First of all I need to declare an interest. I am married to a woman with both Indonesian and Indigenous (Australian Aboriginal) heritage and have three wonderful children from that marriage.

In the first week of November, a story broke in Australia which focused attention on the almost casual nature of racism and how it impacts indigenous people at a fundamental level, that being their ability to find and keep employment.

In the early evening of Wednesday, 3rd November Tim Gatrell, the CEO of GenerationOne received a call from a journalist backgrounding a story which was to break the next day. GenerationOne is an indigenous advocacy group, largely bankrolled by Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrester and his wife Nicola. During the call, Tim was advised that an indigenous woman who applied for a casual role promoting the recently deployed GenerationOne marketing campaign had been denied a position based on technical grounds but during the interview had been advised that she was ‘too white’.

Tarran Betterridge, subsequently wrote an excellent blog for the ABC’s The Drum titled ‘I am a Wiradjuri woman but too white to work’. An excerpt from Tarran’s piece (which can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40746.html).

When greeted, one of the first questions by the interviewer was: “You do understand this is for an Indigenous person?”

Although a little stunned, I firmly answered, “yes”, but proceeded with the rest of the interview.

It seemed to go well, and I gained the impression the interviewer thought so too. She told me that I was “perfect for the job”.

But despite this, she couldn’t confirm whether I would be successful.
She said the reason was she had to first contact those in charge, GenerationOne, because she had been specifically asked to hire someone that looked Indigenous.

Tarran’s story is not a new one. Many employers within Australia have Indigenous policies which in many ways reflect an ideal outcome but when applied through a Facaultian filter often produce very different or less successful outcomes.

GenerationOne and the Australian Employment Covenant support a view that by employing 50,000 indigenous people who are currently unemployed you will forever break the back of continuous indigenous unemployment and underemployment within Australia. Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest stated "It was actually what we needed to get that critical mass rolling to get rid of the disparity for good. If we could get 50,000 Aboriginal people into work, the disparity was on life support" (Q&A, 1 November 2010).

Obviously, Andrew Forrest and the GenerationOne team would be horrified by this story so early into the launch of their marketing campaign. GenerationOne CEO Tim Gartrell has unreservedly apologised to Tarran and excommunicated Epic Promotions, the company who interviewed Tarran, from its organisation. Tim Gartrell’s announcements can be found at:

http://generationone.org.au/media/in-the-news

Both Tarran Betteridge and Tim Gatrell deserve to feel let down. Tarran by an organisation designed to halt indigenous disadvantage and Tim by a poor application of delegated responsibility. GenerationOne’s and the Australian Employment Covenant's raison d’être is to assist 50,000 non-employed indigenous people to enter the workforce and shouldn’t focus on this or other minor marketing catastrophes, especially where the organisation has dealt quickly and decisively with the matter.

Now is not the time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We must concentrate our efforts on ending this obvious disparity in Australia and getting 50,000 ‘real’ indigenous jobs created.

Everything else is just background noise.