More than a quarter of Canberra’s daily average prison population is Indigenous but only 2 per cent of people in the ACT identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. The only way people get to prison is to be sentenced there by a court. Ipso facto the courts are the problem, surely? Wrong. Continue reading »
Indigenous affairs
How governments approach Indigenous governance is crucial to addressing the reform task set by the Productivity Commission’s recent report. The Productivity Commission’s recent review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap challenges Australian governments to fundamentally reconfigure how they engage with First Nations organisations. Modernising how government organisations approach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Continue reading »
You’re either a climate realist or you’re a climate sceptic. You’re either pro COVID vaccines or you’re a vaccine sceptic. You either voted ‘no’ in the recent ‘indigenous voice to parliament’ or ‘yes’. On too many issues, the labels that Australians are using are confrontational. Australians are being led to see just two camps and Continue reading »
Now that the dust has begun to settle, we can look at the referendum result with a little more clarity. Those of us who supported the Voice saw with some dismay how the initial widespread support in favour of a yes vote began to wither away. yet we should not be fooled by the headlines Continue reading »
How News Corp used fear, manipulation and division to campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. HOLDING NEWS CORP ACCOUNTABLE TO BUILD A BETTER MEDIA LANDSCAPE The defeat of the Voice to Parliament was a dark moment in Australian politics. This loss cannot, of course, be attributed to the actions of News Corp alone. However, Continue reading »
To ensure Aboriginal Peoples’ freedom from genocide and ecocide, we need decolonisation. For some, post the Australian 2023 Referendum, questions arise: where to next? More of the same isn’t an option; the evidence surrounds us as to why more genocide in all its forms, including assimilation and the ecocide of our territories doesn’t work. But Continue reading »
Opposition leader (LOL) Peter Dutton has said: ”Who?” When asked today about the whereabouts of his shadow Indigenous Affairs minister Jacinta Nampijimpa Price. ”I’m not sure who this Jacinta person is that you are asking about,” said the Opposition leader.... Read More ›
For decades the Australian War Memorial Council denied the need for the full recognition of Australia’s first and longest wars – the Frontier Wars – despite the overwhelming evidence of actions which today would be regarded not only as crimes but also in many cases war crimes. Now the Defending Country Memorial Project has launched Continue reading »
In the 1990s, in an Aboriginal community near Alice Springs a young boy, aged about nine, and I stood looking at some soft, waving, light-filled spinifex, seemingly floating over the deep red earth. See? he said. I shook my head. I was blind to the possibilities right in front of me. The period between the Continue reading »
No one who cares about basic human rights, or a sense of honour and of honouring, should be remotely intimidated by the sickening “success” of Dutton’s typically self-serving, cruel and mendacious campaign. The Voice did not fail. Australians failed the Voice. It’s exactly a month since the much-anticipated referendum was held to recognise First Nations Continue reading »