TAKEOVER

Australia, 1979, 86 minutes, Colour.
Directed by David and Judith Mac Dougall.

This is a significant documentary – a record, fly-on-the-wall, so to speak, of discussions in Aurukun in 1978, the town managed, first of all, by the Presbyterian Church and, with the emerging of the Uniting Church in 1977, the management of the Uniting Church. However, with exploration and bauxite interests, the Queensland government, led by the Premier, Joh Bjelke Peterson, decided on a complete takeover. There are visits from the Queensland Minister for aboriginal affairs, arranging a fait accompli.

David and Judith Mac Dougall were at Aurukun and were asked by the community to film everything that was happening. Which means then that any structure of the film, sponsored by the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, is simply an abbreviated collection of episodes.

The film provides a strong voice for the aboriginal Council members, their visit to Canberra to see the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Ian Viner, in Malcolm Fraser’s coalition government, as well as at home, in discussions with supportive groups, both aboriginal and white. This means there is a mixture of informal conversations, quite revealing (especially with the audience hearing the discussions, some offhand remarks, discussing insights, as well as the body language).

The film also records the ups and downs of discussions between federal and Queensland representatives, the Premier of Queensland exploiting the situation, targeting the federal government, suggesting compromises – to the advantage of Queensland.

There are also insertions of newspaper headlines and media reports, television programs of the time.

Key to the proceedings is the visit of Ian Viner himself to Aurukun, his listening to the Council, the speeches made by the members of the community, his following their desires, which are reinforced by Malcolm Fraser.

Watching Takeover reminds audiences of how useful it would be to have this kind of film record of so many of the discussions, especially in terms of aboriginal communities, land rights, government interventions, informal scenes in conversations as well as the official ones.

Over a decade later, there was significant advancement with Mabo, and with Paul Keating’s Redfern speech.


From the website for Takeover, distributed by Ronin Films.

One of the major works produced by the film unit of the then Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (now Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, AIATSIS), Takeover observes the profound effect on an Aboriginal community of political and bureaucratic decisions made far away. Although specific to time and place, the film is timeless and universal in its observations of a conflict between an Indigenous minority and a powerful government.

Takeover presents an insider’s view of events that followed an announcement made without warning on 13 March 1978 that the Queensland state government was taking over control of the Aboriginal community of Aurukun in the north of the State, displacing the Uniting Church which had managed the Aboriginal Reserve for 70 years.

At the request of the community, filmmakers David and Judith Mac Dougall documented the events of the following weeks, as the community marshalled its supporters to resist the takeover, and a stream of lawyers, politicians, church officials, government advisers and representatives of mainstream media arrived to talk with the Aboriginal Council and the community at large.

Ostensibly driven by a desire to access the mineral wealth in the Aurukun area, the state government was resistant to modifying its position, but intervention from the federal government forced a sequence of compromises, though not always with the community’s knowledge or to their satisfaction.

Takeover is as much about the political betrayal of the community’s interests, as it is a record of the community’s aspirations to protect and nurture its traditional culture and relationship to country.


Google: AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER STUDIES

Source: Takeover (Film) - Creative Spirits, retrieved from https://www.creativespirits.info/resources/movies/takeover