or quality. In this sense, the concept of development has a positive connotation. The problem with this definition in a cultural and economic context is that it presents us with the dichotomy of a world divided into those people or countries that are developed and those that are un-developed or underdeveloped — the haves and the have-nots. There might not be a problem as such with this as a way of dividing the world, but it is the value judgments attached to the difference between developed and underdeveloped that causes the problem. What is the criteria for being developed? Are they the right criteria? Who is it that is making the judgment about what constitutes 'being developed'? The notion of 'developed' is often identified with being good and normal, and the notion of being 'under-developed' is identified with being bad or abnormal. People in nations that classify themselves as developed, usually normalize their understanding of development and seek to then impose that on the rest.

The problem is that this takes no account of the value and importance of the knowledge, culture and abilities that the people in the 'under-developed' countries have. It negates diversity and encourages the perception of superiority and inferiority — 'if I have all these things and you don't, I'm better than you are!'. It's likely that a hegemonic relationship is the result.

People who buy the story, have to at the expense of implicitly denying the value of their own processes of development – ones that are inextricably linked to their culture. So by buying the ideology of development from the western world, they almost invariably accept the culture that comes with it and de-value their own culture in the process. It's almost as if they are saying 'Yes, you are better than me!'

Playing the game

These days people enter into using the 'development' discourse without even thinking, because it is so much an entrenched part of the way our society works. That's not necessarily a problem if you are part of the powerful and wealthy side of the argument, but not so good if you are not. The dominant ideologies of development and their discourse come out of western societies (the USA and Western Europe). How do other cultural groups fare in the face of a wave of development, couched in terms that make it seem inevitable?

Many cultures embrace it, other resist: culture has a way of maintaining itself and reshaping itself to the local circumstances. Most groups are able to pick up the useful parts of the imposed culture and run with them, but often in the process of development, it is the fine grained details of cultural practices linked to places and long traditions that no longer seem relevant that are lost.

If you live in a place like Bangladesh or East Timor, and you (or your Government) decides to take on the ideas of western development, then you immediately take on a whole pile of information and baggage that goes with it:

• You are now under-developed, lacking things and you need someone else's help to develop you;
• Your current cultural practices, policies and economic activity are now far less valuable to you because someone has told you (and you've accepted it) that they are no longer able to provide you with what you want.

See how the whole concept is based around language

• what people say;
• how they say it; and
• what you accept as true about what other people say.

This is the engagement of the development discourse. Now people are not only saying "I'm better than you!" but, the people they are saying it about are replying with "Yes, you are better than me!".

How Language is Used in the Discourse of Development

Jay Arthur's article The Unobtrusive Goanna in Rose and Clarke (1997) is a good example of how language is used in discourse to promote a particular point of view and to ensure particular outcomes. Ask yourself how the language changed as people talked about the before, during and after of the development process that has occurred in the Ord Region?

The culture of dependence

If you have been convinced that you (or your nation) are deficient in some way, then the natural place to look for help is the developed nations, those that have the expertise and the finances to assist you. Usually however, the assistance comes at a price.

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were set up in the post World War Two years to do exactly that, assist countries to 'develop'. Increasingly, the money is also used as a lever to encourage these countries to re-structure their economies to make them more attractive for international/global investment.
• This is not necessarily a bad thing as foreign investment then saves the IMF etc from pouring more money into the country. The spin off however is that once the country is financed by high levels of foreign investment, the country's economy may be dependent upon them, and CEOs and Presidents of these companies may have an inordinate say in how those countries are then managed.
• With the increasing openness to foreign investment, these countries are also left open to the vagaries of the market. With electronic connections, investors can remove their investments from a country as soon as there seems to be some political problems (or if the countries leaders don't bow to the wishes of the investment companies — in some cases). The recent problems in Mexico, Indonesia and Argentina are a classic examples of what can happen when investors lose confidence in a government or country that isn't towing an appropriate economic line.

Development at the local level

Locally, the issues of development and the imposition of a particular ideology are no different to the picture we have painted of the wider world. The same ideological processes are at work here in the north as anywhere else. Groups of people here are marginalized and expected to toe the ‘development’ line without any regard for their culture or life choices.

The government, for all its rhetoric regarding a Territory lifestyle, seeks processes by which it can continue to develop the Territory, encourage big business and attract major projects. Not that either of these things is necessarily wrong, but it is happening at what cost to cultural diversity, different modes of development and ecological sustainability?

It’s not a contemporary problem though. Colonisation in the 1870s around Darwin produced similar outcomes. Development occurred as a product of particular agendas and discourses and people were either expected to conform or they were excluded.

The issues you see in the newspapers over recent years identifying an:

Aboriginal Problem or the Itinerant Problem

also reflect an ideology of development. In essence, those that claim that there are such problems are really saying:

If only these people behaved like us, or conformed to our rules and played our game, then we wouldn't have a problem.

They expect people to conform and play the game according to the rules they set out. When people don't, then they cry foul and claim there's a problem. Theorists however, would be asking the question: 'Whose problem is it really?' When people reject the term of the engagement, then perhaps the problem lies with the people who set the rules in the first place.

We say this because perhaps there are lessons to be learned from engaging the others out there in a process of development. Our development processes are not sustainable. Our use of resources can't be kept up forever, but the opportunity exists in north Australia to seek alternative ways to proceed with development that is sustainable and protect the vast ecological and cultural diversity we still possess. Indigenous people have lived sustainably in north Australia for many thousands of years and as Christie (1992) suggests, perhaps there are things that our society in the north can learn from this to ensure we don't mess things up here like we have in the southern part of Australia and in many other places across the world. You might like to re-read Michael Christie's (1991) article Aboriginal Science for the Ecologically Sustainable Future, to see how Yolngu understandings of the world assist in maintaining a sustainable society. You might also like to read Nugget Coombes' article on the Ideology of Development. It provides another perspective on the development debate and looks at how this relates to the north of Australia and to the interactions between Indigenous Australians and settlers.

European settlement

So why did European people come to north Australia in the first place?

• Securing the frontier!
  The colonial government needed to make sure that no other colonial power was able to get a foothold on the continent. This included the Chinese in the north — the feared 'yellow peril'.
• The fast buck!
  The frontier is always a good place to make lots of money, so opening new frontiers was sure to bring money into government and private coffers.
• Populate or perish!
  The government saw the need to start populating all the regions of the colonies to secure the British presence in the land.

Their aim, no doubt, was to aim to achieve the economic potential of the place in terms of western European cultures.

But, given these initial reasons for settlers coming to the Northern Territory and the recognition we have contended that needs to be given to the initial inhabitants of the NT before settlement, there's a need to think about the way in which development occurs. Do we plough on, and develop the agricultural and industrial base of the north or do we learn from the mistakes of others? Do we take on board the need to follow the same lines of development that has occurred in other places in Australia and the more 'developed' nations or do we think more carefully about development and all the social and cultural baggage that come with this type of development?

Statehood and the development of the constitution for the Northern Territory will require us to think about these issues and develop a model of government that will be inclusive. A model that will incorporate a range of perspectives and enable those perspectives to be a part of the Territory and the ways in which it is developed into the future.

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© CDU | Last Updated March 5, 2007 | Authorised by: Head of School | CRICOS Provider No: 00300K