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In 1983, founding Four Corners and 60 Minutes producer Gordon Bick and myself were commissioned to produce 13 half-hour episodes of a documentary series called Focus.
It was to be SBS’s first attempt at ‘serious’ documentary making, and its aim was to shine a genuine light on multiculturalism in this country.
Hitherto SBS had studiously ignored the many contentious migrant issues being experienced by Australia as it embraced the great big melting pot experiment.
It had a twice-weekly so-called current affairs program called S.C.O.O.P., which in hindsight was arguably the worst, most facile program ever aired by SBS. Frankly it was little less than propaganda featuring happy dancing and singing ethnics picnicking at weekends in sunny parks all over the country.
In a word it was bullshit.
Bick was and Englishman an I’m a New Zealander, so in a sense we both viewed Australia as objective outsiders. I had already detected a degree of racism in this country, not least against Aborigines, that was in stark contrast to that of my homeland.
I grew up near a small village where at least 30 per cent of my classmates were Maori, many of them full bloods, and many of them my friends. There is little doubt that I and my pakeha classmates absorbed, albeit subconsciously, a great deal of their culture.
At secondary school, we learnt a haka – a Maori war dance – which I have performed all around the globe, where mostly it has been applauded (although I was once taken in by security at a pub in Poland after management thought a patron had become insane in their underground bar).
More importantly, as New Zealanders we were all equals; it was drummed into us at a very early age. And as a nation we were and are proud of it.
I came to Australia in 1976 and was given a job as a reporter for Nine’s A Current Affair. It was here that I first encountered evidence that racism against Aborigines extended right into the media itself, and I unwittingly became part of it on December 1, 1976, when Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls was sworn in as South Australia’s (and Australia’s) first Aborigine governor.
I was sent to Adelaide to cover his swearing in and my producer (who thought it ockerishly amusing to use the word ‘Ab-borrow-gynes’) insisted I ask him one specific question when I interviewed him.
Bear in mind that I was a newcomer to Australia, ignorant of many things about this country. The question seemed simple enough: did Pastor Sir Doug believe he could cope with the job?
In hindsight again, the question was loaded; it inferred that because he was an Aborigine, the job could be beyond him. I am ashamed I asked it, even though he answered it gracefully and in the positive.
Upon my return to Melbourne, my producer was delighted with me for reasons that I genuinely did not understand at the time.
Almost seven years later, and better educated to what was really going on under the surface, Bick and I agreed that my pilot episode of Focus for SBS would tackle racism – no holds barred.
The result, ‘A question of prejudice’, was explosive. In the furore that followed its broadcast, which inadvertently included a segment showing the freshly minted firebrand Sheik Hilaly preaching in the Lakemba mosque, urging Muslims to kill Jews and Christians, a Lebanese Christian newspaper was burnt to the ground apparently for condemning the Hilaly sermon. I say inadvertently because the Hilaly grab was not translated when I put it to air; I had no idea what he was saying.
Gordon Bick felt strongly (and rightly) that we should include an episode on the treatment of Aborigines in modern Australia. I went off to Alice Springs to research it and what I found there horrified me.
The following is an excerpt from an autobiography I am writing:
You are in Alice Springs researching a two-part documentary about the plight of Aborigines who exist like animals in dire poverty on the fringes of the town. Working with leaders from the black community, some of whom you overhear calling you “a white c*nt” behind your back, you see at first-hand how some Aborigines are living: in upturned water tanks, sleeping on filthy mattresses. There are as many as 30 people relying on a single water tap for drinking, cooking and bathing. These are not just second-class Australian citizens, they are third class, living just a rung above beasts.
In any sense, their plight is appalling and shameful.
During the day you see tour bus drivers bring tourists to ogle from their buses at the fringe dwellers; they, the parasitic tour companies, are brazen in displaying Australia’s disgrace and making money from it.
You are staying at a motel away from the centre of town. You have not told any Alice Springs white persons why you are there. The motelier and his wife are a friendly couple who on the third day there invite you over for a barbecue. A helicopter pilot and his wife join us, making a party of five.
“So whaddya do from a living?” asks the pilot, all friendly.
“I’m a documentary producer and journalist,” you reply.
“Oh yeah – so what brings you here?”
“I’m researching the plight of the Aborigines in the fringe camps.”
The man’s face suddenly contorts and reddens in anger.
“Whaddya fuckin’ mean ‘the plight of the fuckin’ Aborigines’? You mean the fuckin’ rock apes!”
He crushes his beer can in his hand, grabs the arm of his wife:
“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” he orders her. “I’m not fuckin’ spending good drinking time with the fuckin’ southern yellow fuckin’ press. Fuck that!”
Enter my life one of the greatest men I have met: former Senator Neville Bonner, who I later flew to the Alice to add comment to the documentary as we were filming. We were also joined by Jim Liddle, then Fr Pat Dodson and the Gumbainggir activist Gary Foley:
Bonner, the first Aborigine elected to the Australian Parliament, is someone you quickly come to genuinely like and admire. No, someone you quickly love. You go to the casino with him and watch him toss the two-up shovel and see him lose 200 dollars. In fun you ban him from going the next night and losing more money, but he insists and you watch him win 400 dollars. He then bans himself from going back.
You enjoy him immensely, this self-effacing ‘nigger in the woodpile’ as he tells you his beloved wife, Heather, calls him. He is so human, this man and so unaffected by his fame, even standing with you on the banks of the Todd and sending out over its waters the biggest, most thundery fart you have heard ever in your life.
Neville Bonner later stands on the steps of the Alice Springs courthouse and for the camera passionately recites the words of the persecuted Aborigine painter Albert Namitjira, shouted in defiance to the White Australia authorities as he was dragged off to prison for merely buying alcohol for his relatives:
“If you can’t treat me like a man then shoot me, shoot me like a dog!”
You provocatively entitle the ensuing two-part documentary, ‘A shame like Alice’. It causes uproar in state and federal parliaments after the episodes are broadcast.
And now the Adam Goodes conflagration.
Next Saturday night, the Wallabies will play the All Blacks in Sydney. Traditionally, the All Blacks will perform their fierce, bloodletting pre-match Haka, yes a Maori war dance or challenge which in Maoritanga demands a response.
There are two versions they now perform: ‘Ka Mate, Ka Mate’ or ‘Kapa o Pango’. The latter culminates in a slit-your-throat motion, a public death threat to the Wallabies no less.
Likely some 75,000 mostly Australians will politely applaud or even enjoy it.
Surely there is a double standard here? They boo Adam Goodes for cutting an innocuous couple of moves and throwing an imaginary spear, and yet they applaud the All Blacks for expressing their intention to do so against their national rugby union team.
I would love to see Kurtley Beale, in solidarity with Adam Goodes next Saturday at ANZ Stadium, stand tall in front of the Wallabies and on behalf of all Australians respond to the challenge of the Haka exactly as it should be responded to: chuck an imaginary spear at ‘em.
I suspect that long-overdue response would be greeted with rapturous applause and possibly put a prompt and timely end to the booing of Adam Goodes. Call it healing.
Besides, what wonderful, meaning-filled theatre it would make.
Leonard Lee is an author (The Zilch! Factor); animation screenwriter (Blinky Bill) and an award-winning documentary-maker (A Question of Prejudice).
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.