Andrew Bolt: Voice argument treats Aborigines as helpless children

The latest crazy reason we’re given for backing Labor’s Voice is an insult to Aborigines.

The latest racist reason we’re given for backing Labor’s Voice are the trashed homes of the Martu people.

What an insult to Aborigines.

A journalist at The Australian last week reported on the Martu, about 1000 people living on lands nearly twice the size of Tasmania, in Western Australia’s far northwest. (About another 1000 Martu live off-country.)

She was shocked. Half their houses were unliveable: “An audit … counted a total of 80 homes, of which 40 were deemed to be ‘beyond economic repair’.”

But never fear! “This month, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said the Indigenous Voice to Parliament could give practical advice on improving housing …”

Martu workers at a project working on improving housing conditions.

Hang on. So to fix Martu homes we must create an Aboriginal-only parliament in our Constitution to force the federal parliament to act?

That’s crazy. Let’s start with a question: How could have half the 80 houses built for the Martu become unliveable?

A photograph in The Australian of one bathroom gives a clue. It is disgustingly filthy. Tap handles have gone walkies.

Another clue: “Residents demonstrated how snakes enter through gaps in the floors or holes where bathroom tiles had fallen away.”

Half the houses were deemed to be ‘beyond economic repair’.

What? If I had that hole in the floor, I’d fix it. I wouldn’t wait to show it to an audit team. I’d also clean my shower and basin.

Even stranger about all those “unliveable” homes is that there’s been so much money to fix them.

The West Australian government has already given the Martu’s Jamukurnu-Yapalikurnu Aboriginal Corporation $5.9m in recent years to repair 57 properties. That’s more than $100,000 each.

So how could half the Martu’s 80 homes still be unliveable? And what are residents doing to fix their own homes?

Another Martu organisation, Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa, earns more than $10m a year, thanks to charities, government agencies and businesses, including BHP.

Its annual report says it’s spent a lot of that money and time teaching Martu their traditional culture and language, including “teaching the children to collect bush food, visiting rockholes, tracking threatened species and sharing and telling of stories”.

Excuse me, but wouldn’t teaching them to use a hammer and nails, drills and saws be more useful? Is fixing their own homes something to be left for whites to do, with a Voice to nag them?

This is treating Aborigines as helpless children, always looking to guilty whites to fix things. How racist. How hopeless.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Voice argument treats Aborigines as helpless children