Category Archives: Indigenous Australians

Meta vows to crack down on abuse and misinformation surrounding voice to parliament referendum

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Exclusive: Parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads says it will ensure content on its platforms is ‘contributing to democracy’

Facebook and Instagram want to be “contributing to democracy” and not exacerbating harms surrounding the Indigenous voice referendum, the company’s Australian policy head has said, as the social media giant beefs up protections on misinformation, abuse and mental health before the national vote.

Meta, the parent company of the two apps, on Monday announced it would boost funding to factcheckers monitoring misinformation, activate global teams to locate and respond to potential “threats” to the referendum – including coordinated inauthentic behaviour – and form a partnership with ReachOut for mental health support to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The company will also maintain transparency tools such as its ad library that tracks political spending.

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Keating calls Nato head a ‘supreme fool’ over plan to open office in Asia – as it happened

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Racist throwback to Jim Crow days in America

Burney says the advert that ran in the Financial Review encouraging a “no” vote on the referendum over the Indigenous voice to parliament was “totally unacceptable”.

I think Matt Kean, the Shadow Health Minister in New South Wales, really nailed it, David, where he likened it to a racist throwback from the Jim Crow days in America, but it was also incredibly sexist and it is something in the words of Matt Kean, the ‘no‘camp has every right to have a say, but there are better ways of doing it.

I know Aboriginal Australia and I know that people know what the important issues - things like what I’ve identified - education, health, housing, jobs - and Josie Douglas who is this remarkable Aboriginal woman in the central land council put it perfectly: We are about changing lives, not changing dates.

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Peter Dutton concedes individuals made ‘mistakes’ on robodebt but warns against ‘trial by media’

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Opposition leader accuses Labor of politicising the royal commission findings and calls Bill Shorten a ‘political animal’

Peter Dutton has conceded that “mistakes” were made by “individuals” involved in the unlawful robodebt scheme, while warning against a “trial by media” on the findings of the royal commission.

At the Liberal National party’s state conference in Brisbane on Saturday, the federal opposition leader accused Labor of politicising the issue and referred to the government services minister, Bill Shorten, as a “political animal”.

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WA family demand answers over the unexpected death of one-year-old daughter

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The toddler died at Perth Children’s hospital less than 24 hours after being sent home by a GP, according to the family and advocates

A Western Australia family is demanding answers after the death of a one-year-old baby a day after she was sent home by a GP, before being rushed to a Perth hospital emergency room.

The family’s spokesperson, Desmond Blurton, said his niece, Charmain Blurton, and her partner, Cody Yappo, took their daughter to their local doctor when she began feeling unwell.

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Senator says she has been ‘excluded’ from writing pamphlet – as it happened

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Patricia Karvelas challenges Littleproud’s Covid reasoning behind the Murray-Darling Basin delays on ABC RN this morning.

“This isn’t a new problem … Your government was in power when a 2019 Productivity Commission report warned that there had been limited progress returning the water to the environment,” she says. “Why didn’t you change course?”

This is a very technical piece of legislation … The 450 is additional to the 2,750 gigalitres of water in the plan, the Productivity Commission looked at the 450 gigalitres, there’s only been 2 gigalitres recovered on the 450 …

Because the neutrality test on social and economic impact on rural communities have not been passed to get more water back out of it – that’s a test the Labor government put in place, that we adhere to that the states agreed to.

He [is] going down a path that’s divided the country and meant that the attention has been taken away from managing people’s cost-of-living crisis, and focused on trying to win a referendum in which he has overreached in conflating a voice with constitutional recognition.

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AFR apologises for running voice no campaign ad featuring ‘racist trope’

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Newspaper publisher says ad ‘should not have run’ after federal independent MP Kate Chaney accuses no campaign of stoking ‘fear and hate’

The no campaign has been accused of using a “racist trope” in a newspaper ad which included a cartoon figure of an Indigenous voice campaigner appearing to dance for money.

Matt Kean, a New South Wales Liberal MP, lashed the Advance conservative lobby group for “a throwback to the Jim Crow era of the deep south”, saying the full-page ad in the Australian Financial Review had no place in Australian politics. A spokesperson for Nine, publisher of the AFR, later apologised and said the ad should never have run.

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Pauline Hanson threatens to release anti-voice essay if shut out from official referendum pamphlet

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Exclusive: One Nation leader wants her input to be included for the no side as concern grows among some politicians their views may be left out

Pauline Hanson has threatened to send her own 2,000-word anti-voice essay to Australian voters unless a parliamentary committee includes her contributions in the official referendum pamphlet for the no side.

The so-called “progressive no” views of left-wing senator Lidia Thorpe may also end up excluded from the no essay, which will be authorised by a committee dominated by Coalition and conservative politicians.

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Thousands rally around Australia in support of voice despite polls suggesting decline in yes vote

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Peter Dutton, meanwhile, lashes companies supporting yes campaign saying they ‘lacked a significant backbone’

Thousands of people have turned out at rallies nationwide to back the Indigenous voice to parliament, with organisers hoping momentum will build despite recent polls showing a decline in the yes vote.

Welcome to country and smoking ceremonies kicked off Sunday’s day of action with the Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, addressing a crowd at the Brisbane Yes23 event.

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Greens refer PwC to Nacc; yes campaign holds voice events across the country – as it happened

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Myroshnychenko says Ukraine war can’t get any worse

On the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his wagner mercenary group, Myroshnychenko says he is reluctant to get into speculation about “palace intrigue” in Russia.

We haven’t seen any major impact in the battlefield as the mutiny was unfolding, Russians sent on shelling Ukrainian cities sending missiles, heavy battlefields on the frontlines. Definitely the reputation of Vladimir Putin was dented. His leadership was challenged. And in a country like Russia is really extraordinary to see it happening. Putin is running the country as a thug so pretty much a gangster country and all these thugs and somebody revolts all of a sudden, this is already kind of bizarre.

I don’t think anything can be worse, right? Can it get any worse? Look, Russians have deployed 150,000 people in Ukraine – occupied 20% of the land. They just shell us on a continuous basis, killing and raping and murdering people. Can it get any worse? I don’t think so.

I think any support for Ukraine will be very good investment into the restoration of the rules-base international system.

Something which is so important for every Pacific nation because if you can allow a bigger power to curse a smaller power – and you don’t fight back and you let that happen, that sends a wrong signal especially to your neighbours, to countries that depend so much on your support to be sovereign and to make their own decisions and not to be influence bid bigger powers.

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Lawyer claims she wasn’t told for months that Aboriginal teen tried to take her life in youth detention

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Incident at South Australia’s Kurlana Tapa centre was downplayed, lawyer claims, but government says safety and wellbeing of children is ‘highest priority’

A lawyer representing children detained at South Australia’s only juvenile justice centre claims she was not informed for almost two months when an Aboriginal teenager attempted to take her own life in custody.

The Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement (ALRM) lawyer who represents the girl in her early teens said the seriousness of the incident in early 2023 at Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre was not conveyed until eight weeks later.

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‘A gamechanger’: yes campaign launches nationwide voice events as momentum builds ahead of Naidoc Week

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Director of Yes23 says support is growing within communities and the movement has the right message to win referendum

Two dozen major referendum events nationwide this weekend will be a “gamechanger” for the voice, says the director of Yes23, who is confident support will keep rising once grassroots campaigning fully activates in coming weeks.

After a week campaigning across the Kimberley region, Dean Parkin said the voice was crucial to help remote Indigenous communities that were being ignored. He maintained the campaign had the right message and strategy to win the referendum.

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Children locked in cells for up to 23 hours at South Australia’s youth detention centre

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Child protection watchdog says distress at Kurlana Tapa caused by prolonged detention is leading to self-harm

Children are being locked in their cells for up to 23 consecutive hours partly due to staffing shortages at South Australia’s youth detention centre, with the system in crisis amid a spate of “shocking” self-harm incidents, the state’s guardian for young people says.

Shona Reid, the guardian and youth detention inspector, said children were becoming so distressed due to prolonged detention that they were harming themselves at the Kurlana Tapa Youth Justice Centre.

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Bill Shorten has ‘no problem’ with public servants displaying support for Indigenous voice at work

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Comments come after poster on voice was removed from an NDIS commission office over concerns it compromised impartiality

The federal minister for government services, Bill Shorten, has backed public servants displaying their support for the Indigenous voice referendum at work, after a stoush between unions and the NDIS commission over an information flier posted in an office.

Guardian Australia understands a Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) poster featuring referendum information, bearing a “unions for yes” emblem, was removed from a Melbourne NDIS commission office last week, upsetting the union.

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PM launches byelection campaign – as it happened

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Birmingham tells RN he is ‘conflicted’ over voice to parliament

Shadow foreign minister, Simon Birmingham, avoids disclosing what he will vote in the voice referendum, dodging ABC RN’s Patricia Karvelas’ questions.

Do you support the voice?

I’ve been clear that I don’t intend to actively campaign in the referendum.

Why aren’t you taking a position? I mean, you’re making it clear that you want it to be private. If it’s private, that means you are actually sitting on the fence.

Patricia, I think you can hear from my answer there, that I am, in some ways conflicted and think this is a very difficult situation the country has been put in, that we have got a question before a proposed change.

We’re getting a situation where the government is not really directly responding to Ukraine’s requests for the Hawkei vehicles, or the Abrams tanks, nor the D mining equipment they’ve asked for.

[The Albanese government’s] contribution in terms of humanitarian assistance is simply $10m compared with the $65m that had been provided previously. So this is a concern …

Status as the leading non-Nato contributor to Ukraine has slipped away and the type of support being offered now doesn’t seem to be either meeting Ukraine’s requests, providing the modern equipment that they want or need, nor the type of scale that would seem to keep Australia commensurate support of our other parts.

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Media must not confuse voters about Indigenous support for voice, Anthony Albanese says

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PM reels off names of prominent yes campaigners backing ‘a moment of national unity’

Anthony Albanese has suggested the media has a “responsibility” not to confuse voters about support for the voice among First Nations people, arguing that Indigenous critics are outnumbered by supporters.

The prime minister told ABC Coffs Coast radio that Indigenous leaders have been campaigning for the voice “for a long period of time” as their preferred model of constitutional recognition.

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Anthony Albanese says government needs to ‘make it clear’ what is at stake in voice referendum

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Prime minister says ‘we have got to explain what it is about’ as he shrugs off polls showing slipping support

Anthony Albanese has shrugged off polling results showing slipping support for the Indigenous voice, but concedes the government needs to “make it clear” what is at stake in the referendum as the campaign begins.

The prime minister is confident of a yes vote in the referendum, expected in October, as he flags the Labor party will swing in behind the official Yes23 campaign to bolster its work.

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Indigenous voice yes campaign to ‘take the high ground’ with funding for thousands of local events

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Public messaging of referendum supporters hopes to offer antidote to ‘fear and misinformation’, yes campaigners say

The yes campaign for the referendum will offer grants of up to $15,000 for a blitz of community functions supporting the Indigenous voice, in a bid to support thousands of events nationwide backing the change.

Other big headline events and an advertising campaign are in the works for the yes campaigners, who will begin ramping up their public messaging from next week in the long run-up to the vote on an Indigenous voice to parliament, widely anticipated to be held in October this year.

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Australia news live: NSW premier refutes cover-up allegations over police Tasering of 95-year-old woman

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PwC should not be banned from government work but should face ‘significant sanction’, Dutton says

Following the damning interim Senate report into PwC, Dutton says he does not believe the consultancy firm should be cut from all government work, but says a penalty needs to be incurred for the breach of trust:

I think where people have breached a contract, they’ve breached trust, there’s a penalty and the price that should be paid. I don’t know whether that’s the company or whether there’s a solution that the government can provide to it but there’s there’s a significant sanction that’s that’s required – no doubt the government will be looking into that right now.

All of the pollsters at the moment, and credible commentators, believe that it’s either going to fail in October or, best case scenario for the yes case, that gets up 51-49. And in that scenario, our nation is split down the middle.

I think there’s an opportunity to unite our country here instead of divide, and that is that we should proceed with constitutional recognition.

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Albanese calls on voters to ‘rise to the occasion’ on Indigenous voice and ridicules opposition claims

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Peter Dutton warns referendum will leave Australians ‘split down the middle’ and repeats call for symbolic recognition

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has urged Australians to “rise to the occasion” of the referendum, saying he wants to discuss with the opposition how the Indigenous voice could work in the event of a successful vote.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, claims the referendum will leave Australia “split down the middle”, again calling for the government to scrap the voice and instead pursue symbolic constitutional recognition of Indigenous people.

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Anthony Albanese says voice will help ensure taxpayer dollars are ‘spent better and more efficiently’

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The PM says a yes vote should lead to more cost-effective health, education and housing programs for Indigenous people

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says a yes vote for the Indigenous voice to parliament will save money by helping to design more cost-effective programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Indigenous leaders from the Northern Territory came to Canberra on Thursday to urge Australians to listen to their “heart” to support the referendum, saying the voice would help address health, education and housing issues in their communities.

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