Yoo-hoo @sussanley! Me again! Given how OUTRAGED you are about MPs taking rides with BILLIONAIRES… you’ll be calling out Bad Peter Dutton for enjoying free private flights from Gina Rinehart since becoming Liberal Leader yeah? ⏰ 🤔 #auspol
What is the world saying about Australia? Here is something from The Washington Post: First Nations Australians deserved so much better than this.
The overwhelming, country-wide rejection of their recognition in the constitution was the inevitable end to a campaign of misinformation, conspiracy theories and racism that deliberately sought to divide a nation with Trump-style political smears. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizens will struggle to recover from the bruising fight for their basic rights.
This was an opportunity to start reckoning with the country’s violent history — where white settlers fought frontier wars with the original inhabitants and successive governments displaced Indigenous people from their land, took children from their families and entrenched generations of disadvantage that persist to this day. Non-Indigenous Australians should reflect on why they couldn’t take this one small step. The federal government must take stock of its failure.
So where does Australia go from here?
First Nations leaders have called for a week of silence to grieve, thanking the millions of Australians who supported them and asking all citizens to reflect on “the role of racism and prejudice against Indigenous people in this result.” Votes are still being counted, but the referendum was defeated, with 40% for, and 60% against.
It is a bitter irony, that “people who have only been on this continent for 235 years would refuse to recognize those whose home this land has been for 60,000 and more years is beyond reason,” Indigenous leaders noted in a statement shared on social media. “It was never in the gift of these newcomers to refuse recognition to the true owners of Australia.”
The symbolism of the referendum’s failure has raised eyebrows across the globe. The New York Times described the outcome as “crushing Indigenous hopes,” while the Singapore-owned Straits Times noted it would be a setback for Australia’s standing in the Pacific at a time when some countries were looking to China and away from the West.
Nations with a similar colonial past, including New Zealand — which entered into the Treaty of Waitangi with Māori in 1840, and Canada, which began what it calls its modern treaty era in 1973 — have long recognized Indigenous citizens in their constitutions, though the uncodified nature of those documents mean they can be amended by a simple act of parliament. In Asia, Taiwan has had constitutionally enshrined Indigenous representation in parliament since 1972. The governments of Finland, Norway and Sweden developed a convention with the First Nations Saami people in 2017 that provides the Saami with their own parliament in each country. Bolivia has reserved parliamentary seats for First Nations peoples.
Australia’s rejection of the rights of Indigenous citizens in the most public, hurtful way shows the world a very different country to the relaxed sun, sand and surf vibe governments of all stripes love to promote overseas. Education is the nation’s fourth-biggest export, but the experience of foreign students is so often marred by racism. Many in neighboring countries across Asia are now asking: Is this really the place we want to send our kids to study in?
Those campaigning against the referendum said the idea of creating a representative body of First Nations Australians to advise the parliament on issues relevant to their community was divisive. They said it would create a special class of citizens who were more equal than others and that the advisory body would slow government decision-making and result in a tidal wave of legal challenges. None of this is true.
When Gladys Berejiklian stepped down as premier in the midst of a corruption scandal, media made her the poor victim. Dan Andrews steps down after nine successful, popular years as premier and he’s abused by media, including on ABC. Can we stop pretending this is OK and normal?
Major day for the longest serving Victorian female MP, congrats to Jacinta Allan :)
Sad to be seeing Dan go, but gosh damn am I curious to see what innocuous thing the cookers bond over next.
#IStandWithDan#VictorianPolitics#JacintaAllan
@carolinemarcus@SkyNewsAust You realise NewsCorp is being sued as well? By your own assertion it means your own organisation was apart of this “political hatchet job”.
Also, I was a liberal staffer and my partner worked at Sky News. I literally don’t understand this whole narrative.
This is horrific and highly concerning (though not surprising) from Murdoch and #NewsCorpse.
The close, symbiotic relationships between Murdoch, the LNP and the police in this country must be investigated.
Circulating naked images of a female MP for revenge isn’t a “mistake” @Dom_Perrottet
It’s calculated misogynistic abuse, perpetrated for self-gain.
No man who does this should be anywhere near parliament.
This should be obvious to you, Premier.
This is the funniest thing we’ve read all week.
Murdoch could be up for a SIX BILLION Australian dollar payout to voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion, for being brave enough to stand up to his lies.
His appeals just keep falling over.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
#NewsCorpse
How in the gobshiting fuck do we live in a country where Peter Poulos isn’t sacked for deliberately disseminating intimate pictures of a woman to destroy her career prospects but could well have been sacked if he’d given away a few Rolex watches?
#NewsCorpse