By Cliff Reece

Public funding is not resulting in “aboriginal people living longer lives and getting educated and in jobs and housing.”
Nothing much of value was achieved by Prime Minister Albanese’s disastrous attempt to corrupt our Constitution by inserting a race-based and divisive ‘Voice’.
If it had been successful, it would most certainly have led to the disruption of government processes and huge additional taxpayers’ costs.
However, what it did achieve is to open our eyes to the massive waste of taxpayers’ money that has been allocated to indigenous groups but clearly never made its way to the people who most need it.
Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders still live in abject poverty despite all the billions of dollars allocated to Indigenous groups, so the question we all need to have answered is: “what happened to all that money?”
Australian taxpayers deserve to know the answer!
Leading ‘No’ advocate, Warren Mundine, told 2GB radio that he and many other indigenous people certainly agree. He said that public funding was not resulting in “aboriginal people living longer lives, getting educated, and in jobs and housing.”
He went on to say, “We know one of the many things that help people get out of poverty, move into the middle class, and build a better future for their kids and grandkids is homeownership but in many Indigenous communities they aren’t allowed to own their own properties on their land because it’s under collective inalienable title.”
“They also can’t invest in these communities to set up businesses and get people jobs,” he said.
Mr Mundine added that large Indigenous-linked trust accounts contained several billions of dollars, yet connected communities were living in poverty.
“The only people that seem to be doing alright are the top executive levels of these trusts,” he said.
Further, he stated that it was “bizarre” that proceeds from community-owned land had to be diverted through these trust accounts.”
Mr Mundine’s comments came after 61% of Australian voters rejected the Voice on 14 October.
Interestingly, an estimated 40% of Indigenous people voted ‘No’.
During the campaign, Mr Mundine said Australians wanted to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution but did not see the Voice as a “practical way forward.”

Country Liberal Party (CLP) Senator for the Northern Territory – and leading ‘No’ campaigner – Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, totally agrees.
She believes there are already plenty of indigenous voices including 11 within federal parliament itself, but no-one within the current government in Canberra is listening or acting decisively to fix the problems.
It’s all a charade based on virtue-signalling by Albanese and his comrades within the Labor-Greens coalition. They want to look like they are doing something positive.
Senator Price argues that the ‘Gap’ exists between marginalized communities of all races within Australia rather than just between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The race factor should be eliminated.
“We need to focus our efforts on where our marginalized people exist, and we need to listen to their voices and act appropriately,” she said.
Leader of the LNP Coalition, Peter Dutton, has promised a full enquiry into where the billions of dollars of past expenditure has gone. He wants to see what has been actually achieved with all that money.
Hopefully, if taxpayers’ money is found to have been illegally misappropriated to fund left-wing political causes, criminal charges should be laid and wrongdoers sent to prison – hopefully for a very long time!
We can rest assured that any form of enquiry will be vehemently opposed by the ‘lefties’ among the Indigenous so-called ‘elites’.
And they will undoubtedly be supported by their lackeys within the Labor-Greens government led by our Prime Minister – and instigator of the failed ‘yes’ campaign – Tony Albanese.
Many thanks to Isabella Rayner from The Epoch Timesfor her input to this article.
Cliff Reece is the retired Principal of consulting firm Crisis Risk Management, former Executive Director/CEO of the National Safety Council of Australia (NSW/ACT) and divisional manager with KPMG.
Originally published at: https://richardsonpost.com/cliff-reece/33591/the-voice-was-a-charade/
“We need to focus our efforts on where our marginalized people exist, and we need to listen to their voices and act appropriately,” she said.
I greatly admire and support Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and view with renewed hope the benefits this country will enjoy under her expanding influence. However, as the saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” and there seems a danger that Jacinta could pick up the same Canberra disease that got us to the very doors of constitutional change “hospital”.
Why is it that everyone caught up in the “marginalized and disadvantaged” discussion always makes the negative the starting point of their positive solution? I helped the No campaign for the two weeks of pre-polling and the most prevalent theme was “they” get this, now “they” want that, if “they” got a job etc etc.
Back in pre-referendum September the Daily Mail got permission to send a reporting team into the closed 103,000sq km area of South Australia native title Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) community.
The prime reason for the interest was to report on the Aboriginal AFL grand final however the opportunity to be topical, given the pending referendum, was soon realised and the reports were immediately expanded to highlight the level of unemployment, truancy and life struggle the population faced. This was a twin edged sword however given that the APY is a closed aboriginal community and therefore the inhabitants themselves are supposedly more in control of their destiny than most. As Warren highlighted “large Indigenous-linked trust accounts contained several billions of dollars, yet connected communities were living in poverty.”
The DM reports piqued my interest, and I ended up at the Australian Bureau of Statistics site for the APY community 2022 Census which included a section on the “Level of highest educational attainment” based on place of usual residence. Among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population that usually reside in APY are 14 with a bachelor degree or higher, 11 with an advanced diploma, and 43 with a Cert III or IV.
Amongst all that disadvantage some 68 individuals, no doubt supported by their loving (extended) families and clans, seized their opportunity, and improved themselves. These “heroes” and their families should be promoted as the positive inspiration for what can be achieved. They should be the starting point that forms the challenge to their cohort and puts the responsibility to take personal action to correct, rather than just voice, the problems.