Edmunds concludes that -
It is essential that the Commonwealth ensure that
Australia’s human rights international obligations are fulfilled. But it also needs to ensure that this process takes account of how those human rights are implemented
and experienced on the ground. The Intervention shook the assumptions of how that might happen. It relied, in its original incarnation, on the shock impact of The little children are sacred report. And, as Toni Morrison said in her 1998 ABC interview with Jana Wendt (Uncensored, Australian Broadcasting Corporation), ‘I insist on being shocked ... To lose the capacity to be shocked is to lose our humanity’.
But the impact of the Intervention also demanded that we reflect on how the implementation of human rights goes beyond pronouncements, fundamental as they are, to an active engagement between government and those affected by government policy. The present Federal Government approach is attempting to do that. It remains to be seen whether it will or, like so many previous governments, will not succeed.
The key to a long-term response is not to be captured by a disconnected rhetoric of human rights, but to anchor that rhetoric in its translation through the prism of Aboriginal people’s contemporary lived experience. That lived experience draws on traditional culture and values; acknowledges dysfunction; recognises that it is subject to the forces of modernity, including necessary engagement with government in the intercultural space; but demands the right to operate in full partnership. That, finally, will determine how Aboriginal people’s human rights are exercised.
