Since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's formal apology to the stolen generations, Aboriginal poverty has gotten worse, the winner of the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize says.
Delivering his peace prize lecture at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday night, journalist and filmmaker John Pilger spoke of "a war of legal attrition waged against black communities", and also criticised the government's handling of boatloads of asylum seekers arriving off the Australian coast.
Comparing the treatment of black Australians to apartheid South Africa, Mr Pilger said nothing had changed since Mr Rudd's historic apology in early 2008.
"Near the end of apartheid, black South Africans were being jailed at the rate of 851 per 100,000 of population," he said.
"Today, black Australians are being jailed at a national rate that is more than five times higher.
"Western Australia jails Aboriginal men at eight times the apartheid figure," he said.
Mr Pilger said the apology was well received by Australia's Aboriginal communities, however Aboriginal poverty had since become worse, while the federal government's program to build houses for Aborigines in the Northern Territory was "a grim joke".
"Instead, the federal government has threatened communities in the Northern Territory that if they don't hand over their precious freehold leases, they'll be denied the basic services that we, in white Australia, take for granted," he said.
Commenting on the federal government's handling of asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australian shores, Mr Pilger was critical of Mr Rudd's recent words: "Our job, and I make no apology for it, is to take a hardline approach in dealing with the challenge of illegal immigration."
"The use of the term `illegal immigrants' is both false and cowardly," Mr Pilger said.
"The few people struggling to reach our shores are not illegal.
"International law is clear - they're legal.
"And yet Rudd, like Howard, sends the navy against them and runs what is effectively a concentration camp on Christmas Island ...
"The people in those leaking boats demonstrates the kind of guts Australians are said to admire."
Mr Pilger, 70, was given a standing ovation after his heavily attended 40 minute speech in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House.
The age of the audience varied considerably, and included school children as well as those closer to Mr Pilger's age.
The Sydney Peace Prize is Australia's only international prize for peace.
It is awarded by the Sydney Peace Foundation, which is based at the University of Sydney.
Previous recipients include former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Indian author and human rights campaigner Arundhati Roy and last year the Aboriginal leader and "father of reconciliation" Patrick Dodson.
Front page
RSS Feed