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Eleven years later, and promises have done little for the people living in the Block

David Fickling in Sydney

February 17, 2004 - In December 1992 the then Australian prime minister, Paul Keating,made a startling speech in which he promised a future of renewal for Aboriginal Australia.

Standing five minutes' walk away from the site of the weekend's riots in Redfern, he admitted that the country had failed the Aboriginal people.

"Just a mile or two from the place where the first European settlers landed, in too many ways [Redfern] tells us that their failure to bring much more than devastation and demoralisation to Aboriginal Australia continues to be our failure," he said.

"I am confident that we will succeed in this decade."

His optimism now seems misplaced: if anything, the situation in Redfern has got worse in the past 11 years.

Unemployment stands at 33% in the 1,000-odd Aborigine population, and the hepatitis, HIV and respiratory disease rates are far higher than in affluent adjacent suburbs.

In particular the Block - the four streets of mostly derelict Victorian terraces which form the spiritual heart of Redfern's Aboriginal community - is still characterised by poverty, crime and drug use.

But its residents say the biggest problems in the area are caused not by locals, but by outsiders who come to Redfern to score and take drugs. The empty houses on Eveleigh Street have become shooting galleries for heroin addicts where petty crime is endemic.

Aborigines began settling in Redfern in the 1920s to find work in the railway yards to the south, and Aboriginal political activism crystallised there in the late 1960s under the influence of the US Black Power movement.

Redfern is now a crossroads for urban Aborigines: activists, artists, musicians and criminals alike are attracted to the area for its connections, symbolism and vibrancy.

Thomas Hickey, whose death sparked off Sunday's riots, was a recent arrival from Walgett in western New South Wales.

Even at the time of Mr Keating's speech there was little indication that Redfern's problems could be turned round overnight.

A few months earlier the routine racism of the local police had been exposed in a television documentary in which they referred to Aborigines as "coons".

The Aboriginal Housing Corporation (AHC), which owns the Block, was deep in rental arrears and had been cut off from government support.

The AHC has ambitious plans to turn the Block into a complex of 62 houses surrounding a community garden and artificial billabong, with lanes and blind alleys excluded from the design to discourage crime. But so far there is little sign of progress on the streets.

It plans to name the complex after Pemulwuy, an Aboriginal leader who led a 12-year guerrilla war against the British and has become to many an inspirational figure.

"Ask yourself where he'd have been last night," said one local, who gave his name only as Danny.

"He wouldn't have been lined up with the police, that's for sure."

Guardian (UK)

Further information:

• Redfern Riots clippings and background

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