This article was published on http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au on 28 February 2017 THE Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights published its report on freedom of speech today. At 174 pages long, it is not light reading. It contains 22 recommendations, the second of which is “that leaders of the Australian community and politicians exercise their freedom of speech to identify and condemn racially hateful and discriminatory speech where it occurs in public”. Of course very few people want racially hateful and discriminatory speech, but the problem is, opinions that some may express where race is a salient feature can very easily be interpreted as racist, when in fact they are not. And t
I was disappointed to read the predictable responses to this year’s Closing the Gap report - “Governments have failed and need to do more.” I should not have been, as this has been the concerted cry from all the ‘whingerati’ for so long. While it is important to consider the role of government, it is also important to remember that the people have a critical role to play. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made this clear more than 25 years ago: “There is no other way. Only the Aboriginal people can, in the final analysis, assure their own future.” This does not mean doing it alone, but people must be actively involved in doing what they can to improve their lives. Fortun
On Tuesday 14 February 2017, Malcolm Turnbull tabled the annual Closing the Gap Report in parliament. Former Indigenous Advisory Council chair Warren Mundine is reported as saying that this is a “critical time” to define the way forward in indigenous affairs – critical for this government but even more critical for Indigenous people. Some inconvenient truths Real progress in closing the gap must entail discussing inconvenient truths and making unpopular decisions – such as few people in positions of influence and power are prepared to do. But until leaders start facing inconvenient truths and making unpopular decisions, we can expect future Closing the Gap reports to be the same – disappoint
Malcolm Turnbull has been relatively quiet in regard to Aboriginal affairs, that is, until recently when there was news of the Indigenous Advisory Council being in limbo. People have been quick to criticise Turnbull (it seems that’s what politicians are for), but a spokeswoman for Turnbull said the Government was still committed to continuing the council. We can therefore expect to see the emergence of a new council of some kind. I will offer some novel ideas for the PM which I hope he and the new incarnation of the council can act on. I will discuss what many people already know but have been too afraid to say given the politically correct environment we live in. The PC environment I believ
