by Senator Pauline Hanson
Today I attempted to use my Senate time to have the issue of the abuse and corruption that is rife in the indigenous industry debated in the Senate.
Sadly, the Greens decided to use every procedural trick in the book to run down the clock and silence debate, as you will see if you watch this video.
This is an important issue that has been swept under the rug by all sides of politics for too long.
It’s a shame that there are those in other parties who are too afraid to hear the truth about what is going on.
You can read my prepared remarks in full below. This is what the Greens didn’t want you to be able to hear.
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I rise to bring to the attention of Senators and the people of Australia, yet again, the inequality that exists in the funding of Indigenous programs and the continuing desperate circumstances of the victims of this financial bastardry and mismanagement.
I learned of this in my many conversations over the years with indigenous communities across Australia.
Unlike many vocal urban aboriginal elites, I have walked through the streets of remote Aboriginal communities in Queensland, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia.
And I’ve listened.
And I understand.
Whether it’s sitting on the beach with Mullawop on Thursday Island or Jimpoona and her family at the base of Uluru. Just being in remote communities listening to elders and residents have been profound and very informative. There’s not one indigenous community I’ve met with that isn’t concerned and they want to share what’s going wrong.
A lot of these people can’t even gain access to their own land which has in many cases been given back to the registered native title bodies corporate which are often more restrictive than the government was.
Many of these Bodies, especially in more remote areas are highly restrictive to the detriment of the aboriginal people.
Some are charged to go on their ancestral land or worse still some are denied access altogether.
But those conversations in both the large communities and in remote locations, always turn to the needs that their isolation and situation brings.
- Needs reflected in a lack of adequate housing,
- A deficiency of infrastructure,
- Widespread alcoholism,
- Out-of-control levels of domestic violence,
- Repeated sexual abuse – including of young children,
- And a lack of effective pathways to escape the cycles of poverty and
unemployment that are often normalised and passed on from
generation to generation.
Those communities live on the other side of what the highly respected Indigenous spokesperson, Jacinta Price, referred to in the Australian newspaper recently as ‘the kasm’.
She described in detail how the aboriginal elite, the activists, the academics from the indoctrination centres posing as universities, those with their hands out for grant money, those with the loudest voices who want to change the date of Australia Day – they all live in the city – on their side of the kasm.
When was the last time you heard one of the members of the Elite in this place saying anything positive or uplifting about indigenous achievements? When was the last time you heard one of the activists who identifies as indigenous talk up the efforts of those in remote locations working to succeed?
The Elites, the truth deniers, they know there’s a multitude of ways to end the misery.
They know there’s a ton of money being poured into programs.
When they call for an Indigenous voice in the Parliament they deliberately don’t remind you there are multiple indigenous voices already here – in fact the percentage of those identifying as indigenous in this Parliament is greater than the percentage in the national population!
And why wont we hear stories of achievement, of encouragement, of empowerment, of indigenous role models and success stories?
Why won’t you hear them remind their people of Neville Bonner who came from a little island in the Tweed River to become the first Aboriginal to sit in the Commonwealth Parliament and who as Senator Bonner went on to be re-elected in four subsequent elections?
He was also proud to accept Australian of the Year in 1979.
He’s a standout role model for young indigenous people and their parents. But his story isn’t used by the Aboriginal Elites because this hero of his people doesn’t fit their political agenda.
Mick Dodson, Aboriginal and Professor of Law who also accepted the Australian of the Year award in 2009, summed up the widespread indigenous success the Elites and their mates don’t want you to hear when he told the Sun Herald in 2010 – and I quote
“It’s become unexceptional to have successful Indigenous filmmakers, artists, doctors, academics, lawyers, nurses and politicians.”
As a nation we love to celebrate the achievements of all Australians – we’re that kind of society and we love as a nation to cheer the underdogs.
We cheer, we celebrate and so many of our kids try to be like their heroes – the battlers, the ones who give it a real go as well as the ones who succeed.
That’s the real Australia and it’s not based on the colour of your skin.
They want to rewrite history. They’ve made it their mission in life to reframe Australia – both its history and the present.
They spray their venom, they hiss their threats and slurs, they denigrate our great nation and all it stands for. They work hard to intoxicate our youth with their lies and to divide our country.
And their division isn’t between black and white – it’s between black and everyone else.
So many of them seem to have made it their life’s work to enjoy the substantial salary and profile of their city-based positions while they work to ensure indigenous communities remain trapped in permanent victimhood.
Because without victims to point to, the elites on the city side of the kasm have no relevance.
As Henry Ergas said in the Australian recently about the city-based mob, their aim is to incite – not to inform.
Ergas also pointed out (and I quote) “the whole ‘sorry’ culture perpetuates a sense of victimhood that gives European settlement no credit for the enormous gains it has conferred.”
The Aboriginal Elite are creating and tolerating a permanent victimhood for their indigenous Australian brothers and sisters and they don’t care. They’ll let the Indigenous population pay any price to achieve their goals.
Their idea of equality is ‘we own everything and the rest get nothing’.
They want 100 per cent of the land. For them the 32 per cent of Australia under Native Title already isn’t enough. They want 100 per cent of Australia to be owned by around 3 per cent of the population based on the colour of their skin or their ancestry.
That’s called racism. Pure and simple racism and it needs to be called out and exposed at every opportunity.
It’s common knowledge that the billions of dollars thrown at indigenous programs far exceed the funds put into non-indigenous programs on a per capita basis.
Non-indigenous government spending per capita is $22,000 versus $45,000 on Indigenous Australians.
Tens of billions of dollars are spent each year on programs to assist aboriginal communities, both remote and major.
From Jacinta Price’s policy paper ‘Worlds Apart’ published in January this year by the Centre for Independent Studies, we learn the Productivity Commission estimates that governments spent around $33.4 billion on Indigenous peoples in 2015-16.
One standout from those figures is that around $4.1 billion of that was spent on public order and safety alone.
That’s $6,300 per person and that’s ten, yes, ten times the amount spent on the typical Australian.
The paper finds that these places, Indigenous communities are, and I quote, “experiencing extremes that would not be tolerated anywhere in Australia” end quote.
And yet year after year the only thing the governments, state and federal, do is throw money at the problem.
Year after year nothing is done to stop the crime that occurs in the streets and in the home – it’s tolerated, and politicians ease their consciences by throwing dollars at it – dollars that aren’t building better communities.
You can bet if every state and federal parliamentarian was required to spend a month or two living in these communities that things would change.
How many times do we have to read that Indigenous unemployment is 300 per cent higher that non-indigenous employment.
How much longer are we going to let this go on?
The Government claim they can stop a pandemic but they fail to stop an Aboriginal child being sexually abused or Aboriginal women getting bashed in their communities?
It’s sickening that all we see is money getting wasted with no accountability and no results.
Ordinary Ausatralians want to see positive outcomes for First Nation people – not cover-ups.
Not sit-down money.
Positive outcomes.
But you can only get that with performance reviews, financial integrity, value-for-money results, independent audits and arms-length transactions.
Accepted commercial practice that generally applies to non-Indigenous Australia seems to be completely overlooked by the government.
That has to stop if we’re to get the kind of positive results the indigenous communities are crying out for.
It’s shameful that much of those billions has gone to the parasitic Aboriginal industry on the city side of the chasm – the bleed them dry advisors, manipulators and charlatans.
They all have the same impact – they take money from the communities it’s meant for and divert it into the pockets that rely on the Government turning a blind eye.
The Government needs to step in now and stop this happening.
It’s a well organised industry that relies on a funding system populated by bureaucrats and politicians, who for whatever reason won’t ask the hard questions like “Where’s the money really going?”
They won’t ask questions like “Why does it take a million dollars of taxpayers’ money to build a modest little prefab house in northern Australia in this day and age?”
I’ll tell you why the Aussie dollar is only worth 30 cents in many Indigenous parts of Australia. It’s because of the shameful silence of many in this Parliament and in State Parliaments who know this rip-off is happening every day and who, because of their politics, choose to attack only those of us who speak the inconvenient and embarrassing truth.
You don’t get to know the agony of indigenous mothers or the terror of indigenous children being sexually abused when you’re slurping on a glass of champagne at a party fundraiser in Paddington or Port Melbourne.
But those on the left know Gucci loafers and red dust don’t go well together. Their silence on the rorts costing our indigenous communities so much is shameful and makes them complicit in this national disgrace.
Bring that up and you’re labelled a racist. They don’t want the world to hear the inconvenient truth. The shameful truth.
There’s still an overwhelming imbalance weighing heavily in favour of Aboriginal Australians not only in funding but also in multiple areas of service provision.
Is it a coincidence that from 1971 to 2016, the year of the last official census, the population of Aboriginal Australians increased by 459% during the rollout of these programs while the general population increased by only 83.5%?
Again, this can only prompt questions about the value of the definition of “Aboriginality” which has always been difficult to define and remains open to widespread abuse.
There are three points generally accepted by the Federal Government as proof of Aboriginality. These are:
- Being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent
- Identifying as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
- Being accepted as such by the community in which you live or
formally lived.
But in this “tick the box” world, as little as identifying as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person can sometimes be enough to unlock the door to the smorgasbord of benefits available.
The people of Australia know it’s way overdue for those of the left and the right to accept that the awful plight of so many indigenous communities runs across party lines and the system is being rorted.
Indigenous families – any families should never be political pawns.
The hollow cries of ‘hate speech’ thrown across this chamber to deflect from the truth are badges of honour I and my party wear them with pride.
One Nation will continue to shine a light on the rorts, the injustice, the inequality and discrimination, the shameful silence and the lies designed to rip Australians apart.
The Indigenous funding system is broken, it’s being rorted and it needs fixing now before more lives are ruined.
A brave lady that never shies away from speaking out about injustice by the greedy few!
Bravo, Pauline!