Father of Reconciliation Pat Dodson has urged the Prime Minister to use his second term as Prime Minister to revisit Indigenous affairs policy. Photo: Facebook.
Former senator and the man described as the ‘Father of Reconciliation’ Pat Dodson has called on the Prime Minister to reignite the Indigenous affairs agenda in Labor’s second term in office.
He said that while he was disappointed when Anthony Albanese stepped back from reconciliation efforts following the failed Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, he understood why.
“I think Albanese was smart not to drink from the poisoned chalice,” Mr Dodson told the ABC’s 7.30.
“He had to do that … I felt the sadness. We saw a response at the poll that I think shocked many of us, many people felt gutted … I thought time would heal this… [But] we don’t know how to recognise Aboriginal peoples as sovereign peoples, because we fear this will undermine our own sovereignty.
“They think this is something about them getting something better or more than they might be getting.”
Mr Dodson has urged the PM to take up the cause once more with vigour, saying Labor’s second term gives them the opportunity for effective policy over First Nations people.
But he added that Indigenous Australians must engage better than they have done to date if any further push for reconciliation is to be effective.
“If you don’t participate, you’ll end up being the subject and the property of the assimilationists,” Mr Dodson said.
“That’s what the new assimilation is about: completing the obliteration of Aboriginal people from the landscape.
“We’ve got to build now, start now, the time has come. We can’t keep kicking it down the road … It’s a path worth travelling on, even though it’s with its troubles.
“Now is a time for listening more closely to the waves, to the wind, to the environment, to see how the leaves move and don’t move.
“To discern what it is that’s happening.”
Mr Dodson also criticised National-turned-Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who became the Opposition’s face and spokesperson against the Voice referendum during that campaign.
She firmly stated that colonisation had not been bad for Australia and that the impacts of it had not left any lingering effects on First Nations people.
“No, there are no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation,” she said at the time.
Mr Dodson said, “One would have to question their loyalties” if an Indigenous person made such claims as Senator Price did.
“I don’t know how that view could be sustained in the light of the historical truth,” he said.
“If it’s so great and so good to have been colonised, why are we seeing the awful manifestations we see now?
“Poverty, drug abuse, violence.”
In this week’s 4 Corners program, Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie suggested the Coalition went into the 3 May federal election campaign with a misplaced overconfidence due to the Voice referendum result.
The party wrongly thought most of those who had voted against Mr Albanese over the Voice would subsequently also vote against Labor at the federal election.
“People saw that he [Albanese] was prepared to go hard for an idea even if he was going to fail,” Mr Hastie said.
“And I think you can’t quantify that, but … certainly, I think it reflected that people thought he had some convictions.
“He put a referendum, he lost and moved on. But at least people, I think in the end, saw that he was willing to follow through on it.”
Indigenous rights advisor at Amnesty International, Palawa elder Rodney Dillon, said the landmark election result presented a significant opportunity for the nation to unite.
“We were sliding down a way that was trying to split us all apart, and I think that this has turned that around a bit,” he told NITV immediately following the election.
Mr Dodson, a Yawuru man from Broome, was a Labor Senator for Western Australia for seven years until early 2024.
A battle with cancer only allowed him to play a small role in the Voice campaign.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
