Ted Egan

Recent Speaker

Former Administrator of the Northern Territory, Author, Singer, Songwriter

April 9, 2009

"Due Inheritance: Reviving the cultural and economic wellbeing of First Australians"

Limited seating available to book please email marketing@npc.org.au

Known throughout Australia as a folklorist, writer and singer, Ted Egan’s latest book Due Inheritance: Reviving the Cultural and Economic Wellbeing of First Australians is something of a manifesto. Egan is emminently qualified to write on this subject. He has lived in the Northern Territory since 1950 and worked for the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs under both Liberal and Labor governments. He was also a member of the first National Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation from 1991 to 1994.

After so many years of friendship with First Australians, Due Inheritance is a cry for help, to take First Australians out of that imposed category of perceived inferiority that has prompted, since 1788, governments of all flavours to impose on them well-meaning but inevitably flawed policies. In the eyes of the world, Australia’s moral standing is inextricably connected to the plight of First Australians—the unhealthiest, the poorest, the least employed, the most illiterate, the worst housed, the least trained, the most imprisoned people in the land. Desperately, we need to investigate innovative solutions to chronic, systemic problems.
Egan has a set of radical proposals to re-invigorate the Aboriginal community through the attainment of economic strength and restored cultural integrity. He courageously considers ways to reverse the powerlessness and exclusion felt by First Australians under the whitefella system. These include practical measures such as replacing the killing-with-kindness philosophy of unemployment benefits with more positive schemes to endow every able citizen with skills for holding down a meaningful job; giving a First Australian body responsibility for housing, and placing the onus of looking after houses on individual householders; liquor licensing regulations to discourage the predominantly destructive drinking culture; and zero tolerance of town camps, where degradation, murder and mayhem are allowed to prevail.

Central to Egan’s argument is the need for First Australians to attain economic strength and self-reliance, and to maintain their cultural identity. He proposes a new body, the Academy of First Australians, which would be responsible for preserving and enhancing First Australian culture and language, and for helping to set government policy. More radically, the Academy would manage and disburse a once-only sum of money ‘the Inheritance of First Australians’, paid by the Commonwealth in acknowledgement of the pre-1788 stewardship of the First Australians, with the object of providing an ongoing, meaningful future for First Australians.

Egan does not mince his words, and accepts that he will receive plenty of criticism. He maintains, however, that things will get much worse for First Australians unless some drastic action is taken, and the nonsensical practices that are flaunted as being positive policies are put aside.