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"We must stop treating Aboriginal people differently" - Warren Mundine
1.4k Plays2 years ago
Warren Mundine grew up in a poor Aboriginal family in the 1950’s and rose to become the National President of the Australian Labor Party, an advisor to five Prime Ministers, a successful businessman and a tireless advocate for indigenous Australians.
In this conversation with host Will Kingston, he discusses why he is opposing the Voice, and outlines some practical things we can do instead to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.
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Note: We had some minor issues with sound quality on Warren's side. Stick with it. It's worth it.
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Transcript
Introduction & The Spectator Australia's Coverage
00:00:00
Speaker
The Voice is the biggest political story of the year. If you want to understand the implications that this historic vote will have on our nation, you need to subscribe to The Spectator Australia. A digital subscription includes one month free and is just $16.99 thereafter. Vote yes to a Spectator Australia subscription that is at spectator.com.au forward slash join.
00:00:37
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia, a series of conversations on Australian politics and life. I'm Will Kingston. My guest today is Warren Mundine.
Warren Mundine's Political Journey
00:00:47
Speaker
Warren's CV runs into the pages of honours, awards and appointments, so I won't try and summarise all of them, but they are all richly deserved by a man who grew up in a poor Aboriginal family in the 1950s
00:01:00
Speaker
and rose to become the national president of the Australian Labor Party, an advisor to five prime ministers, a successful businessman, and a tireless advocate for Indigenous Australians. Lauren, welcome to Australiana. Thank you. Thank you, Will. We will get to the voice, but before we do, I am fascinated by your career journey. You were a candidate for the Liberal Party in 2019. It's perhaps staying the bleeding obvious to say that you are less ideologically aligned to the Labor Party than you once were.
00:01:29
Speaker
Has the left changed or have you changed? Uh, look, you know, Ronald Reagan said, you know, he was a member of the Democrats in the 1940s and fifties. Then the sixties, he moved over to the Republicans and got elected governor of California. I couldn't imagine that today, but anyway, he said that, uh, famously said he didn't leave the Democrats. Democrats left him. And I'm in a similar boat because I've always been a, a center of right. I've been a strong advocate for a liberal democracy.
00:01:59
Speaker
You know, the free enterprise, free speech, freedom of faith, you know, all the liberties that come with that, that freedom. And so I haven't changed, I don't think I've changed much at all. Yeah, so it was very easily for me to fit into the
Changing Landscape of Left-Wing Politics
00:02:15
Speaker
Liberal Party. I think I probably was feeling safe there for quite a few years.
00:02:19
Speaker
Does it upset you to see the way that the left side of politics, not just in Australia, but I would argue across the West, how it has changed since perhaps you entered public life?
00:02:30
Speaker
I first was interested in politics when I was a young kid. Dad was a bit strange. After dinner, he used to clean the table down. My mum and dad would sit down with my older siblings on number 9 and 11. And I used to sit down and listen to them debate and talk about the issues of the day. And that's how we were. We didn't have TV in them days.
00:02:54
Speaker
You know, it's a good learning process for me. I should have reported my parents to Family and Community Services because by the age of six, I could tell you how the voting system for the Senate was counted. Anyway, so I was very early age, I was very interested in politics. But as to your question,
00:03:11
Speaker
It has changed, it has massively changed, you know, some of the things that we in the Labor Party and even in some of my soft left areas would never have come about in the Labor Party what you're hearing and seeing
Values and Upbringing
00:03:23
Speaker
today. It is across the world, you see in the United States and Britain and Canada and that.
00:03:28
Speaker
and also this identity politics, which has really taken over. The left was usually about working class, working people, and in Australia there was a very strong Irish Catholic left, and now the Catholics wouldn't even be seen within the left.
00:03:44
Speaker
I was reading a review of your autobiography this morning, actually, and it made a note of your, let me get this right, your heterodox indigeneity. I'll save some listeners the dictionary search I had to do, basically said that you don't have views that many other indigenous leaders hold. Do you agree with that? And if so, why do you think that's the case?
00:04:04
Speaker
It is because I, as I was saying from a very early age, my parents were very strong about you either going to school or getting educated, or you're working, or both. You're educated getting out of school, like after school, because we come from a very poor family.
00:04:23
Speaker
my brothers and I used to go down to the soil mills and collect the cutoffs and castaways and go and chips in it and then go and sell them to houses around the place for their fireplaces and also we used to get the old sugar bag, the big sugar bag and we'd go down and collect cow pats and horse droppings and that and then
00:04:45
Speaker
put them in that bag and sell them to the people in town for, you know, for their gardens. And so that's how we got an extra little bit of money because my parents were very strict and they wanted us to be part of our, you know, they wanted us to go to Catholic schools and so we had to pay school fees and that's how we paid our school fees by doing those things. And so we've always had this thing about work and also taking responsibilities, you know, especially because my great grandfather was Irish and that's where my
00:05:14
Speaker
capitalism comes from. And that's how we were brought up. So you never turned anyone away from the door. You always looked after them. And you always were forgiving of people. This is one of the things that has definitely gone out of modern society these days. This idea that you could sin and have redemption has totally gone out of it. They find some tweet of yours
00:05:40
Speaker
15 years ago, and then you could drag through the street and fruit, throw it at you, and your political career or business career is ruined. You know, that's just nonsense. You know, people can make mistakes in the past. They can move on and become good citizens and good
Challenges & Solutions for Indigenous Communities
00:05:56
Speaker
people. So that's how I was brought up with that sort of attitude.
00:05:59
Speaker
Reflecting on what you've said, it's very obvious that the debate that we're having in Australia today is obviously very personal to you. And it leads me to a question which I've thought about when I've thought about Indigenous leaders who are opposing the voice, like you, like Jacinta Price. I imagine you want to be spending your time doing constructive things that are actually helping Indigenous people. You've got to spend the best part of your year stopping something from happening, putting all of your time and energy into stopping something from happening. And if you're successful, then the status quo endures, at least for now.
00:06:28
Speaker
How do you feel about that? It is really tiring and frustrating, you know, because, you know, I run several businesses and I own some and I and I'm involved in a couple of others plus some charities. Like one of the charities I do is the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation. So since 2008, we've raised one hundred and forty million dollars to educate kids through the year twelve. And we have something like a ninety five percent success rate there.
00:06:58
Speaker
of graduations and then we help kids into universities and postgraduate studies. And we have a 90, I think there's 92% success rate in that area. But if you put it in a sense of a five day working week, I'm probably spending four days on the voice and one day on the others.
00:07:18
Speaker
And it is time consuming and a lot takes up a lot of my travel as well. But this is so vital for our democracy. As I said, I've always been a Liberal Democrat, very proud Australian, very proud Aboriginal Australian when we set up this country in 1901.
00:07:35
Speaker
It wasn't perfect. You know, some states in Australia, Aboriginals were allowed to vote. In the New South Wales, my grandparents, great-grandparents, I have records of them voting back in the 1890s and 1901 after Federation. And in other places like Western Australia and Queensland, they weren't allowed to vote. So it wasn't a perfect Federation, but we worked hard at making it that
00:07:58
Speaker
perfect federation. And look, and that's what the 67 referendum was about. It was about equality. And you look at, I always challenge people and they say to me, oh, well, you know, Aboriginal and under the Constitution, the rough deal. I said, name me a right that Aboriginals don't have.
00:08:16
Speaker
I'm not saying it's a perfect world, but name your right that we don't have. We have the right to go to public schools. We have the right to be equal before the law. We have the right to vote. We have the right to do things that we want to do. We can buy a home. We can do a whole wide range of things. Is it perfect? No, it's not a perfect world. We've still got a struggle, especially in remote and regional Australia.
00:08:41
Speaker
in the cities we're not doing too bad but remote and regional Australia. We're dying of equal age to other Australians in the cities but when you go out in the bush
00:08:52
Speaker
It's 48, 50 year olds. So we still got a hell of a lot of work to do there and bring our brothers and sisters along on that journey. But it's,
Legal Frameworks for Aboriginal Groups
00:09:03
Speaker
you know, we've got the structures to fix it. Like, how did we get the vote in 1960? All of us got the vote, you know, in New South Wales, we had it, but all of us got the vote in 62. It was the Menzies government.
00:09:14
Speaker
who forced it happen. And how were they able to do that? Because we had the Westminster structures where the Parliament can make those changes to the laws and that we could lobby and talk to the Parliament about getting a better deal. And that's what happened. They changed.
00:09:32
Speaker
Something I read when I was doing research for this interview, which I didn't know, is that in 12 New South Wales local courts, a version of circle sentencing is utilized in some instances. Do you think that there are some circumstances where different legal approaches for different cultural groups are appropriate?
00:09:51
Speaker
What's happening now, and this proves my point, if the magistrates and judges didn't, because we have a separation of power in this country, the legislative judiciary and the executive, those executive and the judiciary were able to work out that, you know, the way we were doing things, there may be a tweak or experiment that we can play with. What happens, you go to court, so Warren London goes to court, he broke into someone's house,
00:10:20
Speaker
This is not a confession here. But I cannot go to that court system unless I'm found guilty. So I am guilty of the crime.
00:10:31
Speaker
under our Westminster system. So then it goes to a sentencing mechanism. And you know what the statistics found out? You know what the research found out? The Aboriginal sentencing system was tougher than the white man's system. Where the magistrate courts and people were saying, okay, you're getting six months in jail or you're getting a bond or a warning, the Aboriginal courts were saying, no, you're going to jail.
00:10:57
Speaker
You made a shame. You've broken our law. And so it's quite funny when you actually look at it. But again, it can't happen unless we've got this basic legal system to allow that to happen. So people forget that. This idea of decolonizing our
Root Causes vs. Symptoms of Social Issues
00:11:17
Speaker
governance system, you know, the legislative, the executive and the judiciary, it's just madness. Our system, the British legal system, and that's where it come from, and which come out of coming out of Roman and Greek
00:11:32
Speaker
philosophy and law built up over a thousand years to come to this thing. It gives us this flexibility that some other countries don't have. You look at the old Soviet Union, you look at even Russia today, and you look at the Chinese system and all that, you're buggered before you even get to the courtroom.
00:11:53
Speaker
That's it. Whatever the Congress are or whatever they want, they get in our system. The executive have been sometimes embarrassed because they've taken someone to court, and then they were found not guilty. Or the law that he was charged under was not constitutional. And these happen in these situations. It's happened throughout our history.
00:12:17
Speaker
the British legal system, you know, we, you know, goes right back in, you know, look at old King Charles's first, he got his head chopped off. He was the executive, because he broke the constitutional law. And so he said, you imagine that in other parts of the world, we have these incredible things. But what people are missing is, is they're looking at the end result. Warren London does his break and entering and that why is he doing that break in and entering? That's when we got to go back
00:12:46
Speaker
to the beginning. I read an article on Mr Walker who was shot by the police officer at Ewan Damu and his life was a tragedy before he was born. From conception, his mother was sexually abused, beaten, mistreated and she's only about 14 or 15 when she had him.
00:13:07
Speaker
and she abandoned him in the hospital and he was passed around like a footballer through families and friends and everything like that who sexually abused him and beat him and did horrible things to him and of course that meant he grew up to be a horrible person and unfortunately not his fault but that's what happened to him and so what we should be focusing on is not the end result it should be going okay why did we get to this stage
00:13:36
Speaker
Why did Mr. Walker get to this stage and go back?
00:13:41
Speaker
and start working on those issues. How do we have that his mother was healthy and safe and grew up to be healthy and safe and to be educated and was not a teenage pregnancy that she grew up and she went to school and she got a job or went to university and something like that and met a bloke and they had a baby together and he was born healthy and strong as a baby and then
00:14:09
Speaker
I was able to get educated and go on and get a job. That's what we should be focusing on rather than the end result. Let's think about that. The argument you've put to me so far has been on principle. This is a violation of the principle of equality before the law. If I wanted to vote yes and I was to accept everything you said and said to you in response,
00:14:29
Speaker
Well, things are so desperate. You know, the example you've just given is a very good one. And I think a voice will lead to better outcomes and potentially that particular situation not happening in the future. Do you think this actually there is an argument so that this will actually lead to better outcomes for indigenous people? Oh, look, I reckon there is an argument that I respect people on the other side who have different opinions to me on this because I, as much as I think I'm a very brainy, intelligent, good looking white, other people don't think that I am.
00:15:00
Speaker
And also we've got to accept that sometimes we can be wrong. I'm always accepting of that, that I could be. In fact, every time I do a decision in my business, I always make sure there's someone in the room who disagrees with me. And then I listen to their arguments and then we talk about it and then we come to look good.
00:15:18
Speaker
hopefully, a good decision. We don't do it all the time, unfortunately. But we're working towards, that's why I don't abuse my opponents, because they're entitled to their views. I've worked with many of them over the years, and they're very good people. On this issue, we disagree, and we disagree on the fundamentals of the concept. What we've got to do is stop treating people different.
00:15:43
Speaker
stop treating people as human beings that there's some sort of subset or something else. One of the most important things in my submission to the referendum parliamentary committee, yes, we are Aboriginal people, but that's our race. But we identify through our nation, our tribe of who we are, because under our culture, I cannot speak for someone else's country. If I'm not
00:16:12
Speaker
of their nation, of their tribe, or clan, then I can't speak for that. I only can speak with my people on my thing, so Bundjalung can speak about Bundjalung country.
00:16:23
Speaker
Gumbangka can speak about Gumbangka country, and Raja people can speak only for Raja country. And this is where the voice cuts across all that cultural stuff. And this is one of the failings for the last 50 years, is that we've got to recognise how people see themselves. And now they see themselves, most Aboriginal, I'm not saying all, most Aboriginal see themselves as Australians, and see themselves as their clan, as their nation.
00:16:52
Speaker
And you see that when you see people on social media that have their name and then they have their country underneath. I call it the Post Office Hotel, because in Britain, in Sydney for many years, that's where Aboriginal people used to drink.
00:17:06
Speaker
And we're all brothers and sisters and high fives and cuddles and kisses and that. But if a fight broke out within minutes or in seconds, we'd all break into our clans. Even today. Yeah, even today. And so that's how we see ourselves. Because I'm a great believer you don't understand Aboriginal people unless you understand their kinship structure. Because that's how we operate. Like for instance, my father's brothers are my father too. My mother's sisters are my mother's too.
00:17:36
Speaker
So when I walk around and like today I was on the phone talking to a couple of cousins of mine, we called each other brothers. And we are brothers under our kinship structure. We're not cousins, we're actually siblings. And we both have to act like siblings. And this is how we operate as culturally. So that's one. That's that one
Identity Politics vs. Individual Needs
00:17:58
Speaker
fundamental. Also, we've got to start focusing on, you know, Australians are very generous.
00:18:03
Speaker
We always look after someone who's fallen on hard times. So that's part of my Christianity as well. We always help people, but we always help them to get back on their feet and back to a job. So it's based on need. And that's what we've got to do. We've got to stop focusing on identity. Look at me. I don't need to go to the government and ask for funds to help you in my daily life or unemployment benefits. In fact, I've never had
00:18:28
Speaker
the unemployment benefits benefit and neither has my father and some of my siblings in that
00:18:34
Speaker
So because we worked, we worked. So I don't need that help. But some of my cousins, they have been unemployed and they have struggled and they do need that help. So I don't need it, they need it. And so that's how we should be, and we know in rural and remote Australia, as well as in some of the suburbs of Sydney, white people are in just as much dire straits of what some Aboriginal people are.
00:19:00
Speaker
Can I interrupt you there? Why do you think so many politicians treat indigenous people as one just homogenous group? Because it's easy for them. But I find it easier that they shouldn't. Because they're playing to the politics of the activists and the elites.
00:19:20
Speaker
you know why does say professor wow look at that she's a professor of law at New South Wales University I'm not having an attack at her because I think that is wow wonderful because she got up got educated and was able to go to university and then practice law and then go and then get to the high levels of being a professor of law at New South Wales University which is what about
00:19:43
Speaker
top
Economic Opportunities for Indigenous Peoples
00:19:44
Speaker
law schools. I think that's fantastic. I think that's wonderful and I congratulate her on those achievements. But does she need help? No, she doesn't need a voice. She's got a voice, you know.
00:19:59
Speaker
I just find that bizarre. In fact, only two weeks ago, Andrew Forrest found out Aboriginal people, even the ones who are uneducated, if you want to put it that way, living out in the bush, who are traditional owners. Because when you're an ex-Aboriginal landowner out in those areas, you've got to negotiate, you've got to consult with the Aboriginal traditional owners of that land.
00:20:23
Speaker
for things to happen on that land. And he found out, one of the richest blokes in Australia, he found out they had a stronger voice than him because they stopped him from irrigating a river. We may disagree on the reasons why, but that's a pretty strong voice stopping a multi-billionaire
00:20:41
Speaker
So this is why I think it's built on a fallacy of falsehood that that Aboriginal people don't have a voice and because I see it every day the voices of Aboriginal people who are out there doing things and that.
00:20:54
Speaker
Myself, we're seeing Aboriginal people who are self-determining themselves. Look at the Aboriginal business sector. 2015, worth $6.2 million. Today, only three weeks ago, it's worth $8.7 billion. It created 45,000 jobs for Aboriginals. 45,000 jobs. And 37% of those jobs are in rural and remote Australia.
00:21:23
Speaker
And so these are the way to go forward. Don't treat people all the same. Treat people on need and help those people.
00:21:35
Speaker
don't treat Aboriginals as this huge group of people who just one thing like the ball from Star Trek, you know, we all got the one mind, the one thing, you know, wandering around and that we are individuals and we have and look at the most successful people in this country and I look and I praise Professor Megan Davis and I praise all my people who are on the other side of the noise because they're all professors and doctors and that.
00:22:03
Speaker
Good on you, fellas. You have used your voice and you've got to the position that you are. Now it's time that we help the bush. The only way we can do that is through economic development. 500 years, I should say, of human development has shown us
00:22:21
Speaker
The only way we can get ahead is to build safe communities that attract investments. You get an educated, skilled people and you get investments into those places where businesses which are profit, private, commercial businesses which hire people jobs and that's where you build the economic prosperity for those people.
00:22:44
Speaker
We need to change laws, you know, like the land rights and age, where you've got the bizarre situation, we've got Aboriginals who can't own a house on that. And, you know, the funniest one of all is some people who work in the mining industry, Aboriginals who are on about $200,000 a year can't buy a house on their own land. And so what happens? Me, you and the taxpayer has to buy a house. Total madness.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah, I want to probe you on that a bit further, but I need to get my plug for the Speccy Inn. If you are enjoying Warren's insights into the voice and into Indigenous affairs, you need to grab a spectator Australia subscription. Warren is an occasional contributor. Warren, I noticed an article of yours that was all the way back in 2015 said that an Indigenous body would be a third chamber of government, which puts race squarely back into the constitution.
00:23:33
Speaker
So, listeners, no one can say Warren didn't warn you. He warned you in the Spectator Australia, no less. Digital subscriptions, $16.99 a month, with one month free when you sign up, go to spectator.com.au forward slash join.
Education and Democratic Tools
00:23:46
Speaker
That is the second time I've heard that spiel around how do we actually make change happen for Indigenous Australians today, because I read the article that you wrote. She popped out on the social channel today on how do we actually create real change.
00:23:58
Speaker
The enabler to all of that, to what you just mentioned in the article was, well, we need to get Indigenous education standards up in remote communities, and it is at the moment unacceptable. How do you do that? We have to work, especially in remote areas, where you're getting attendance under the 50%, and we all know that if you're not at school, and this is what educationists tell us, I'm not an educationist.
00:24:23
Speaker
I just fund education programs, is that if they're not at school more than 80%, then you're really wasting your time, unfortunately. And that's a bit cruel for me to say like that, but that's what it really is. So one of the questions that I was chair of the Prime Minister of Indigenous Advisory Council for Ambit and Turnbull was we wanted to know, like, there's 100 kids in this community, 50 turn up on Monday, 50 turn up on Tuesday,
00:24:53
Speaker
are they the same kids? Or are there groups of kids not turning up Monday or Tuesday? And so how do we, it's not a punishment program, it's about how we can then work with those families to assist in them getting their kids educated.
00:25:12
Speaker
And we need to do that. We've got to get those kids there more than 80% of the time. We've got to get them to school. We've got to get them to be educated. Even if it's a bad school, some people say, oh, but they're bad school. Even if it's a bad school, it's better than no school. We know that by research. A few questions specifically on the no campaign. What do you say to someone who is unsure of how to vote, but they're worried about being a labelled a racist if they vote no?
00:25:40
Speaker
The good news is, and this is one of our great structures, in fact it was an Australian invention, which is the secret ballot. It was created by us and we sold it around the world. I wish we sold it around the world, we would have been pretty rich. Your boss, your wife, your husband, politician, your football code or whatever cannot follow you into the polling booth.
00:26:04
Speaker
When you go into that polling booth, it's you and that pencil and that bit of paper. And you can vote whatever way you want to vote. And that's the beauty of the Westminster system we have in Australia. You can be bullied outside the gate. You can be spat on and you can be called horrible names. But once you get in that polling booth, no one knows how you voted.
Referendum Campaign & Corporate Influence
00:26:32
Speaker
Do you expect a gap between the polls and the end outcome for that reason? Yeah, we've seen that already just recently, you know, our polling similar to what the US campaign polling is. And you can see the panic in the US campaign because they're coming out and attacking us.
00:26:49
Speaker
on all levels in the last couple of weeks because we're having to cut through to the Australian community. And our poll is saying, you know, you get in the low 50s and in some places even below 50%.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's in 47%. Now, to be at this stage of the campaign, for a referendum, not talking about a normal election, but for a referendum, you're in trouble. You can have as many singing and dancing koalas and football players kicking balls around and tennis players lacking tennis balls and saying vote, yes.
00:27:28
Speaker
But the public is starting to catch on to something here. In fact, I've got a graph when it first was kicked off last year by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, when he first launched at Gama, it was in the 80s. And you see the Trajection Guard like this.
00:27:50
Speaker
The interesting thing is that when you ask people about, do you want to recognise Aboriginal people in the Constitution, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution as first people, 90% of Australians like it. I think it's great. And that's one of the nicest things I've seen come out. So this idea that we're all a bunch of rednecks running around the bush is just nonsense.
00:28:12
Speaker
If you've been in this country five minutes, or you've been here for several hundred years, or 60,000 years, this is a great thing that we're seeing, this unity, this oneness. And this is one of the things that is working against the voice, because a lot of people see this as division, and they've seen the division already. And it's simple just to look at the insults that's been tossed at me. That's division.
00:28:35
Speaker
uh and just in it and other aboriginal you know football players and businessmen ring me up all the time saying look our companies decided this our teams decided to do this but i'm gonna vote no but i'm too scared to tell anyone and i said don't worry about it you don't have to tell anyone all you got to do is it's a secret ballot go to that polly boot and vote the way you want to
00:28:57
Speaker
But are you worried? You know, I spoke to someone the other day who works for a big four consulting firm. They've formally announced they're supporting the Yes campaign. They're even doing lunch and learn sessions to educate their employees. And by educate, that means effectively telling them to vote Yes. Yeah. Are you concerned about that?
00:29:15
Speaker
No, because they're losing. They're propagandists. They're no better than commasars in the Soviet Union, to be quite honest. They should be like Collingwood. Collingwood board said they're going to support the vote, right? The yes campaign. But they told their staff they could vote any way they like.
00:29:37
Speaker
In fact, last Thursday, they invited me to the club, and I spoke to their staff about what I believe. Now, that's the proper way to do debates, right? And they took me to lunch afterwards, and we had a great conversation about the voice. Now, that doesn't mean they're going to change their mind, but at least they had an opportunity to hear both sides. And that's all we want in the democracy.
00:30:04
Speaker
is that people, they hear both sides. So all these big corporations and KPMG are singled out, because what I had personal experience with them, they come to me and said, oh, the CEO told us that we should get a different view as well. And then 48 hours later, they run, they said, oh no, we decided to ignore that. So that to me is propaganda.
00:30:27
Speaker
There, if you're not listening to both sides and then making up, you know, look, so there are some people out there to listen to me and they'll listen to the yes campaign and they'll vote yes. Well, that's their right because they listened to both sides. Good on them. But these people who are trying to force their employees or their football players or their sports stars or their community members, forcing them to vote yes, they're just propagandists. That's all they are.
00:30:55
Speaker
A couple more questions before we wrap up, Warren. The one which came out a lot when I asked for questions on social media, and that was on the concept of a treaty. Some people may not know the difference between, or may not know what a treaty is, may not know what the difference between a treaty and the voice is. What is a treaty? Where do you stand on a treaty, or perhaps several treaties? What are your thoughts on that topic?
00:31:17
Speaker
I've looked at this area for 30 to 40 years and looking at the Canada and funny in Canada they're called Aboriginals as well in Canada and the United States and New Zealand of course which are jurisdictions with legal jurisdictions like ours British law and similar governance that you know the Americans are
00:31:40
Speaker
you know, presidential style. It is interesting how treaties are done in the United States and Canada and they were two types of treaties. One was going back to before independence or during the independence wars or the Indian wars between Canada and between the British and the French in Canada. They were small military agreements so they went to the the Aboriginals in Canada and they said okay
00:32:07
Speaker
We want your warriors to fight for us, or be the French or the British, and under their constitution those treaties are recognised. There are other treaties within Canada that give real strong rights for the Aboriginal bands, they call them, tribal councils, and they've recognised under their constitution because it's a follow-on from that period of time.
00:32:32
Speaker
New Zealand's the same and the United States is the same. Except the United States, they've got real strong stuff. So where the Cherokee lands are, they'll have a couple of counties or one county within it. They'll actually have their own law courts and their own police and all that type of stuff. But they're still under the sovereignty of the United States.
00:32:53
Speaker
So they're a lot different than Canada and New Zealand and us. New Zealand, of course, they had the Waitangi Treaty and that was after a long war, the conclusion of that war. And that's morphed into what it is today. And it's a bit of a concern how it's morphed in the last 10 years.
00:33:10
Speaker
under Jacinda Ardhan's government and is having a huge backlash in New Zealand at the moment. That's why she had to resign as Prime Minister. But the Nationals will be getting back in power on that single issue. It's good for us to look at what's happening in New Zealand because there's a lot of problems there now.
00:33:30
Speaker
The other one is, of course, in Australia, we never had a treaty. And so from us, it's almost like starting from scratch if you're looking at it. I looked at all this stuff and then I come to the conclusion, I just like to have things completed.
00:33:44
Speaker
And so that is that we have treaties with our traditional nations, which ends all this argument about sovereignty, because the nations have agreed to sovereignty like the United States have. We are these Cherokees or whatever, but we're still under the United States' sovereignty.
00:34:05
Speaker
There's no question about it.
Community Safety & Living Standards
00:34:07
Speaker
And then for us, it's then moving forward into actually, okay, how do we deal with these social issues? Now we can spend, and we have, billions of dollars a year on this issue, and we haven't resolved in some of these areas. It's an issue. And I'll tell you now, we're never going to resolve it until they actually decide that they want it to be resolved.
00:34:28
Speaker
And like me, I live in the suburbs here, I've got to look around and hope that my neighbour's not listening to this podcast, because I'm going to say that's one of my neighbours, and I won't tell her who he is, he's a bit of a dickhead. But I don't go to his house and throw brick through his windows, or kick his garbage bin over, or pull his flowers out of his garden, because we want a safe,
00:34:51
Speaker
community where people can get on, even if we still call each other dickheads, we still get on. The community say if our kids are able to go to school and get a future for themselves, there's no rubbish all over the roads and crap that's about because we want a certain standard of living. Until people decide to do that and reach out for help and that we can help them, then you're never going to change anything.
Grassroots Campaigning & Conclusion
00:35:19
Speaker
What will the outcome of the referendum be and what will the margin be? Look, I reckon it's a no at this stage, but, you know, I can't say at the end because we haven't got to June. And most people in Australia, it's like any election campaign, they won't be focusing until the date's been declared. And that's why you've got this big, like, we don't know what we're doing. And we've got a very soft yes at the moment. So that soft yes, you don't get that soft yet, no at the moment.
00:35:47
Speaker
It's pretty hard. So I reckon we have a great opportunity to get more of those soft yeses, and those people who don't know at this stage across the line. But we won't know until the date's really declared now, because the legislation or the bill, I should say, won't become law until after June, when it goes before parliament. And you have it in the Prime Minister's draft suit. After that one announced the date for it, then it'll get hot. And the campaign's going to be running.
00:36:16
Speaker
And it's all guns home from there. We're not going to be able to compete with that because we haven't got the money that they have. But we're running a groundswell campaign. We're just talking to Australians, people on the ground, Australians. And, you know, we're some of these migrants. You know, when I talked about immigrants and migrants being in the Constitution,
00:36:36
Speaker
That the all the head bodies that are warrants an idiot. Well, guess what? I'm going to Moss I'm going to seek temples. I'm going to South Korean and Korean I mean I should say in Cantonese Chinese and in Mandarin Chinese temples and Vietnamese temples and guess what they're saying to me they're buying all my books and they're in there loving me and giving me photos things and that so look so we're going for we're going for the for the Australian
00:37:06
Speaker
people and talk to them and they can talk as much as they like to the elites up there. I don't care. That's their issue. They can spend millions of dollars as much as they like. I have great faith in the Australian public. They're not mugs. They're very good people and they will vote the way they see is best for this country and I believe that would be a note of
00:37:30
Speaker
Well, as John Howard said, the electorate usually gets it right. Let's hope they get it right here. Warren, you've got a lot of talking ahead of you in the next four or five months. Thank you very much for taking the time to chat to us on Australiana today. Thank you, Will, and you can send a nice message to your boss that Warren thinks you did a good job.
00:37:50
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.