The Voice

[JohnDe]

Why hasn't this been implemented before spending billions of dollars on welfare and a referendum?

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has laid out her vision for an “advancement movement” in Indigenous affairs, in which welfare-dependent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do the jobs in their communities​

​

“There should be no fly-in, fly-out workers in communities with Indigenous Australians on welfare.”​

‘Second way to close the gap’: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price outlines her post-voice vision​

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has laid out her vision for an “advancement movement” in Indigenous affairs, in which welfare-dependent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do the jobs in their communities currently done by fly-in, fly-out workers, and “meet the standards other Australians are expected to meet”.

The opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman also calls for an end to an implied acceptance of cultural payback, arranged marriage, apportioning tragedies and mishaps to sorcery and other practices that are “anathema to modern culture”. As her home base of Alice Springs enters its second curfew this year to curb youth violence, and the nation struggles to find a new policy path after the failure of the voice to parliament referendum, Senator Nampijinpa Price has declared there is a “second way” to close the gap.

“We know where the gap is – it is 20 per cent of the 3 per cent,” the Northern Territory senator writes in an essay on history commissioned for The Australian’s 60th Anniversary Collector’s Edition magazine, published on Saturday.

“It’s remote Indigenous Australians, many of whom do not have English as a first language. We already know that we can either fix or exacerbate that by school attendance.

“There should be no fly-in, fly-out workers in communities with Indigenous Australians on welfare.”

Senator Price – a Warlpiri-Celtic woman from Alice Springs – has set out her arguments for an “advancement movement” and her hope for “real reconciliation and integration”, as she works on the Indigenous affairs policy she and Peter Dutton will take to the next election.

She describes the advancement movement as “a second way”.

“We can continue along the separatist road that sees Indigenous Australians as irrevocably damaged by settlement and wants to keep Aboriginal culture stuck in time like a museum piece,” Senator Nampijinpa Price writes.

“Traditional culture is romanticised by those who do not live it, while reinvention of culture has become an industry in the name of reconciliation for the purpose of political influence.

“This (separatist) way forward leaves negative parts of Indigenous culture alone to grow and fester. Things like violent cultural payback, arranged marriage and apportioning tragedies and mishaps to sorcery, all of which are anathema to modern culture.

“This is a view that lowers standards for Indigenous Australians … This has been the strategy of decades of government agencies and academic activists, and yet they fail to draw the obvious connection between this approach and the failure to make much ground on Closing the Gap.”

Senator Nampijinpa Price has never supported a truth-telling commission as proposed by the Greens in parliament last week. Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney on Tuesday said the government would look at the nature of the proposal.

Sources have told The Australian that Labor will block any judicial model that would in any way replicate the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa. Instead, it has been consulting communities that prefer truth-telling projects potentially overseen by a central body. The Albanese government has left this work to states.

“My personal view is that it needs to be more of a community-led initiative that brings people together,” Ms Burney told ABC on Tuesday.

Senator Nampijinpa Price expresses her concern about truth-telling because, as she tells The Australian in a video interview to be published with her essay, it has been “driven by this notion that somehow modern non-Indigenous Australians have to compensate for what occurred to Aboriginal people in our country’s history”.

But she said Australia needed to understand the atrocities that occurred at and after colonisation, which included the murders of many of her Warlpiri family in the last sanctioned massacre at Coniston in 1928. “Seventy-five years after that we had a commemorative ceremony and invited those descendants of those who killed our family … (we told them) ‘we don’t blame you for what happened in our country’s history’.

“We recognised those were hard times but we are now together as Australians moving forward, and I think that is one of the greatest acts of reconciliation I’ve ever been part of.”

Senator Nampijinpa Price said guilt politics was like racism because “it denies the truth and it doesn’t help anybody progress”.

“We need a second way: the advancement movement. Under this movement, we are all Australians. We can learn and cherish our Indigenous culture while still meeting the same standards that every other Australian is expected to meet,” she writes in her essay.

“Our culture will be respected like never before when Indigenous Australians are making it thrive under their own steam and not as part of a welfare industry. That culture will become part of our national tapestry, rather than a separate story to be fought over.”

Senator Nampijinpa Price was the Coalition’s most potent weapon during the debate that culminated in a failed referendum for an Indigenous voice in October 2023. Her decision to join right-wing activist group Advance in February 23 was a landmark for the No campaign.

She said the nation needed a nuanced understanding of its own history, including what is great about the nation that emerged from it. She said few younger Australians were taught that King George instructed Governor Arthur Phillip to “live in amity and kindness” with Aboriginal people and to punish crimes against them. “Of course, the British settlers did not always live up to King George’s instructions, but that doesn’t change the fact the instructions were given,” she writes.

“Even … when barbaric crimes were committed against Aboriginal Australians, the civilising rule of law often played out. The infamous Myall Creek massacre in 1838 marks a dark and bloody moment in our history, when 28 Indigenous Australians were murdered by British settlers. But the activists have done a good job of playing down what happened after the massacre.

“Contemporary sources indicate that while there were pockets of excuse-making for the perpetrators, there was also clearly an abiding desire of the colony as a whole to do the right thing. The attorney-general, John Plunkett, prosecuted the perpetrators and then – when they were acquitted on a technicality – he prosecuted them again. Seven white men were thus found guilty and hanged.”

Read the essay in full on Saturday in the 60th Anniversary Collector’s Edition magazine.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Why hasn't this been implemented before spending billions of dollars on welfare and a referendum?

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has laid out her vision for an “advancement movement” in Indigenous affairs, in which welfare-dependent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do the jobs in their communities​

​

“There should be no fly-in, fly-out workers in communities with Indigenous Australians on welfare.”​

It has been implemented in one form or another in communities in Queensland, there are still programs running, all have been failures.

The usual reasons and suspects I'm afraid. It is shocking.

Education and willing integration with, or catch up with, the rest of Australia would help more than all the money being spent on health and welfare. It is difficult to solve and nobody is game to stop pretending and do something.

Education. Education. Education.

Jacinta is a cluey lady so I'd back any program that she gets behind.

gg

 

[macca]

Why would anyone want to get up and go to work every day when they don't have to?

We were on a tour and at one place we were to have a local person explain how their community worked but the coordinator for the community could not get anyone to start work at 8.00am.

The pay was only $400 for 2 hours so no one wanted to do it

 

[farmerge]

It has been implemented in one form or another in communities in Queensland, there are still programs running, all have been failures.

The usual reasons and suspects I'm afraid. It is shocking.

Education and willing integration with, or catch up with, the rest of Australia would help more than all the money being spent on health and welfare. It is difficult to solve and nobody is game to stop pretending and do something.

Education. Education. Education.

Jacinta is a cluey lady so I'd back any program that she gets behind.

gg

@Garpal Gumnut Most unfortunately the receivers of these massive and more than generous handouts are firm believers in the "Cargo Cult" where the goodies just keep on keeping on.
Why bother with doing anything when it is all free.

 

[farmerge]

Why would anyone want to get up and go to work every day when they don't have to?

We were on a tour and at one place we were to have a local person explain how their community worked but the coordinator for the community could not get anyone to start work at 8.00am.

The pay was only $400 for 2 hours so no one wanted to do it

@macca Crickey $100 an hour just to waffle on a bit and try to impress how good they are doing.

 

[farmerge]

Oophs should have typed $200 an hour.

 

[macca]

Oophs should have typed $200 an hour.

Yep and this was more than 5 years ago

 

[wayneL]

This is the path forward IMHO

 

[JohnDe]

This is the path forward IMHO

Pretty much sums up the core group of the YES intelligentsia.

I like the Central Poster.

However, I can't ignore the nagging feeling that the mainstream NAIDOC agenda has been co-opted for ulterior motives. It seems like it's being used as a tool by the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) and other elites to further their own agendas and maintain divisions among us.​

 

[IFocus]

Always thought Ken Watt was a good person especially for politics (proper blue blood Liberal) story below looks at his family history and the shocking draconian laws they had to endure.

Ken Wyatt: A trailblazer in Australian politics​

Wyatt said his mother's files also demonstrated the extraordinary power that the department exerted over her life.

When she was older and a domestic worker, her salary was sent to the department to manage, which meant it controlled her ability to buy basic necessities — from dresses to underwear.

"Even when my mother wanted a pair of shoes, she had to write in and ask if a voucher could be made available for her to purchase a pair," Wyatt said.

The department only gave his mum a small amount of her salary, which limited her ability to make her own life choices.

Wyatt discovered that his grandparents were also made to adhere to the same draconian practices.

"If they needed a train fare to Perth then sometimes the letter would say, 'No, we can't justify you returning back to Perth. Remain where you're employed,'" he said.

From racial prejudice to political triumph, Ken Wyatt's story is of resilience and leadership

After a humble upbringing marred by racial prejudice and social disadvantage, Ken Wyatt broke new ground for First Nations Australians wanting to have a say in federal decision-making. This is his story.

www.abc.net.au

 

[JohnDe]

 

[sptrawler]

Ken Wyatt

A successful family.

Ben Wyatt making history as nation's first Aboriginal treasurer

Ben Wyatt is making history as the first Aboriginal person to be treasurer in a state or federal government in Australia, as part of the incoming WA Labor administration.

www.abc.net.au

Ben Wyatt is making history as the first Aboriginal person to be treasurer in a state or federal government in Australia, as part of the incoming WA Labor administration.

He follows in the footsteps of his relative Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous man to become a federal minister.

Ken Wyatt is Minister for Aged Care and Indigenous Health in the Turnbull Government.

 

[qldfrog]

The terrible thing is now, when i read the headline, i do wonder: did he get the job per skills, hard work, brain and dedication? An old fashion merit and skills

Or just because he has the mandatory 1/8 of "pure Aboriginal blood"..

This is where the voice and decades of discrimination has led us, and anyone not wondering the same is imho, just living with the fairies .

 

[IFocus]

The terrible thing is now, when i read the headline, i do wonder: did he get the job per skills, hard work, brain and dedication? An old fashion merit and skills

Or just because he has the mandatory 1/8 of "pure Aboriginal blood"..

This is where the voice and decades of discrimination has led us, and anyone not wondering the same is imho, just living with the fairies .

Read the whole article none of us have had to endure his past also talks to why he achieved and who helped him.

 

[sptrawler]

The terrible thing is now, when i read the headline, i do wonder: did he get the job per skills, hard work, brain and dedication? An old fashion merit and skills

Or just because he has the mandatory 1/8 of "pure Aboriginal blood"..

This is where the voice and decades of discrimination has led us, and anyone not wondering the same is imho, just living with the fairies .

I have some indigenous mates, who are highly successful people and I guarantee you would find them terrific.

So a lot of the issues are a result of the environment they are brought up in, the communities they are brought up in, a lot of life choices they make due sto where they live and a lot depends on the opportunities that are available where they live.

It's complicated and a lot of the problem is trying to facilitate two cultures, one which actually just wants to live on the land and the other that wants everyone to work their ar$e off and kill themselves, just to have a little house on a tiny bit of it.

 

[JohnDe]

Read the whole article none of us have had to endure his past also talks to why he achieved and who helped him.

You have no idea what others have had to endure while growing up.

Your life is not a mirror image of every non-indigenous person in Australia.

Stop judging.

 

[farmerge]

Always thought Ken Watt was a good person especially for politics (proper blue blood Liberal) story below looks at his family history and the shocking draconian laws they had to endure.

Ken Wyatt: A trailblazer in Australian politics​

Wyatt said his mother's files also demonstrated the extraordinary power that the department exerted over her life.

When she was older and a domestic worker, her salary was sent to the department to manage, which meant it controlled her ability to buy basic necessities — from dresses to underwear.

"Even when my mother wanted a pair of shoes, she had to write in and ask if a voucher could be made available for her to purchase a pair," Wyatt said.

The department only gave his mum a small amount of her salary, which limited her ability to make her own life choices.

Wyatt discovered that his grandparents were also made to adhere to the same draconian practices.

"If they needed a train fare to Perth then sometimes the letter would say, 'No, we can't justify you returning back to Perth. Remain where you're employed,'" he said.

From racial prejudice to political triumph, Ken Wyatt's story is of resilience and leadership

After a humble upbringing marred by racial prejudice and social disadvantage, Ken Wyatt broke new ground for First Nations Australians wanting to have a say in federal decision-making. This is his story.

www.abc.net.au

Happily I can say that Mr ken Wyatt was our member in the federal Government.
He wrote to us (well all in the electorate) consistently and I felt that he really did have the community he represented at heart.
Birthdays were not forgotten also.
A sad day when he decided to retire.


On a similar note of Big brother (the Govt) controlling the lives of others.
My father was a child migrant under the Kingsley Fairbridge Foundation (which is dismal blight on those who were removed from England).
He had similar grievances with his pay being paid to the Welfare Department as he was a "Ward of the State" until he was 21.
Though he rarely talked about it, we have found out through researching the family tree just how draconian his life was.
He was never able to obtain a birth certificate as this would have proved he was not an orphan but had a mother, a sister and later 3 brothers.

First Peoples are not the only ones who had to suffer because some bureaucrat in government thought they knew better.

 

[qldfrog]

I have some indigenous mates, who are highly successful people and I guarantee you would find them terrific.

So a lot of the issues are a result of the environment they are brought up in, the communities they are brought up in, a lot of life choices they make due sto where they live and a lot depends on the opportunities that are available where they live.

It's complicated and a lot of the problem is trying to facilitate two cultures, one which actually just wants to live on the land and the other that wants everyone to work their ar$e off and kill themselves, just to have a little house on a tiny bit of it.

Of course, being white, yellow or black does not make anyone better or worse, but with years of "positive" discrimination be it at board level, city offices of big corporations,etc..i will argue that the inner qualities/qualifications of major and not so major appointments in 2024 Australia are not that decisive anymore and nominations are affected by a de facto apartheid and sexism.
I experienced it personally on a RioTinto position in the Brisbane office a decade ago.
I find this terrible and actually horrendous to genuine bonafide talented individuals to be chosen on a sex or skin colour.

 

[JohnDe]

As mentioned in post #3335, it's not over yet.

Yes camp’s warped ‘post-mortem’ shows they still don’t get why voice failed

There is now a shadow voice – much like the original voice – that is merely a rehash of an old idea, one that promotes separatism. While the original voice may be dead, the mindless pursuit of the shadow voice is not. It is therefore important we continue to have these conversations.​

Since the defeat of the Indigenous voice to parliament, I have generally avoided pursuing post mortems or extended discussions of the failed referendum. If I do engage in these kinds of discussions, it’s mostly to say the No outcome was not a loss to Aboriginal Australians, given they already had voices and continue to use them, and that the path towards closing the gap is clear and has been for some time.

Readers of this newspaper know well that to close the gap we need to focus on those Aboriginal people who are most disadvantaged and address their basic needs, much the same as we would for other Australians.

Of course, I am talking about the need for education, job readiness, opportunities for employment and easy access to modern services. This view aligns with what Peter Yu recently advocated in The Weekend Australian; namely, a focus on economic prosperity and wealth creation.

I was invited to write for these pages immediately after the referendum result, but with the exception of that piece I have not written any comprehensive analysis. But, after reading the piece by pre-eminent Aboriginal voice advocate Megan Davis, I wanted to offer some comments on her views as they relate to the voice.

Davis’s article was an edited extract from the NAIDOC Week keynote lecture, which she delivered at the University of Queensland. In it, Davis states she has had a lot of time to “think about the referendum, and yarn about it”. I have too, but I have not “yarned”. I’ve simply had discussions with other people about it. In the eyes of the “modern First Nations person”, my failure to yarn may disqualify me from informed comment on the voice. Whatever the case, I write as an Australian, as I always have.

Fundamentally, Davis presents messages that are counter-productive for Aboriginal people.

For example, she suggests the failure to include Aboriginal Australians in the Constitution implies they are somehow unimportant. Aboriginal children returned to school the Monday after the referendum “feeling like they didn’t belong”, Davis wrote, while many other Aboriginal people “felt sickened, hurt, rejected”. Finally, her claim that the voice proposal was an olive branch offered to the rest of Australia beggars belief.

Much could be said in response to these points, but let me say most Australians care deeply for Aboriginal people. Any feelings of exclusion or hurt felt by Aboriginal people – allegedly caused by the No outcome – arose because they were repeatedly told the lies that Aboriginal people lack a voice, and a No outcome means non-Aboriginal Australians are racist and do not care.

When I wrote before the referendum, saying I could not predict the result, I commented that if the Yes case were to prevail it would do so purely on emotion. And yet reading Davis’s piece, it is striking that she is again appealing to emotion about the failure of the Yes camp. Is she hoping most Australians will endorse the next iteration of the voice? I ask this because the voice is far from over.

There is now a shadow voice – much like the original voice – that is merely a rehash of an old idea, one that promotes separatism. While the original voice may be dead, the mindless pursuit of the shadow voice is not. It is therefore important we continue to have these conversations.

My concern about pursuing this shadow voice, along with treaties and truth telling, is that it uses valuable energy and resources that could be better focused on real-life issues that impact far too many Aboriginal people.

In recent weeks we have read stories about crime waves involving Aboriginal youth, curfews and cashless debit cards.

If you get your news from left-leaning media, then you are sure to get your daily instalments of Aboriginal deaths in custody, claims of racism, stolen children, along with the narrative that a Yes vote would have dealt with all these issues.

We know how to deal with these issues, and it is not reliance on any voice-like structure.

The Aboriginal architects of the voice represent a stellar cast of hardworking, highly intelligent and successful people. They have earned what they have; and what they have, they gained without the voice. To their credit, they continue to use their voices to call attention to the fact far too many Aboriginal people in this country are denied the advantages, opportunities and equity they have themselves.

They should be using their voices to tell these less fortunate Aboriginal Australians what their formula for success has been.

And that formula is pretty much the same one that works for all Australians.

Anthony Dillon is an Indigenous commentator, and an honorary fellow at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney.

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www.theaustralian.com.au

The Aboriginal architects of the voice represent a stellar cast of hardworking, highly intelligent and successful people. They have earned what they have; and what they have, they gained without the voice. To their credit, they continue to use their voices to call attention to the fact far too many Aboriginal people in this country are denied the advantages, opportunities and equity they have themselves.​

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They should be using their voices to tell these less fortunate Aboriginal Australians what their formula for success has been.​

​

And that formula is pretty much the same one that works for all Australians.​

 

[SirRumpole]

And that formula is pretty much the same one that works for all Australians.

Yes, it's called W.O.R.K.