27 May 2025
Professor Megan Davis, one of the architects of the Uluru Statement, says in the Guardian, "Aboriginal Australians increasingly feel the government isn’t listening to their views on laws and policy design." She warned against "closed-shop public consultations in the wake of the referendum defeat."
“Good public policy cannot be served by limiting your consultation to a hermetically sealed segment of a community. As a consequence, many Aboriginal people are now saying that the no vote has been interpreted as bureaucrats and government no longer needing to listen to community voices on laws and policies.”
“It’s the structural [change] – the public structures of the state – that incontrovertibly lead to change.”
Professor Davis is one of Defending Country's distinguished Patrons.
28 May 2025
WA government announces a reparations scheme for living members of the Stolen Generations, 'in recognition of the harm caused by removal from family and community'. The scheme 'is a further step towards reconciliation and healing past wrongs. It acknowledges the Stolen Generations era represents a sorrowful and shameful period in WA's history and recognises that it has caused cycles of disadvantage and intergenerational trauma.' ABC story.
The imminent WA scheme leaves Queensland as the only jurisdiction without such measures in place. More First Nations children were removed from Western Australia than any other state or territory.
WA Attorney-General, Tony Buti, said the government was 'talking and consulting with Aboriginal organisations to provide additional reparation measures such as healing and truth telling'.
Noongar traditional custodian, Jim Morrison, said: 'The impact of removal has been devastating on Aboriginal people — the intergenerational impact is ongoing ... The reality is, if there was some sort of recognition before now, I believe that the current removal rate of our children wouldn't be as bad, I believe the current incarceration rate wouldn't be as bad. Our world would be different if there was acknowledgement and understanding of this history.'
Former Senator Pat Dodson, Yawuru, was on ABC 7.30 last evening, talking to Sarah Ferguson on the beach in his Country at Broome. Video.
The interview marked National Reconciliation Week, the eighth anniversary of the release of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and the 28th anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report on the Stolen Generations (Sorry Day.)
Mr Dodson challenged Prime Minister Albanese to resume an ambitious Indigenous Affairs agenda in his second term.
"Yunupingu entrusted (him) to carry that fire stick, to bring about the kind of reconciliation and healing this nation needs - he can't drop that."
Mr Dodson called on the government "to push forward with a national truth telling commission (Makarrata) and a treaty process," as well as local and regional Indigenous advisory bodies.
"I felt the sadness [at the defeat of the Voice Referendum]."
"We don't know how to recognise Aboriginal peoples as sovereign peoples, because we fear this will undermine our own sovereignty," he said.
He was critical of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price for her claims about the benefits of colonisation to First Nations people.
Picture credits: Cable Beach, Broome (Yawuru Country), 2007 (Bidgee, Wikipedia CC BY 3.0); then Senator Pat Dodson, New York, 2022 (DFAT, Wikipedia CC BY 4.0)
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