Yes campaigner Noel Pearson’s gentle slapdown of Andrew Bolt and John Howard

Yes campaigner Noel Pearson says a Voice to Parliament would mean Indigenous communities could no longer pass the buck or blame historical wrongs for their plight.

Indigenous Australians need to take responsibility for the problems in their communities, and tackle crime and education issues with a tough, no-nonsense, back-to-basics approach, the nation’s leading Voice campaigner has declared.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Noel Pearson said that perhaps the ultimate benefit of the Voice was that Indigenous communities would no longer be able to pass the buck or blame historical wrongs for their plight.

Referencing the massive gulf in crime levels, employment and education between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians — not least in his own area of Cape York — Mr Pearson said it wasn’t acceptable to simply blame colonisation or racism.

“History might have caused it, the causal story might be the history, but what’s driving it now are the behaviours of certain people that need to be confronted,” he said.

“Having an explanation for why something is a problem is not a solution.”

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, who has been at the forefront of the Voice’s Yes campaign. Picture Glenn Hampson

Likewise, Mr Pearson said there should be zero tolerance for crime and anti-social behaviour, and his team had seen transformative outcomes by taking young people out of their often isolated or insular communities and putting them to work all over the country.

“We think the solution is getting young people who are starting to get in trouble come out into the heart of Australia,” he said.

“Put them on an adventure, get them out of the social environment.

“The best way of breaking those behaviours is put them in a new social environment. We’ve seen it work.”

This included such things as youngsters doing stints on fishing boats, in abattoirs and on farms.

“They’ve got a regimen, you know, they get up at 5am, they go off to work and they’ve got a new social network with their fellow workers.”

Columnist Andrew Bolt.

Former PM John Howard. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian.

Mr Pearson is a diehard advocate of back-to-basics teaching, known as direct instruction, to boost literacy and numeracy rates — for which, ironically, he has often been targeted by progressives who favour a more flexible approach.

“This is stuff that conservatives should support,” he said.

Mr Pearson said the Voice would be a practical instrument to amplify programs such as these that are working, while eliminating bureaucratic waste and the duplication of resources.

On this, he refused to get drawn into a slanging match with columnist Andrew Bolt, who devoted his piece in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph to the Aboriginal leader and questioned the effectiveness of his efforts in Cape York.

Citing a speech made by MP Warren Entsch in May that claimed Mr Pearson’s various organisations had received $550 million in government funding since 2005, Mr Bolt hypothesised that if $350 million of this went to Cape York “every man, woman and child would have got almost $100,000”.

Mr Pearson would address the matter only by alluding to his former friend John Howard’s cry that No campaigners should “maintain the rage”.

“Mr Bolt, like Mr Howard, believes the No side must fuel their campaign with rage,” he said.

“On the Yes side, we are taking a different path, we will fuel or campaign with love.”

Originally published as Yes campaigner Noel Pearson’s gentle slapdown of Andrew Bolt and John Howard