Australia Has No Need For Anti Immigration Parties. Australia First Party? We Don’t Ever Want A Return To The White Australia Policy Do We?
As Australians we should recoil in horror at the image on the left. Recoil in horror, yet recall with some shame that there was a time in our past where this evil existed. It existed right here in our own country – Australia. It must never exist again!
Yet, this kind of evil will appear on the horizon at the next election in the shape of the “Australia First Party” which has announced it will stand at the next election.
If you think Senator Fielding and Family First are “right wing and extreme” – get a load of these turkeys…
The average voter might find some of their policies attractive. They appeal to the unifying emotion of nationalism we all possess to greater or lesser degrees.
A closer examination of those policies reveals the same platform as the “White Australia Policy” and of course Pauline “Please Explain” Hanson.
Those insidiously sick, bizarre and cowardly members of the Ku Klux Klan are now attempting to infiltrate the Australia First Party. This is hardly a surprise. They are exactly the kind of person the party’s policies appeal to.
NSW director of Australia First, Jim Saleam said:
“Mr Palmer (sic KKK) did the same to One Nation years ago and Pauline Hanson fell all over herself trying to disassociate the party from Klanism — we’re not going to let history repeat itself.”
Whereas Mr Palmer told The Sydney Morning Herald the Klan members joined Australia First to:
“take back what we consider our Aryan parties … in case the ethnics get out of hand”.
This is the kind of evil I’m talking about. “Aryan”? “Out of hand?”, “Ethnics?” “Parties?” These are KKK style words if ever you’ve heard any. It’s a bloody disgrace Palmer uttered them to anybody, let alone to The Sydney Morning Herald!
We want this in Australian politics?
I should hope not.
They’ve Got The Australian Labor Party Spooked
No pun intended, but Labor seems to have caught a sniff of flapping white and ghostly robes in the air and has moved hastily, as you would hope, to ensure no Labor preferences go to Australia First, while the Liberals – who’s party structure doesn’t permit a guarantee we are told, has stated via spokesperson Brian Loughnane that they should not to give Australia First any Liberal preferences.
So What Are These “Australia First” Characters On About?
Well, nothing new, in light of the image pictured above it seems. They have, on their website, a document they loosely phrase their “Constitution” that includes what they call themselves their “Core Policies”. Those “Core Policies” include their desire to Abolish Multiculturalism. As I said, nothing new here, same old far right divisive evil we’ve been hearing going back decades and similar in principle to Hitler’s Nazis.
But the one that really stood out, on their website, to my mind was this:
“Australia must remain predominantly white”.
Which is actually a vile quote from Australia First founder and former Labor member Graeme Campbell. Ugly, damn ugly! This has no place in Australia. It undermines the good will and principles under which we all live and prosper. It can only lead to division. Just as it’s always led to division worldwide.
Seems these right wing jerks aren’t going to be alone at the next election, though. They’ve got rivals for their racially motivated obsessions. The “Australia Protectionist Party” is also planning to run candidates at the next Federal Election. Australia is to have goosestepping candidates in abundance if they can get the numbers to run as a party. My fingers are crossed they engage, as so many right wing parties have done before, in the predictable internal power struggles over who gets to read “Mein Kampf” to their members and in turn is allowed to be called “Fuhrer” when spoken to.
The resurgence of extreme right wing politics in the world, as seen in the recent European elections, is disturbing. History tells us this doesn’t work. There’s nothing “pure” about a community of people who fabricate policies based on racial, religious or political oppression. It’s not new, it’s hardly smart and it’s cost the world dearly time and time again.
Please – not in Australia, it’s a country to beautiful to destroy though right wing crazies like “Australia First!”
Scott Kane
Martin Ferguson makes ‘Sickness Country’ – a radioactive toxic waste dump.
Federal resources minister Martin Ferguson is choosing a site for a low level nuclear waste storage facility, to be commissioned by 2014 and probably in the Northern Territory.
Australia has large areas of naturally occurring radioactivity. The aboriginals know these lands as ‘Sickness Country’ and learned to stay away. Would they willingly agree to make more? And if Ferguson proceeds without their support, what does this do for reconciliation?
I fear the ‘low level nuclear waste storage facility’ would be so successful that all our ‘mates’ would want to use it too. Every advanced country wants to be rid of their toxic waste, urgently and permanently.
I can hear the call: “Hey mate! Maaaatee!… Maaaatee! We can pay.”
Australia is THE prime candidate for a global nuclear fuel repository We are politically and geologically stable with a big dry back yard.
What engineering feat can hold these poisons? None that I know of.
What fund would pay for fences and signage, for the guards and inspectors – for thousands of years? How could it possibly last that long?
Ferguson promises community consultation, a totally asymmetrical exercise when no community leader knows what price, what terms, what conditions we should put against the 1,000 to 30,000 years this toxic store will need to be contained.
And while the up-front payment for taking everything from medical waste to spent fuel rods may seem fabulously generous, the sheer duration of its toxicity would make that initial fee laughable.
Don’t do it Martin! Make the nuclear scientists come up with a real solution to waste, not just dumping it in the Outback.
Home-buyer Health Hazard
I am gravely concerned about the level of Australian house prices. Real estate prices have tumbled in the US, the UK and New Zealand, but not here.
It may be unpopular and unwelcome to point this out, but our very high property prices are a cost and not a benefit.
According to RP Data-Rismark, the national median house price of $468,819 is just $520 shy of the record set in February last year, before the global economy sank into recession. Melbourne is leading the housing recovery, with a 6.1 per cent growth in prices between January 1 and May 31 and auction clearance rates in excess of 80 per cent for the past seven weeks. Sydney recorded 5.2 per cent growth in prices over the same period.
All sorts of reasons are offered for this – demographics, immigration, rationing by land-banking corporates and government action to contain the spread of our already large cities. None of this explains why house prices are so high relative to incomes.
That is, Australians spend much larger multiples of their income on housing – they now cost about six times earnings – than anywhere else in the world. How is that affordable? How is that socially or economically useful?
If that is confusing, understand that at six times earnings a mortgagee with a 100% mortgage over 30 years will need to pay 20 per cent of their pre-tax income in principal repayments. Interest is extra. Anyone signing up for such a mortgage is committing themselves to a lifetime of poverty, after including those interest payments.
A reversion to the long term average ratio – house prices at about three times earnings – would mean a halving of house prices. That seems impossible and psychologically impermissible to a lot of Aussies. Price falls of that magnitude are already underway elsewhere and probably nearly completed in the USA.
Our government sparked a lending boom to those people in Australia with the most to lose from taking on a huge mortgage at the low end of the interest rate cycle: young Aussies, the most vulnerable workers in the job market who spend the highest percentage of their discretionary income (not much) on an asset they are buying at the top of the boom.
If you wanted to deliberately wipe out the financial prospects of an entire generation by saddling them with crushing debt, increasing the first buyer’s grant and putting on a time limit is exactly what you’d do.Many thanks for background to The Daily Reckoning Australia www.dailyreckoning.com.au
The pain is yet to begin
We Can’t Allow Senator Conroy’s Internet Filter To Be Decanted. Huxley Was Right, Not Orwell
June 8, 1972, in the village of Trang Bang, nine year old Phan Thi Kim Phuchad had stripped off her burning clothes following a napalm bomb attack on her village. The photo won Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize. It was Ut who took Kim Phuc and the other children to the hospital.
Under the seriously flawed – if not itself depraved – internet filter proposed by Australia’s Senator Conroy we would be unlikely to see this photo. We are lucky to be able to see it and in turn appreciate the gravity of the scene and the proof that innocents are horrifically treated in war, simply because poor little Phan ripped off her burning clothes in an agony of searing, horrific, flames and fled naked from her obliterated villiage.
This photo demonstrates why internet censorship cannot be tolerated.
We know there are dangers on the internet, particularly for children. It is our parental responsibility to make sure they are not exposed, not Senator Conroy and his Huxlean legislation.
A filter like that one proposed for Australia by Senator Conroy – the chief proponent of Australia’s own digital “Great Wall of China” – is not and cannot be a solution. Senator Conroy and his merry band of byte blockers would consider this heinous example of man’s inhumanity to man pornographic or to quote the Senator’s own dark expression: “Inappropriate”.
It fits many if not most of the definitions he has put forward. Yet surely, the blocking of an image like this is as sickening as those who ordered the napalming of the Trang Bang village.
George Orwell famously wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. While both poignant warnings in their own right, with 1984 warning us to be wary of invasive, government controlled technology, it is Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” that contains the prophecy.
“Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches.”
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 3
Conroy’s crude filter and it’s supporters lump logical argument into a grab bag of aspersions. Opposing the filter exposes one to any number of despicable characterizations. But Huxley’s quote is paramount in relation to the Senator’s reckless, industry and democracy-threatening censorship.
Senator – there are many options available, including international work on preventing “inappropriate” content by ending the financial streams of those engaged in it. It’s more work, yes, but it does work. Filtering Australian internet services is a laughable waste of time, money and effort. Truncating our information technology sector with a filter based on Victorian-era terror is socially, politically and economically disastrous.
As soon as it’s released it will be circumvented – and those who do the evil the Senator is keen to protect us from will still exist and will still be doing that evil – but Senator Conroy won’t be able to see them behind his filter. Australia’s very own “Ostrich 2.0″ of the world wide web.
Senator Conroy’s preoccupation with “naughty bits” is an issue Senator Conroy needs to deal with in his own life, not yours, not the lives of Australians. The Senator should not, nay, must not force Australia to lay down to his own private version of what constitutes good or bad content.
It’s so fatally flawed it’s remarkable Conroy’s expert advisors haven’t pointed it out to him – or perhaps they have and the Dear Senator is mimicking the odd bird with it’s head in the sand pictured above? I remind the Senator of Huxley’s words:
“The greater a man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offense is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual – and, after all, what is an individual?” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 10
“And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Ch. 16
Is Victoria dinkum about our Fire Risk?
The photo on the left is the street my sister, her family, her friends and her neighbours once called “home”.
My sister and her family were amongst the “lucky” ones, who lived in one of the 47 houses on Pine Ridge Rd Kinglake West, all of which were utterly destroyed.
Twenty one people – neighbours, friends, human beings – were not so fortunate and died.
This is not a death you would wish on anybody.
As Australian citizens, we must, despite the personal discomfort, reflect on this to ensure it is never allowed to happen again. Stopping fires isn’t the issue, it’s about saving lives. To do that, we must cut through the confusion of “green” politics and look at balancing human survival and environment management.
That the Victorian Dept. Sustainability and Lands are exempt from appearing at the Royal Commission into Black Saturday speaks volumes.
I stood in the ruins of my sisters home, before the mandatory property clearing was undertaken, shortly after Saturday February 7th 2009. Nothing prepares you for this.
Nothing.
I’ve stood and seen, directly opposite where her home stood, the police cordons where the remains of people were found and the different coloured tape that showed areas “cleared forensically of human remains” I’d been inside some of those homes before that day, filled with the sounds of families, friends, music, children’s laughter and love – just like your home in every regard.
We can’t allow this to be swept under the carpet with another “Royal Commission”, like all the Victorian inquiries before it – going back to 1939 – to do absolutely nothing. We must not let soulless bureaucrats fudge, flounder and throw a facade of concern over an issue that could have been avoided, all the while spraying excuses, platitudes and justifications for actions or lack there-of. All Victorians, all Australians, must be disgusted and angry about this outcome.
I’ve seen house fires before. But this did not resemble the house fires we see from time to time in the suburbs or even other bushfires. Brick turned to powder, metal twisted into abstract shapes like a fresco from Dante’s Inferno, refrigerators bore no resemblance to any kitchen appliance, and nothing of one’s life remains, barring a few pieces of charred crockery. In minutes, with temperatures in the thousands of degrees everything was erased – including people – forever…
Most of you didn’t hear from the victims, nor did the Royal Commission, as I did locally. Their description of the approaching wall of flame and smoke, the colours and the roar as loud as standing on the runway next to four 747 Jumbo Jets on full thrust. The nightmares of the children who survived – and their parents - replay in therir dreams. The agony of and for their loved ones, friends and even their beloved pets who perished in an agony of flame and toxic smoke.
Scientists have estimated the fire to be the equivalent to 9.6 Megatons of TNT. To put that in perspective that’s over 640 Hiroshima nuclear bombs or three low yield hydrogen bombs – or just short of one “average” yield hydrogen bomb. The “McArthur’s fire danger index” was in excess of 100 on Ash Wednesday 1983. On Black Saturday February 7th 2009 it was 180!
Consider that coming at you in a legislated “green canopy” zone – imagine surviving it – imagine not surviving. ..
Most of you saw the news from the safety of your urban abode. But locally it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t safe.
Here in Hurstbridge, where I live, the sky turned black, the air we breathed was yellow, pale beams of off yellow sunlight filtered through a pall of disaster taking place only 7 kms away in St Andrews and nearby Strathewan. According to the CFA official website there were no fires there. Several “false alarms” were listed. Hurstbridge was warned of “imminent ember attack” and told to “activate our bushfire plans” two hours after everything had been erased just minutes away to the North. Later that night, the threat message was changed to state that the township was within the path of the blaze “imminently”, as opposed to “ember attack”. By a miracle, Hurstridge was spared – this time.
The Region Is The Most Wildfire Prone In The World
If the wind change had not come through at precisely the time it did, the townships of St Andrews, Panton Hill, Hurstbridge, Kangaroo Ground, Diamond Creek and perhaps even Eltham would have made the news. The loss of life would have been even more horrific, even if that doesn’t sound possible. Our fortune was the devastating misfortune of others, as we are all painfully aware. I won’t speculate on how bad the toll could have been if the fire had reached Research, Warrandyte or even Templestowe. This horror scenario was mapped out years ago by bushfire scientists whom our state, federal and local governments studiously disregarded.
The region sits in the federal seat of McEwen – an electorate contested by me in 2007 Federal Election for the Australian Democrats and won by the Liberal Party’s Hon. Fran Bailey MHR – is considered the most wildfire prone area in the world.
In McEwen it’s not if there’s a super firestorm- it’s always been when.
In a letter to The Australian newspaper of February 10, 2009, David Packham OAM, an honorary senior research fellow at Monash University’s school of geography and environmental science, wrote:
This is a pretty damning statement from a man who studies bushfires all his life. But he goes on:
For a person who lives in and appreciates the natural splendour of the Australian bush you’d probably think I’d be concerned if not have my heckles raised at the scientist’s words? Loving the green and the bush is not a justification for the environmentally bankrupt policies of our state and local government. We’re not talking “green” here, we’re talking about “Greens”. Make no mistake: it’s not politics at work here, it’s a doctrine so powerful it borders on religious fervor and shares the fundamental flaws of many religious groups whereby disagreement is heresy.
Locally, “green” groups have been promoting the absurd notion, using news footage, that the fire was worse over open ground and that bushland some how acted as a buffer. To that I and others in this electorate say take a long, hard, compassionate look at the photo above because what your claims are is unadulterated bollocks! Shame on you!
David Packham OAM continues:
Now David Packham is talking about “Green” and where the rubber meets the road.
I know or knew of several people who died in that thick smog. One I went to school with. Her daughter was found wandering alone after the fire had passed in Strathewan, found by local police officers, and even now is recovering from her terrible burns in hospital. Her mother, father and siblings did not make it and were found in their home.
I know personally several people who lost their homes, in places forgotten by the media, names like “Flowerdale”, places I visited to attend various functions and debates during the 2007 Federal election campaign. Places near where I grew up and indeed still live. It is a sobering thought to consider that people who voted for you are not only affected by this tragedy, but in some cases are no longer with us. It’s impossible, it’s inhumane, to allow this to pass us by.
While the administration of the CFA comes under ember attack in the Royal Commission in Melbourne and struggles desperately to justify actions, or lack of actions that day, one has to wonder – do these people care?
It’s a good question because on that terrible day, as reported in local press and the Royal Commission, Nillumbik Shire council refused to assist CFA and SES efforts to assist, rescue and mitigate the agony of victims in St Andrews and Strathewan by point blank refusing requests to provide bulldozers to clear roads blocked by fallen and burnt trees.
The CFA volunteers, the SES, the emergency service personnel worked beyond and above their duties – they have earned our respect and gratitude – a debt that cannot be repaid.
Yet from the administration, we hear of jurisdictional jockeying before the fire, during the fire and now afterwards. We’ve heard the spotting tower in Kangaroo Ground spotted dead people in the IZone at St Andrews yet the CFA administration did not acknowledge the event in any capacity and Kangaroo Ground spotting tower yielded control to the Kilmore tower. We’ve also seen at the Royal Commission that certain CFA employees and the electrical power company were notified five hours before the fire hit the McEwen communities, that the CFA believed the fire would impact heavily. However, are we supposed to believe the Emergency Services Coordinator saying he had no idea the scenario would unfold as it did?
To again quote David Peckham:
Emphasis mine.
David Peckham, and other scientists, warned us and our government prior to the event. Not just warned, but predicted with a suprising accuracy. In forthcoming posts from me, on this matter, I’ll share some more devastating scientific predictions, like the one above, from other scientists reported in the media, government reports and submissions prior to February 7th 2009.
You would expect the State Government of Victoria and the Shire of Nillumbik, at the very least, would now be taking heed of this – right?
You are forgiven for thinking so. The reality is actually quite different.
While the State Government is “awaiting the final report from the Royal Commission” Nillumbik Shire Council is spending $400,000 on fuel reduction. That sounds pretty good. But dig down. The council spends more on fighting planning appeals, including actions against residents performing reasonable fuel reduction clearing, than it’s shiny new fuel reduction plan. To add insult to absurd injury the regions targeted are those impacted by Black Saturday’s fires in Arthurs Creek, Strathewan and St Andrews. This was the “IZone” (Impact Zone), to use CFA and SES terminology. While fire could occur there next season, the most likely candidates for a Super Firestorm in coming years are the unburned areas of southern St Andrews, Panton Hill, Hurstbridge, Kangaroo Ground, Research, Wattle Glen and Eltham, stretching across into Warrandyte.
The “Green Canopy” enforcement remains unchanged, prohibiting the clearing of dead and fallen foliage from nature strips, prohibiting the removal of explosive gum trees adjoining family homes, the lack of clear guidance to residents on what they can do – as opposed to the abundant advice on what they cannot do in relation to “fuel reduction”. This hasn’t changed. It won’t change short of a State government dismissing the council and replacing it with an administration with the intestinal fortitude to stand up to “green” interest groups for a balanced and humane fuel reduction and environmental policy. Nobody wants mass clearing here. All residents are asking for is a hefty dose of common, humane, sense.
Yet we read in Diamond Valley News letters to the editors of the “green” answer to residents asking for reasonable fuel reduction. I paraphrase: “If you don’t like it you can leave.”
How humane is that?
I’ll conclude with the words of David Peckham again:
But don’t hold your breath. Do you hear that lovely sound the warbling pigs make as they fly by? “
He’s right. Sadly. But then, we knew that when Premier Brumby chose the politician’s tools of choice to inquire into the Black Saturday Super Firestorm – a Royal Commission and not a Coronial Inquest – didn’t we?
Each time the platitudes, excuses, justifications and pseudo-scientific hogwash is spouted in our community by the “cult of green” they should be required to look carefully and closely at the image directly above.
It shows Pine Ridge Rd Kinglake – not “open cleared land” as depicted in “Green” propaganda – but homes sited inextricably in forest land.
I’ve spoken to witnesses: it came in from the forest from several directions at once.
The first half is a before shot from the air. The right hand side needs no explanation. For me the red dot with the number “19″ says everything.
Scott Kane
Save Reconciliation Victoria. Victoria’s Indigenous People Need Your Help!
Reconciliation Victoria will be forced to close its office at the end of June unless the Victorian Government reverses its decision to discontinue funding. The Australian Democrats are urging members, Supporters and the public to write, phone and email the Premier calling for his personal intervention.
Reconciliation Victoria rejected an offer made by Aboriginal Affairs Victoria to temporarily fund the organisation for an interim period of 12 months because it was conditional on Reconciliation Victoria ‘merging’ with Stolen Generations Victoria.
This offer was inadequate and inappropriate and lacked consultation. To use money allocated for Aboriginal services to do the work of reconciliation would undermine the relationships Reconciliation Victoria has with the Victorian Aboriginal community.
The funding has amounted to just $200,000 per year and the Government’s decision fly’s in the face of its public commitment to ‘closing the gap’ in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage and health outcomes. If we don’t close the gap in our relationships we will never close the gap in health outcomes.
Reconciliation Victoria works to promote an inclusive Australia, which encourages and educates non-Indigenous Australians to value the rich and vibrant living cultures of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The government’s decision sets Victoria apart as the most regressive state on the east coast: New South Wales and Queensland have announced funding boosts to their peak reconciliation bodies.
You need to act NOW, as time is literally running out on this issue, to steer the Brumby state government’s reckless abandonment of our First Victorians.
What you can do:
Visit the Victorian Division website at: http://www.vic.democrats.org.au/vic-articles-170609-save-reconciliation-victoria.html for more information and campaign resources or use the links below to write, phone and email Premier Brumby.
Download and add your personal touch to this letter: http://www.vic.democrats.org.au/RVcampaignletter.doc
You can also download a text file here with full details (email addresses are removed from this post for protection against spammers, but our download contains full documentation): Download By Clicking Here.
Premier, John Brumby
Level 1, 1 Treasury Pl, Melbourne 3002
03 9651 5000
Fax: 03 9651 5054
Send copies to:
Deputy Premier and Attorney General, Rob Hulls
Level 3, 1 Treasury Pl, East Melbourne, 3002
03 9651 1222
Fax: 03 9651 1188:
Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Richard Wynne
Level 22, 50 Lonsdale St, Melbourne, 3000
03 9096 7722
Fax: 03 9096 9225
Minister for Community Development, Peter Batchelor
Level 20, 1 Spring Street, Melbourne, 3000
03 9658 4660
Fax: 03 9658 4631
Contact your local MP
Find your local member of parliament here:
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/mlas1.html
Write a Letter to the Editor
The Age:
Editor Email Address Removed Please see download above.
Herald Sun
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/editorial/letter/
Write to your local newspaper.
Contact Talk-back radio
3AW (693) with Neil Mitchell 8.30am – 12noon
03 9690 0693
774 ABC with Jon Faine 8.30am – 12noon
1300 222 774
Background Information
* What Reconciliation Victoria does
http://www.vic.democrats.org.au/RVbrief.doc
* Government arguments for not funding
http://www.vic.democrats.org.au/RVgovtarguments.doc
* Richard J. Frankland letter of appeal
http://www.vic.democrats.org.au/RVfranklandletter.pdf
* Campaign information and FAQ
http://www.vic.democrats.org.au/RVcampaign.pdf
More information
* Reconciliation Victoria:
http://www.reconciliationvic.org.au/
* Antar (Australians for Native Title & Reconciliation)
http://www.antarvictoria.org.au/saverecvic.html
Letter to copy and paste.
To avoid copying unwanted code, paste first into a text editor such as Notepad, then into your email message.
—————————————————————————————–
The Hon. John Brumby
Premier of Victoria
Level 1, 1 Treasury Place
Melbourne VIC 3002
Dear Premier Brumby,
I am dismayed to learn that the funding status of our only state-wide reconciliation organisation, Reconciliation Victoria, remains unclear.
On 14 May, Reconciliation Victoria were informed that funding was to cease on 30 June, 2009. Yet only four days later the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs told the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee that funding for the next two years would be provided through the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, but reduced and eventually “merged” with Stolen Generations Victoria.
This ‘solution’ is unacceptable. Neither Reconciliation Victoria nor Stolen Generations Victoria were consulted about this proposed ‘merger’ and funding should not be diverted from monies set aside for services and programs to the Aboriginal community.
To take money from the Aboriginal Affairs budget would imply that Reconciliation is “blackfella business,” for Aboriginal people only. Reconciliation concerns all Victorians, and must be funded outside the Aboriginal Affairs area. Money should not be siphoned away from Aboriginal programs and services, such as Stolen Generations Victoria, which desperately need government support.
Support for Reconciliation as a matter for the whole of State Government has long been Victorian ALP policy. In a 2000 statement, the Bracks Government wrote that it viewed: “reconciliation as an ongoing responsibility of Government that needs leadership and support to ensure that the process of reconciliation and its key themes of respect, understanding and addressing the past are embraced by the whole Victorian community.”
And on 19 August, last year you signed a Statement of Intent to “Close the Gap” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy. You committed to “working collectively to systematically address the social determinants that impact on achieving health equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.
These social determinants include racism, stereotyping and cultural misunderstanding, factors which Reconciliation Victoria is uniquely positioned to address.
What has changed to make your Government now desire to close the doors on the State’s peak reconciliation body? Successive Federal and State Government reports have called for state-based reconciliation groups, and the imperative for greater understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is greater than ever.
For the past eight years, Reconciliation Victoria’s staff, council and countless volunteers have worked tirelessly for reconciliation in this state. Through organising events, as well as its referral service, school visits, education conferences, public awareness campaigns and its acknowledged role as a key player in negotiations between key stakeholders, Reconciliation Victoria plays an integral role in bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians together.
I strongly urge you to intervene to return Reconciliation Victoria’s funding to its previous three-year period. Also, the funding level must be consistent with the volume and variety of work Reconciliation Victoria undertakes.
Your personal intervention to ensure funding through the Department of Premier and Cabinet would send the clear message that you and your government are sincere about reconciliation in Victoria.
Yours sincerely,
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Thanks for making a difference,
Australian Democrats Victoria
