Utopia

It’s nigh on impossible not to be compelled by the storytelling of John Pilger.

Driven by passion, with gravitas in his voice, his style is so uncompromising that when he tackles a subject you know it must be a cause that needs championing.

In Utopia, he revisits a subject that has helped define his career: the plight of Indigenous Australians.

As a friend and crusader for the Indigenous community, Pilger has made 7 films on the subject, dating back to The Secret Country in 1986.

In this 2 hour documentary produced by Dartmouth Films, he demonstrates the canyon that exists between a rich, lucky country, and the abject poverty and neglect surrounding our first people.

It has to be said, the footage you will see in this documentary is nothing short of shameful and will leave you rethinking any Australian pride.

From $30,000 a week beach rentals on Palm Beach, north of Sydney, we are whisked away to the Central Australian community of Utopia, a misnomer population of 1,400.

In Utopia, as in Ampilatwatja, the living conditions are atrocious: no car, no bush bus, overflowing toilets. “They are denied the basic facilities that White Australia regards as their right and takes for granted,” says Pilger.

Re-visiting communities he filmed in 1986, he encounters “the same shacks, the same lack of basic services, the same diseases.”

Stark images are not the kind of standards where city-dwellers would consider keeping a pet.

Pilger interviews Warren Snowdon, who has been a Northern Territory-based federal politician since 1987. He outlines the death of a 47 year old man who died 20 metres from a health clinic and quotes a health worker who compares the conditions with 19th Century Dickensian England.

Snowdon struggles to defend the context of his politics, but questions quickly descend into a heated exchange.

“I’m proud of the contribution this government has made to a very poor set of circumstances, not only there but in Aboriginal communities across Australia,” he asserts.

“I wont have it from you that we’re not committed to making those changes.”

“Why haven’t you fixed it?” Pilger insists.

“What a stupid question. What a puerile question.”

Pilger also visits the Canberra War Memorial, and finds no commemoration of the war between First Australians and colonial invaders (he cites being refused permission to film). Vox pops with Aussies celebrating Australia Day portray the Indigenous as as lazy or drunken.

Western Australia comes in for a serve, referred to as “a state of imprisonment for Black Australians.” He visits Rottnest Island, once an Aboriginal prison, where men were killed and boys were tortured.

“Today it’s a hotel with a luxury spa, a former morgue is now a kitchen,” Pilger learns.

“It’s so degrading. We feel so traumatised about all of this,” one Elder explains.

“They don’t have any idea what happened here.”

The death of Mr Ward, who died in a mobile police cell that reached 56 degrees one day in 2008, is the subject of an interview with WA politician Margaret Quirk, who was Corrective Services Minister at the time.

“Where does the buck stop?” Pilger asks.

“Ultimately you’re right. The buck stops with me,” she replies.

“Why didn’t you resign?”

Patricia Morton-Thomas (who acted in Redfern Now) talks about a relative who was so mistreated by NT police, that he died in his cell at the age of 27.

“He was just left in his cell to die while police officers surfed the net,” she recalls.

“Do you think Australia should be regarded as an apartheid state?” Pilger asks.

“You would have to be blind not to see apartheid here.”

The 1981 death of Eddie Murray at the age of 21 in Wee Waa, NSW, led to a campaign against black deaths in custody.

Pilger interviewed his father in 1998 and again in 2011, still awaiting justice.

You will see housing where families and children live with asbestos, in the shadow of Uluru and luxury hotels charging “$2000 a night, out of sight of the poverty of those whose land this is.”

Even measures taken to address Indigenous issues, such as Native Title, the ‘Sorry’ apology and the Intervention, are criticised.

Former 60 Minutes reporter Jeff McMullen brands the Intervention a lie, smearing all Indigenous Australians as paedophiles. ABC’s Lateline is accused of running a “lurid media campaign” in 2006 alleging sex slavery, petrol warlords and paedophile rings.

Mal Brough, Minister for Indigenous Affairs during the Howard Government Intervention, is next in the firing line as Pilger accuses him of running a racist campaign based on falsehoods.

Mutitjulu elder Bob Randall explains that the Intervention smeared them all. “No warning, no apology, nothing. We were left hanging in the air as though we were still guilty,” he says.

In another interview Kevin Rudd also defends the 2008 National Apology. But Pilger cites subsequent cases of 37 children from Lightning Ridge being taken by the Child Protection Agency. The Stolen Generation, he alleges, is still happening.

Youth suicide, native title, mining development and working conditions are also touched upon in this vast work, all driven by the fire in Pilger’s belly.

The documentary has clearly been pitched at an international audience, notable from some of Pilger’s descriptions such as miles, rather than kilometres, a brief explanation of Canberra as our capital and some basic history lessons. Whilst even asking whether Australia needs foreign aid to solve its problem, the nation is, in Pilger’s eyes, guilty of abuse and neglect that puts us close to the bottom of the international citizen list.

At times Pilger comes close to putting words in the mouths of some interview subjects, and most of the politicians are put through the wringer, even interrupted, when trying to answer his questions. Nor is there any room for positive depictions or interviews from less-aggrieved members of the Indigenous community. The joy depicted in this promo photo, was barely reflected in the storytelling -presumably, these do not fit the brief.

On a question of balance, Utopia puts its own impassioned pleas above all else as a case for the Prosecution. As a film I found this diminished its power (I also question whether it has been buried in a Saturday night timeslot by SBS).

That said, the footage is compelling and history has shown that sometimes it takes cage-rattlers and shakers to effect change.

The Indigenous community has no better friend than Pilger.

Utopia airs 8:30pm Saturday on SBS ONE.