OPINION
With the referendum done and dusted, the activist groups behind it have dropped their masks of “unity” and “love”, and revealed their true, ugly face. Australians can heave a sigh of relief that we dodged the bullet of this lot.
After spending a week throwing an epic sulking fit, an unidentifed “group of indigenous leaders” have released an unsigned, anonymous Jeremiad that, if nothing else, makes clear what Australians managed to avoid by voting “No”.
Besides the expected name-calling and arrogant insults, the Yes group have also laid bare the truth that they spent months flatly denying. Having spent the entire referendum campaign denying that their real aim was a land grab and “treaty”, the Yes group have turned around and renewed their demands for both.
And their intention to act as if the referendum never happened.
The leaders of the Yes campaign have flagged their intention to establish an Indigenous voice despite the referendum’s defeat, as a week of silence ended with accusations of racism, dishonesty and ignorance towards No voters […]
In a sign the Indigenous affairs debate will increasingly turn to treaty in the wake of the referendum defeat, the statement addressed the “occupation” of an Australia that belonged to Indigenous people.
Australians need to understand beyond any doubt what the Yes campaign’s true aim was all along, as exposed by this sulking “statement”: a land grab far exceeding anything seen before in “native title” claims, which have already scarfed up 50% of Australia’s land mass.
“We do not for one moment accept that this country is not ours,” the statement said. “It is the legitimacy of the non-Indigenous occupation in this country that requires recognition, not the other way around. Our sovereignty has never been ceded.”
This is a total and complete claim to Australia. All of it.
We see now, the naked greed behind the Uluru Statement’s assertion (which they tried to hide away in the “secret” 26 pages that they long denied even existed) that the Australian nation is “illegal”.
It’s of paramount importance, too, that Australians understand exactly what “Our sovereignty has never been ceded” means.
Sovereignty is the sole, supreme, and indivisible law-making power over a defined territory. This is not an empty buzzword. It’s a clearly defined tenet of international law. Australians ignore Aboriginal activists’ claim to sovereignty at their peril.
For a mob who spend so much time accusing everyone else of “misinformation”, this lot are dab hands at telling obvious lies.
The referendum’s defeat, the statement said, meant Indigenous people remained excluded from the Constitution as originally intended by the nation’s founding fathers.
That was never the intention, and it is not and has never been true. There is simply no way around this: they are lying.
And yet they have the cheek to say this:
“The scale of deliberate disinformation and misinformation was unprecedented, and it proliferated, unchecked, on social media, repeated in mainstream media and unleashed a tsunami of racism against our people,” they said. “We know that the mainstream media failed our people, favouring ‘a false sense of balance’ over facts.”
Whoever these people are, they are shameless.
While the authors of the statement were not listed, the document was distributed by the public relations agency that had been working with the Uluru Dialogue throughout the Yes campaign.
It’s understood that while up to 60 Indigenous leaders were involved in the drafting of the document, not all those involved endorsed the final statement.
Sean Gordon, a co-convenor of the Liberals for Yes campaign, said the statement was written by a collective of leaders as a response to all Indigenous people. He said signatures were deliberately not attached so as to allow Indigenous people to share and take ownership of the statement.
Or so as not to be held accountable for their hateful, radical vitriol.
Well might Uluru Dialogue member and Griffith Law School lecturer Eddie Synot sneer that “reconciliation is dead”.
Because reconciliation is, after all, a coming together.
But, while non-Aboriginal Australians have spent decades apologising, fawning over a violent Stone Age culture, handing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars over, year on year, in return they’ve been met with contempt, vitriol, and ever-increasing demands for more, more and more.
The sulking, tantrum-throwing reaction by the troughers of the Aboriginal Industry to a democratic vote has stretched Australians’ generosity and willingness to be spat at to breaking-point.
Shove your Welcome to Country where it belongs. We’re done.