I reacquainted myself with Warren Mundine through the “Voice” Referendum Campaign in Australia. A referendum to give a Voice to indigenous Australians via a change to the Constitution. Vote now set for October 14. Warren speaks for the No campaign. I have no view, and can’t even vote, despite being Australian, as I’ve lived too long in Hong Kong.
But I've followed the campaign with interest. Concluding that it’s a very consequential referendum. If the outcome is Yes, the Constitution is going to be amended in ways that will affect Australia for ever.
There’s vast sums of money on the side of the “Yes” campaign, from the government, industry, media, banking. There’s very little on the “No” side, Warren being one. The other high profile No campaigner, Jacinta Price.
The Yes campaign is that it’s not a big change and that it will bring people together and help reconciliation.
The No campaign is that there’s already plenty of representation by the Indigenous community and lots of money spent: best to get to know HOW it’s been spent, and WHY it hasn’t done much. And then HOW can it be better spent.
“How have they spent the money?”, ask Warren and Jacinta, given over $A 30 Billion per year is spent. With very little positive result.
That’s another way of saying/suggesting that there’s a degree of ... hmmm.. corruption. Noel Pearson in his Cape York Leadership program has been given $500 million for 3,500 people. Yet not a single measure of welfare has increased. Where has that money gone? They suggest, the No-sayers, that more money in Canberra, in the hands of activitists, is not going to help. Not to mention, they remind us, that it’s a racist proposal. A separate Voice, housed in Parliament House, with membership based solely on race. Racist, how not?
One of the problems is summed up in the headline above: “What are we going to do about pretty boy?”. Said by members of the aboriginal community when Warren changed from Labor to Liberal party. How can an aboriginal be a conservative? And even having a job was seen as selling out:
"On many occasions, we had to leave certain drinking establishments because we were tagged Uncle Toms and uptown niggers for daring to have a bloody job. We understood why people were saying it, but it did hurt.” [Ref]
That’s a real problem. And Warren is against it. And he’s right. He’s right to fight for aboriginal self reliance, getting jobs, moving to the cities. None of which is helped by the Voice. Which he sees as just one more bureaucracy in Canberra, with heaps of money, for the activists.
One of the biggest reasons for poor aboriginal health is living remote communities. Where I have friends who’ve lived with and worked beside and doctored to, the Indigenous, but when I ask “what’s to be done?” answer “I don’t know". Warren answers: Get with modern Australia. Give up on the “mythical, noble-savege ideal”:
Aboriginal people needed to embrace private ownership and enterprise, as his parents had done. .... In 2005, he was awarded a medal by the conservative Bennelong Society and used the occasion to hit out at those who sought to preserve "a mythical, noble-savage ideal of indigenous Australia”. [Ref]
And he’s also pro-nuclear. That’s thinking clearly. That’s thinking independently. That’s thinking Science.
What a man!
