'From Deserts, Prophets Come'

The History of the Indigenous - Aboriginal Party of Australia (IAPA)

up to Election 2022:

The IAPA comes from a long history of Aboriginal resistance and activism in remote Western NSW, growing out of a spiritual, emotional, social and sustaining bond to the Baaka (Darling River). Barkindji means ‘people of the river’. Uncle Owen Whyman says, “The Baaka is our mother” and means it. “Healthy River, Healthy People”. Most Executive members of the IAPA have long activist and community nurturing backgrounds as well as family histories of that same staunch commitment.

These families were involved in a blockade which resulted in the first ever total hand over of a National Park to the ownership and management of Traditional Owners in NSW. The 1998 Lease of Mutawintji National Park was the first lease agreement under the National Parks and Wildlife Amendment (Aboriginal Ownership) Act of 1996.
Most of the Executive remain involved in the highly successful management of Mutawintji and its Local Aboriginal Land Council (LALC) It is the only NSW National Park to have all Indigenous rangers.

Uncle Owen Whyman’s family coined the slogan, “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal Land.” Uncle Owen, himself, is a respected cultural and community leader in Wilcannia. He has worked for the Western NSW Aboriginal Legal Service and holds a Diploma of Primary Healthcare. He serves on a variety of boards, including that of the Paroo-Darling National Park. Owen founded the Wilcannia Barkindji Baaka Dance Group where he continues 20 years of teaching traditional dance and mentoring the young people of Wilcannia and surrounds.

With government policy always impinging on Aboriginal lives, Uncle Owen realised that there were some issues which could not be solved without insider political power. Despite demonstrations, and even blockades, Uncle Owen came to the conclusion that his people were powerless to stop upstream over-extraction and chemical pollution of his precious Baaka without electoral representation.

Meanwhile Gubba, Gab McIntosh (OAM), had just started a Wilcannia satellite campus of her successful alternative school, Eagle Arts Vocational College, based in Broken Hill. With Uncle Owen and other Barkindji people she was able to provide a culturally safe and enriching evironment to students who has been chronic school refusers. These schools were educating student which the Gubba system could not, or would not, accommodate. The schools were closed down suddenly by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) because of alleged bureaucratic non-compliance in a school which was achieving excellent educational outcomes for very disadvantaged students.

These two issues, one of wilful government neglect and the other of zealous over-intervention were the find straw and catalyst for Uncle Owen and Gab McIntosh to band together and officially launch the Indigenous - Aboriginal Party of Australia (IAPA) on the 8th of October, 2020 in Wilcannia. So while the conception was smooth, it was a difficult pregnancy with many obstacles. Nonetheless there was no looking back as a small team led a cracking pace.

To become an Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) registered Party which can contest elections, one of the requirements was to prove a membership of 500. Understandable suspicion of government processes slowed progress until Uncle Owen’s popular daughter, Kahlia Joy Blair, hit the phone and recruited the first 300 members from her Western NSW network. Uncle Owen, as Convenor, set about putting a seven person Executive together which drew on the breath of  talent, experience, and respect for proper governance, available up and down the length of the Baaka. Recently he has been proud to add Canberra based policy expert, Ngunnawal woman, Delephene Fraser to the team.

Submitting the then required 500 required members was a bureaucratic nightmare as the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in ’20 Question’ style would reject a list without explaining which members details were incomplete or why, or even if, that was the reason for the rejection. Sometimes it it was something as simple as computer glitch regarding the order of the day and month in a member’s DOB - simple for governments and corporations but torture for every day people in remote NSW.

Meanwhile, Wilcannia was contending with its own particularly savage COVID emergency. IAPA Executive members rallied to the cause, providing Wanga (wild meat) to the isolating families, calling this service ‘Deliver-roo” in mockery of NSW Health’s adivice that homebound residents should ring ‘Uber Eats’ if they were hungry.

Incredibly, despite all these obstructions and difficulties, on the 13 th of April, 2021, only 6 short months later, the IAPA submitted an acceptable list of 500 members and the rest of their application, including a constitution, to the AEC.

Then on the 29th of July, 2021, unspeakable tragedy struck when the much loved Kahlia Joy Blair, mother of four young children, took her own life. The IAPA is about many things but it is also an enduring memorial to the remarkable Kahlia. While still grieving, the Party embarked on a campaign and fundraiser for a dedicated Indigenous staffed and led suicide prevention help line. Suicide prevention was always a policy goal for the IAPA, and this issue striking so close to home was devastating.

As if all that wasn’t enough, plotting was afoot in Canberra. The Coalition Government and the ALP joined forces to rush through a cynical and anti-democratic piece of legislation called the ‘Party Registration Integrity Bill’ on the 12th of August, 2021. While clearly aimed at ‘The New Liberals’, no member of Parliament seemed concerned about its affect on other Parties or, most importantly, on an Indigenous Party which was so clearly displaying the heroic self-empowerment and agency which White Australia claims it wants to see from Indigenous people. Worse still, the effect of the legislation was back-dated, so on the 9th of September, the now the fledgling party was told it had to produce evidence of 1500 members rather than the 500 it had accepted in good faith as being required when it entered the process.

For all Australian’s faults we have an intense sense of fair play when it comes to contests which are sport or resemble sport. Onlookers not normally concerned with politics, were outraged that the ‘big boys’ were ‘moving  the goal posts in the middle of the game’ to the disadvantage of the little battlers. So when the demand for ‘further information’ (1000 more full names, DOBs and addresses identical to those on the Electoral Roll) came through on the 18th of October, 2021, the gutsy but also very savvy IAPA team started a storm. A storm based on outrage. And at that time the social media platform which thrived on outrage was Twitter. A Twitter storm it was, and the new members flooded in.

So now with 1500+ submitted members under its belt, the  IAPA heard on the the 29th of November, 2021, that it was a fully registered federal political party. Movies are made about this sort of stuff.

Soon it had two well experienced candidates to run for the Senate in QLD. Efforts were made to run Western Australian and Northern Territory Senate candidates but it proved too much. Connections were made for future elections.

By the 25th of February, 2022, there was a Queensland launch at Inala Hall and a ‘meet & greet’ in King George Square, covered by NITV, all among an impending near cyclonic storm and the Qld flood emergengy. Brett Duroux, candidate for Page on the Northern Rivers, braved breakdowns and torrential rain to attend and support with his whole family. It took him at least a week to get home after being cut off by flood waters.

Leading up to the Federal Election on the 21st of May, 2022, the IAPA was able to run two candidates in both the NSW and QLD Senate contests and candidates in three (3) House of Representative Electorates in NSW: Page, Parkes and Robertson.

All this occurred in an election complicated by Clive Palmer, a variety of other ‘Freedom Parties’, controversy over, and practical difficulties associated with COVID and vaccination, as well as a looming referendum debate.

The IAPA has been told that for minor parties, their first election is usually their best and it is down hill after that.  Uncle Owen says “No way to that; we’re here to stay.”

To be continued...