Opinion
The Graborigines are scrambling with both hands outstretched, in Victoria. Which is hardly surprising in a state where “First Peoples” activists are often as lily-white and blue-eyed as a Reichskommissar could wish for. Because this is also a state where the gibsmedat flows deeper than the mighty old man Murray.
A state were, despite its population voting overwhelmingly otherwise, the government is carrying on as if the “Voice” referendum had passed. The “Voice” was explicitly touted as the opening act of a triumvirate of “Voice, Treaty, Truth”. Logically, one might have thought, if the first failed, then the rest would be off the table.
That, though, is reckoning without the elitist mendacity of Labor governments.
Victorian Labor is moving to share the wealth of renewable projects and other power infrastructure with the state’s Aboriginal peoples, as the state’s energy minister claims current gas and resources laws are making “land injustice” worse.
In her evidence to the Yoorrook Justice Commission, Victorian Energy and Resources Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said it was “horrifying” that Indigenous people had been shut out of independence and prosperity.
The truth-telling body heard that Victoria had earned a total of $149.4m in royalties for the extraction of gold, $885.6m for coal and $79.5m for sandstone and gravel between 2010 and 2023, as commissioners pressed the minister on the steps the government had taken to “return” a proportion of wealth.
“Return” it, to whom? It already belongs to the Victorian people — all of them, regardless of race.
A key objection to the “Voice” was that it would establish a de facto apartheid regime in Australia. That seems to be exactly what Victorians are getting.
“We have to acknowledge that … traditional First Peoples cannot possibly be able to secure what self-determination means for them without having an embedded and reliable source of revenue for themselves.
“Either through processes that I hope to deploy through renewable energy processes, what the future might be in mineral extractions, and also ultimately through treaty.”
This is both utter nonsense, and a disturbing exercise in political obfuscation. Sovereign nations cannot make treaties with anyone other than other sovereign powers. It is constitutionally ludicrous for a sub-national entity to make a treaty with its own citizens. But what is hidden in D’Ambrosio’s obscurantist waffle is that, firstly, she clearly regards “First Peoples” as a separate, sovereign group in Victoria, and secondly, that she wants them to be funded by the rest of the state’s citizens.
A literally mendicant state within a state.
And, for anyone who still denies that “climate change” is about wealth-redistribution, first, last and always:
Ms D’Ambrosio said long-lasting streams of revenue, such as profits derived from renewable energy projects, needed to be codified to properly shift power to traditional owners.
No fatuous leftist virtue-signalling about Aborigines is, of course, complete without a dollop of oogabooga play-acting.
“As a result of that dispossession, the state has upset important natural and spiritual balances in the relationship between First Peoples and Country.”
The Australian
What does this nonsense even mean? When a Christian family in Tasmania refused to pay land taxes, claiming the land belonged to God, they were laughed out of court and stripped of their land.
Yet, make equally silly magical claims with a bit of blackface sprinkled on, and the government will fawn all over you.