Professor Attacks Policy On Blacks
The Age
Wednesday May 15, 1991
The Australian of the Year, Professor Fred Hollows, yesterday criticised the Federal Government's reconciliation process for Aborigines and described the Royal Commission on Black Deaths in Custody as a waste of money.
Professor Hollows, head of the University of New South Wales ophthalmology department, led the way in identifying and treating blinding eye infections among Aborigines in outback Australia.
Speaking to the National Press Club in Canberra, he said he was asked to take part in the Royal Commission but refused. ``I did not see how anything good would come out of it besides spending a lot of money.
``How on earth they draw the direct link between land rights and deaths in custody I will never know. They say, give us land rights and deaths in custody won't occur. Deaths in custody won't occur if you stop locking up blacks." Professor Hollows said Aborigines were being ``selectively crippled by mediaeval diseases, to our undying shame" in hundreds of Aboriginal communities where it was unsafe to rear children.
He said disease among Aborigines must be eradicated and the states should be forced to contribute to the national Aboriginal health strategy. ``We will be judged by the persistence of these terrible diseases." Professor Hollows said Aborigines were ``pretty smart". ``I don't think being described as some pre-industrial, Stone Age people really helps them. But I do not think looking back into traditional Australia will solve modern problems." He expressed concern that educated Aborigines had been ``sucked up" by the bureaucracy at the expense of competent Aboriginal leadership.
Professor Hollows also called on the Government to support Eritrea, where he has made several visits, in its bid for democracy at the end of its war with Ethiopia.
© 1991 The Age