Andrew Bolt: Australia’s Voice date marks our Apartheid Day

How could Anthony Albanese sell us Noel Pearson’s Voice, a plan to forever divide us by race and guarantee that generations more of Aboriginal children live in poverty?

As Anthony Albanese told us the date of the vote for his Voice – October 14, Apartheid Day – I kept thinking of Noel Pearson.

Prime Minister,

just look how your guru has already blown millions of dollars meant for poor Aborigines up at Cape York!

How could you now sell us Pearson’s Voice, a plan that will forever divide us by race and guarantee that generations more of Aboriginal children live in poverty?

Yet there was Albanese on Wednesday, crying: “Vote yes!”

Yes, to the Voice, this advisory parliament, just for Aborigines, cemented into our Constitution.

Vote yes on October 14, because “On that day every Australian will have a once in a generation chance

to bring our country together and … get better results for indigenous Australians.’’

But all I could think was Pearson.

You see, no one has done more than Pearson to create this Voice. He co-wrote and signed the Uluru Statement calling for it, convinced naive conservatives such as the Liberals’ Julian Leeser to back it, and was on the government’s Indigenous Voice Co-design group which designed it.

No one has done more than Indigenous leader Noel Pearson to create this Voice. Picture: Glenn Hampson

But, second, no one has done more to prove – oops – the Voice is useless, divisive and based on false hopes.

Indeed, the Lutheran-raised Pearson was once dead against dividing us by race like this.

“Racial categorisations dehumanise us all,” thundered Pearson a decade ago.

“We are each individuals and we should be judged as individuals … Race should not matter.”

Exactly my argument today.

But Pearson at least is embarrassed enough to now claim he’s not arguing for racism in our Constitution, even though that’s exactly what we’re voting on – to change the Constitution to add an “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”.

No, says Pearson now: “This is not about race … but indigeneity”.

But which of us who were born here – who have buried our parents in this soil – aren’t indigenous, too?

Oh, yeah, Pearson once admitted at a folk festival: “Even Andrew Bolt was becoming indigenous, because the bones of his ancestors are now becoming part of the territory.”

He’s right again. So, Noel, if we’re all becoming Indigenous Australians – Aboriginal, white, Asian and African, increasingly blended – why do we need this Voice?

But go to Albanese’s second argument – that we need the Voice

to make better decisions when spending the more than $30bn a year on Aborigines.

Again I’m thinking: Noel Pearson.

I doubt any Aboriginal leader had more politicians listen to them more often, and obey them more often.

Pearson founded The Cape York Partnership, an organisation promoting the economic and social development of 3700 Aborigines in the northern tip of Queensland, and what good has that done?

Warren Entsch, the federal MP whose electorate includes the towns where Pearson’s Cape York Partnership works, summed it up in a speech to Parliament in May.

“Over decades, Noel Pearson and his organisations and policy initiatives have exerted growing influence over governments of all persuasions …

“And for what? Many of these remote communities that Noel has used as policy experiments remain dysfunctional …

“With great difficulty, I’ve been able to ascertain that since 2005, Noel has accumulated something like $550m of Australian taxpayers’ money – and that’s only what I’ve been able to find – and subsidies for his entities and policy initiatives. The vast majority of these have been in remote communities in Cape York …

“I ask the question: is there value for money? In my view, it’s always been a ruse.”

Wow: $550m? If, say, $350m of that had gone straight to the Aborigines of Cape York, every man, woman and child would have got almost $100,000, but where’s it all gone?

The 2021 census results for violence-plagued Aurukun, the biggest of the four towns in

Pearson’s partnership, just show a welfare ghetto.

How could Anthony Albanese sell us Noel Pearson’s Voice? Picture: Gaye Gerard

Of the people there, 89 per cent Aboriginal, a third dropped out of school before year 10, and not one owns their own home.

Just 31 per cent – including the whites – are in the workforce, yet unemployment is still 17 per cent.

A quarter of those in jobs are “community and personal service workers”, and the average family income is less than half the Queensland average.

And that’s after politicians did everything the Voice is meant to make them do – listen to local Aboriginal leaders such as Pearson, and do as they say. And treat Aborigines as a race apart, living apart.

It’s been tried, people. See what Pearson, Father of the Voice, has achieved, and vote No. Our future must be together, not apart.