This rich country has never truly eliminated ... our Fourth World poverty, the poverty not of a Third World developing nation but the shameful poverty that persists alongside the great wealth flowing to others from your land ...
When distinguished Australian journalist, Jeff McMullen AM, became a Supporter of Defending Country, we became aware of his long history as an advocate for First Nations people. Some of this history - and Jeff's strong views - are contained in his speech 'Little Voices' at Colebee Centre, Doonside, NSW, 8 August 2025. The speech was a fundraiser for Murray-Toola Damona Preschool for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, Mt Druitt, NSW.
The speech in full by permission of Jeff McMullen. Extracts below. (We have split a couple of long paragraphs.) Please read the whole speech for its combination of Jeff's personal experience and broad themes.
One powerful theme is the link between colonisation and modern outcomes. Jeff said this to Defending Country in an email dated 15 February 2026:
Among the politicians there is little grasp of cross generational trauma and therefore no meaningful gauge of what was happening in the Australian frontier wars. To me that is an important missing ingredient in bringing national appreciation. The violence and theft of land is implicitly connected to the poverty, poorer health, higher suicide and incarceration and continuing removal of ATSI children into state care.
We could not have said it better ourselves. Understanding the loss of land and lives and liberty flowing from colonisation is the key to understanding - and changing - the Australia we live in today. DC
Extracts from Little Voices
We all walk in the footsteps of those who stayed on this long road to equality with so much patience and persistence in the Struggle for justice. I believe that it’s how we approach the Struggle that determines what kind of human being we really are ... All the stories we’ve been hearing tonight are moving and heartfelt because it’s through these stories we hear the little voices of the children who need us not just to wait for this nation to have a change of heart but for us to do something and take the right action ...
I think Australia is very slowly beginning to appreciate our many shades of beauty, the creative talents, the strengths of family and community life, and the resilience that has seen the Aboriginal knowledge system thrive for 65 thousand years or longer than anyone truly knows. There’s clearly still a burning need to tell your important story through a night like this because the lives of Aboriginal people in Western Sydney, and especially the needs of your children, are not understood by most Australians. I believe this is part of a very old pattern. The ignorance is in our history. The reluctance or sheer apathy, the unwillingness to listen, learn and take the necessary action, has gone on way too long ...
As a journalist on Sixty Minutes, I travelled with men and women trying to find families they had been stolen from years before. Some were lucky. Some were rejected, the damage was done and it drove some to their graves. Everyone here knows that this cruel practice, the worst policy ever inflicted on Aboriginal people, continues today ...
The breakup of families and the shattering of communal life as the foundation of cultural strength falls into the centuries old historical pattern of relentless assimilation. One way or the other, the nation state, the Great White Protector, decides what is best for you, even as the number of children feeling anxious, alienated and losing hope, just keeps growing year after year. Like you, I am sick of annual recitations of the statistics of failure. We all know that the pain is right here. As we have heard tonight the crossgenerational trauma is very much linked to the disproportionate levels of undiagnosed disability. This rich country has never truly eliminated what my daughter Claire once termed, our Fourth World poverty, the poverty not of a Third World developing nation but the shameful poverty that persists alongside the great wealth flowing to others from your land ...
Think of the 1967 Referendum. Most of the country, over 90 percent of voters, voted ‘YES’ for Aborigines’ as the placards said that year. But that great opportunity was squandered. Counting Aboriginal people in the census and letting the Commonwealth government make laws for you did not bring about Treaty, Truth, Recognition of Sovereignty, let alone Reparations as part of a Just Settlement.
The rejection of the Voice Referendum falls into that deep entrenched disavowal of responsibility for what has happened in the past. This is wrong. Every time a promise or an apology is made, or even a hand is held out in friendship, the poison of politics and outright racism betrays any good intentions ...
The way too slow progress noted each year by the federal government in its Close the Gaps report, with just five of those nineteen stated goals on target, never really addresses the most essential facet for wellbeing. There is overwhelming evidence that for every child anywhere in the world the essential condition for wellbeing is having a strong and positive social environment. It’s what we call Cultural security. This is the child’s key to knowing who they are and how each one is valued as an important young human being. This is our task as parents, families, communities and indeed the whole society. We need to ensure that these children are safe, secure in their understanding of who they are and knowing that they are loved.
I can tell you that the very young Aboriginal people many of us here have visited in jails and juvenile detention centres over many years are almost always feeling somewhat lost. They feel abandoned by society and sometimes with no clear connection to the magnificent strength and resilience of their Aboriginal culture. Sometimes they don’t even know their story as that was erased from their upbringing.
Picture credit: detail of cover of McMullen's 2002 book, A Life of Extremes.
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