Category Archives: Indigenous Australians

Australia politics live: ABC journalists walk out to stand in solidarity with Stan Grant against ‘awful blight’ of racism

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Greens announce comedian Mandy Nolan as Richmond candidate for 2025 election

We are only a year into the Albanese government, but it’s never too early to be prepared, I suppose. The Greens have announced their candidate for Richmond at the next election – Mandy Nolan.

At the last election people were desperate to kick out the Liberals, but now they’re realising Labor also wants new coal and gas, which makes the climate crisis worse, as well as billions in handouts for property moguls, which pushes up rents and house prices. Labor has no plan whatsoever to help renters and Labor’s housing bill sees the crisis get worse.

Mandy’s already got a team of volunteers ready to hit the streets and talk to Richmond residents about how the Greens are the only party fighting for renters and climate action.

The Finance and Public Administration Committee (which includes department of parliamentary services and prime minister and cabinet).

The Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee, where it will be the Department of Home Affairs show.

The Environment and Communications committee will hear from the climate change and energy department as well as environment and water. (So power prices will dominate this one).

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Original voice bill wording to stay as Noel Pearson calls Mick Gooda a ‘bedwetter’ over proposed change

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Former human rights commissioner suggested Indigenous leaders should consider ‘compromise’ to improve referendum’s chance

Calls to change the wording of the Indigenous voice amendment have been shot down by key Indigenous leaders of the government’s expert working groups, with Noel Pearson dismissing former human rights commissioner Mick Gooda on ABC radio as “foolish” and a “bedwetter” for suggesting an eleventh-hour alteration.

Guardian Australia understands the Albanese government doesn’t plan to amend the proposed constitutional amendment ahead of it being debated in parliament on Monday.

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Q+A host Stan Grant standing down from ABC show after racist abuse

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The ABC presenter says he has been a media target for racism and for now he’s ‘walking away’

The host of Q+A Stan Grant is standing down from the show after receiving “grotesque racist abuse” which escalated after he spoke on the ABC about the impact of colonialism ahead of the King’s coronation.

Grant said in a column published on the ABC website that after Monday’s episode he was “walking away”.

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Gas lobby plans ‘national public awareness campaign’ – as it happened

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‘Good women’s policy is good economic policy’: Sussan Ley convening women’s economic security roundtable

The deputy opposition leader and shadow minister for women, Sussan Ley, is convening a women’s economic security roundtable today.

Restarting the Career Revive program for older women to retrain and re-enter the workforce.

Greater flexibility in childcare arrangements (for which there are no details, but the rhetoric is consistent with allowing women to use subsidies on alternatives such as nannies).

Paying superannuation on paid parental leave.

Helping older women who face relationship breakdown achieve financial security, including through access to superannuation.

The Liberal party can be the party of choice for women – we must be – and that is why we are going to meet them where they are in life with new ideas and real solutions that help them.

I want the women of Australia to know that the Liberal party that Peter Dutton and I lead will be back in your corner – we will support your career choices, we will look at ways to help you as you manage your work-life balance and we will help you secure your financial independence.

I don’t think anyone would question when you’ve got something like the debt ceiling being negotiated in the United States …

In terms of the relationship between the countries and the strength of the relationship, as allies, that’s all there; and I think anyone who knows what negotiations with the debt ceiling are like in the United States understands exactly why President Biden’s been in a situation to make a decision like this.

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Labor’s cashless welfare bill criticised as disproportionately affecting First Nations people

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Critics claim the bill could see government further expand income management policies

Indigenous organisations and welfare advocates have blasted a government bill they say cements controversial cashless welfare policies that disproportionately affect First Nations people.

Labor abolished the cashless debit card that operated in several trial sites but has kept income management in the Northern Territory, where about 20,000 mostly Indigenous welfare recipients are forced on to the “basics card”.

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Breaking the cycle: protesters demand solutions for youth detainees of Banksia Hill

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Advocates say system is broken and government needs to work with local community to support young people

They came to call for change.

Among the 700 protestors outside Western Australia’s Banksia Hill Juvenile detention centre on Sunday afternoon was Lee-Anne Mason.

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Central Australian schools get record federal funding, as Labor aims to halt public education flight

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Albanese government will spend $28bn on schools in 2023-24, but unions demand more to improve retention rates

Public schools in Central Australia will meet the minimum education funding benchmark for the first time in about a decade under the new federal budget, but the Greens say more needs to be done to close the gap between public and private education.

The Albanese government will spend a record high of $28bn on schools in 2023-24, Tuesday’s budget confirmed, rising to $31.4bn in 2026-27.

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Budget allocates millions to support Indigenous mental health through voice campaign

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Treasurer also finds $492m for Closing The Gap plan and $250m for programs to tackle antisocial behaviour in Alice Springs

The government will devote $492m to the Indigenous Closing The Gap plan and $250m for a new strategy for central Australia and Alice Springs, but nearly $95m of that remains in a contingency fund pending further co-design processes with local communities.

The federal budget also allocates $336m to the Australian electoral commission to manage the referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament, including $10m to print and deliver the official yes and no pamphlet to every household, plus millions to support mental health for Aboriginal people throughout the campaign. The government will also press on with developing regional voice groups before the national voice referendum is held.

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NRL joins growing number of sporting codes backing Indigenous voice to parliament

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Major Australian sporting organisations expected to play a significant role in the yes campaign, with AFL and Cricket Australia yet to announce a stance

The National Rugby League is the latest major sporting code to back the Indigenous voice to parliament, joining a growing list of elite athletic organisations campaigning for a yes vote in this year’s referendum.

As the major football codes hold their Indigenous rounds in coming weeks, a long-mooted campaign of support from sporting groups is expected to intensify toward a referendum likely to be held in October – shortly after the AFL and NRL grand finals.

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National gathering of First Nations women aims to bring ‘gender justice’ to Indigenous issues

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Conference will help to design institute to ensure Indigenous women and girls have input into policies that govern their lives

First Nations women have the right to move beyond “holding society together, healing, reducing harms and violence, and guaranteeing cohesion and healthy environments for everyone” and be free to imagine “gender justice”, the social justice commissioner June Oscar says.

More than 900 First Nations women are meeting in Canberra this week, the first national gathering of its kind, to bring “a necessary First Nations gender lens” to everything from housing to education, healing and economic development.

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Victoria’s police chief apologises for systemic racism and discrimination against Indigenous Australians

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Shane Patton acknowledges at Yoorrook commission the police uniform is a symbol of fear for some First Nations people

Victoria’s chief police commissioner has unreservedly apologised for past and present actions of the force that inflicted trauma on First Nations people.

Shane Patton appeared before the state’s Indigenous truth-telling inquiry on Monday morning.

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Warning social media being ‘weaponised’ over referendum – as it happened

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Senators Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell have agreed to back the government’s housing affordability legislation.

The housing minister, Julie Collins, has told ABC Radio the deal was struck after the government agreed to build 1,200 social housing homes in every state and territory:

We’ve agreed to make sure that every state and territory gets a fair share of housing from the housing future funding from other federal government programs.

What we want to do is make sure that every state and territory gets their fair share of funding.

Many of these deaths occurred in the home. There is opportunity for others present to avert death and reverse the effects of an opioid overdose if they administer a medicine called naloxone.

The Australian Government has funded the availability of naloxone for free, without a prescription, for anyone who may be at risk of witnessing or experiencing an overdose.

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Commonwealth Indigenous leaders demand apology from the king for effects of colonisation

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Exclusive: Aboriginal Olympian Nova Peris says ‘change begins with listening’ as campaigners from 12 countries ask for ‘process of reparatory justice to commence’

Australians have joined Indigenous leaders and politicians across the Commonwealth to demand King Charles III make a formal apology for the effects of British colonisation, make reparations by redistributing the wealth of the British crown, and return artefacts and human remains.

Days out from Charles’s coronation in London, campaigners for republic and reparations movements in 12 countries have written a letter asking the new monarch to start a process towards “a formal apology and for a process of reparatory justice to commence”.

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Noel Pearson warns of ‘almost endless protest’ if Indigenous voice referendum fails

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Pearson says reconciliation efforts would be ‘dead’ if the proposal is rejected, while a yes vote would have ‘tectonic’ positive change

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson has called Tony Abbott’s calls to scrap the voice to parliament “absurd”, claiming the proposal has been examined longer than any other public policy idea, and warning that a no vote could lead to a future of “almost endless protest”.

Pearson, an architect of the voice, said on Monday that he feared reconciliation efforts would be “dead” if the referendum failed and predicted years of protests if the voice was rejected. By contrast, a yes vote would have “tectonic” positive change for the nation, he said.

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Aboriginal legal services frozen or at risk of shutting in 17 communities across NSW and Queensland

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Advocates call for federal government to provide urgent funding for culturally safe legal services to prevent worsening Indigenous incarceration crisis

Four communities in Queensland have had their Aboriginal legal services frozen and more than a dozen communities in New South Wales are at risk of losing theirs, prompting calls for urgent funding from the commonwealth government to help First Nations clients.

Karly Warner, the chair of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services national peak body NATSILS, said communities were now at risk of not being able to access culturally safe legal services and lead to a worsening crisis of Indigenous incarceration.

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Dysfunctional treatment of Indigenous Australians will continue unless voice exists, Ken Wyatt says

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Ex-Liberal minister tells referendum committee First Nations people despair for their future because they are never listened to

Australian governments still have a “missionary zeal” of wanting to “deal with Aboriginal people” that hasn’t changed, and unless there is an Indigenous voice advising governments the present dysfunction will continue, the former minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt has told a parliamentary committee hearing in Perth.

Wyatt, a Yamatji man, said the dysfunction has led to what he called “a futility syndrome” among Indigenous young people, who feel despair that they have no future in the nation because they are never listened to.

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Indigenous mother of baby murdered by abusive partner says police failed her in ‘every way’, inquiry hears

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Tamica Mullaley told committee into missing or murdered Aboriginal women and children her child would still be alive if officers ‘did their job right’

An Indigenous mother whose son was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by her former partner says her baby could still be alive if police had done their job properly and believes officers failed her family in “every way”.

In testimony on Thursday, Tamica Mullaley says she described how she was left bleeding after being attacked by her abusive partner Mervyn Bell in Broome in 2013 – but when police arrived after being called to assist her, they arrested her, claiming she was abusive to officers.

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‘Great shame’: Daniel Andrews highlights injustice over Indigenous children in care and justice system

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Overrepresentation of First Peoples ‘is a source of great shame’ for the Victorian government, premier tells Yoorrook chair

Daniel Andrews has expressed his government’s “great shame” regarding the overrepresentation of First Nations children in Victoria’s child protection and criminal justice systems, saying racism and injustice need to be “confronted and addressed”.

In a statement representing the strongest language the premier has used about the removal of Indigenous children from Victorian families, Andrews acknowledged that discrimination against First Nations people persisted today.

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Raising age of criminal responsibility to 12 ‘falls short’ of First Nations’ expectations, Victorian attorney general admits

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Jaclyn Symes urges other jurisdictions to follow state after announcing ‘staged approach’ to ensure support services are in place

Victoria’s attorney general has acknowledged that plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12 “falls short” of expectations from First Nations groups but described the move as a “first step” and urged other states to follow suit.

Jaclyn Symes confirmed the government will introduce legislation later this year to raise the age from 10 to 12, with no exceptions, which will come into effect in late 2024. It will then be increased to 14 by 2027.

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News live: thousands gather in capital cities for Anzac Day commemorations; no tsunami threat to Australia from Indonesia quake

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‘Every death at Gallipoli was like a sapling torn out of the earth,’ Albanese says in first dawn service address as PM. Follow the day’s news live

Symbolic sea burial held at Gold Coast dawn service

At the Anzac Day dawn service at Currumbin on the Gold Coast, the local surf life-saving club held a symbolic burial at sea.

Our two countries already work closely together. William has had a long association with Australia. He’s the chair of our naval expert advisory panel that’s already providing advice on our naval acquisitions, and even when he was a serving officer in the US navy, he provided a critical role, he played a critical role in supporting our efforts, for example, he was instrumental in improving the Collins Class submarine to make it the best diesel-powered submarine in the world.

…We do have Australians involved with that review. It will be a short, sharp review, just to check that we got the right structure of our surface fleet to complement the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.

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