PM says passion still burns, but Price accuses him of grandstanding

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used last year’s Garma festival to reboot the campaign for a Voice to parliament. He pushed back against calls to delay the vote, arguing it represented a once-in-a-generation chance to reconcile the nation.

A year on, he will stand on the same red dirt with a far less ambitious reconciliation agenda. Indigenous leaders, many still scarred by the vigour of the referendum bout, worry Labor has lost its appetite for bold action to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will promise at the Garma festival that his “optimism for a better future still burns”.Credit: AAP

In a speech lacking new policy proposals or lofty ambitions, Albanese will promise to keep working with state governments on their reconciliation plans and reaffirm Labor’s commitment to a Makarrata commission designed to oversee a truth-telling process – one of the three elements of the politically contentious Uluru Statement from the Heart from which the Voice concept emerged.

Albanese, who invested huge amounts of political capital and emotion into the referendum, will promise his “optimism for a better future still burns” and that his “trust in the resilience and wisdom of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people remains”.

“We can be a country where [they] people have power over their destiny. Where your children can flourish, as they walk in two worlds. We can confront the legacy of dispossession and tackle the realities of disadvantage,” he will say, according to an advance copy of his speech, describing the gulf in living standards between black and white Australia as indefensible.

“These aspirations for a better future did not end last October [when the Voice was defeated].”

As new Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy takes over from retiring Linda Burney (both women are at Garma), the Indigenous political establishment has arguably never been further apart on its vision for the future.

On the left flank of the movement behind the Voice, Megan Davis and her Uluru Dialogues group are staying away from Garma. On the centre-right of the spectrum, politicians such as Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle will not attend.

It leaves Labor leaders and more centrist Indigenous leaders such as Dean Parkin, who led the Yes23 referendum campaign, as the major voices at the three-day event. Firebrand Coalition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has cut off any links that remained between her party and what she calls the “Aboriginal industry”.

The Northern Territory senator does not believe the future prosperity of Indigenous people should be talked about at Indigenous-themed events like Garma. She wants to upend the notion that Aboriginal people should be spoken about differently from other Australians.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price wants to upend the notion that Aboriginal people should be spoken about differently from other Australians.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“These conversations need to take place more broadly,” Price said in an interview with this masthead.

“The way the media focus on Garma – it’s a platform for Prime Minister Albanese to make it all about himself. I’m not interested in that level of grandstanding.”

Price argued the event would be dominated by east-coasters who could afford the travel and ticket cost (some of which nudge $3000) and figures she said had been “banging the same drum” on policies that engendered “separatism”.

“[There is a] crabs-in-a-bucket syndrome that has occurred for a long time within the Aboriginal industry. We have been our own enemies, and a lot of Aboriginal people know this,” she said.

Davis’ Uluru Dialogues group gathered this week for the first time since the referendum.

Davis, a constitutional lawyer who played a key role in drafting the Uluru Statement, said her group remained committed to its calls for Voice, treaty and truth-telling.

“More and more Australians are saying the referendum was a missed opportunity. Our research shows that many Australians voted No because they thought First Nations people didn’t want this change. The polling results show that the majority did,” Davis said in a statement on Thursday.

Last week, this masthead revealed the Albanese government favoured a minimalist, community-led plan to “tell the truth” about Indigenous dispossession.

The prime minister will argue that ongoing progress to close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage remains at the mercy of political uncertainty and that “changing this, building true and lasting self-determination, requires economic security”, linking it to the opportunities offered by a renewable energy boom.

“Growing global demand for renewable energy, critical minerals and rare earths represents an unprecedented opportunity for our nation and for Northern Australia,” he will say.

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