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Something suspicious about secret business
By Frank Devine
27aug 01
UP to a point, damages action taken by developers Tom and Wendy Chapman, decided against them last week, caused the most extensive legal inquiry into the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair.
Federal Court judge John von Doussa, unlike royal commissioner Iris Stevens in 1995, was unconvinced that stories of Ngarrindjeri women's fertility depending on the Hindmarsh area's staying unchanged were a fabrication. They may be, he said, authentic Aboriginal tradition.
It is now hard to declare as a matter of fact that this ain't so.
Conviction that it ain't has been made a personal matter. But it has not been made unreasonable. My own unweakened conviction is based on the sequence of events.
Also on the conduct of some of the participants in the affair during the royal commission hearings – for example, a key anthropologist confidently proposing the existence of women's business but reduced to babble by cross-examination, and "proponent" Aboriginal women, spectators in the hearing room, glowering intimidatingly and aggressively interjecting during evidence given by Aboriginal women who rejected the secret business.
Stevens's brief was to determine the authenticity of the beliefs claimed by some women of the Ngarrindjeri people. Von Doussa's was to decide if the actions of various people, including former Aboriginal affairs minister Robert Tickner, his appointed investigator Cheryl Saunders, anthropologist Deane Fergie and Ngarrindjeri genealogist Doreen Kartinyeri, had caused the Chapmans financial loss by delaying construction of a Hindmarsh marina complex.
To find for the Chapmans, the judge had to believe those sued had acted in bad faith or, if in official positions, irresponsibly. He did not. All went "conscientiously about their tasks as they saw them".
Late in proceedings, the Chapmans questioned the authenticity of the secret women's business tradition. Von Doussa proceeded to a meticulous inquiry.
Kartinyeri and the other proponent women had refused to appear before the royal commission. They testified in the damages case.
Kartinyeri, unchallenged women's business leader, was on the stand for three days. Some of her evidence was "unreliable" but "believable in its essence" the judge said. He was "not persuaded" that [Kartinyeri's] claim to have been told of women's business by her Auntie Rosie, around 1954, was "a lie".
He added: "At times in the witness box her emotions were patent, and she acted in an angry manner. But if she has been wrongly labelled as a fabricator, her responses are understandable."
This generosity contrasts with the judge's concluding Wendy Chapman's reliability to be diminished by her showing "a high level of anger, hostility and suspicion".
Von Doussa also showed exceptional complaisance about the proponent witnesses, other than Kartinyeri, who had forgotten "a substantial part" of what they had been told of the Hindmarsh women's business. This despite his rejection of the Chapmans' submission that a tradition can't be a tradition if only one person knows about it.
He said he wasn't satisfied Kartinyeri was the only person who remembered the details of women's business on Hindmarsh. He considered it feasible, in any case, that a single individual might carry for a time the body of "traditions, observances, customs and beliefs of the Ngarrindjeri people".
REGRETTABLY, so far as public understanding of the issues are concerned, the judge heard evidence on the nature of the Hindmarsh secret in closed session. This was a continuation of Tickner's eccentric acceptance in 1994 of an envelope labelled "to be read by women only", said to contain details of the secrets.
With hindsight – and without, for that matter – it's clear that much conflict, distress and cost could have been avoided had Tickner politely sent the letter back, unopened. A demand that he stop the bridge without knowing the facts is unreasonable.
Von Doussa compounded the anomaly by refusing to let Wendy Chapman, a woman only, see the contents of the envelope. However, the principal reason for my unshaken conviction that there has been dirty work at the confluences is the sudden emergence, in October 1993, of Friends of Hindmarsh Island, protesting vehemently against the bridge's construction.
This came three years after it had been okayed by the South Australian government and followed consultation with local Aborigines and three public meetings at which no objections were raised.
Sherlock Holmes would have started with the Friends. Von Doussa gave them little attention in his judgment.
Members of the suddenly appearing group included a residents and ratepayers association, energised by tranquility-enjoying owners of holiday houses in the area, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, offended by being denied a monopoly on bridge construction work, and Greenpeace.
Shortly after going public, the Friends found support from male Aborigines objecting to desecration of sacred sites on the island.
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