Anthony Albanese must show us the courage of his compassion

Voice architect Professor Marcia Langton. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

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Australians voted against a future defined by Trump-style economic policies and the threats posed by his tariffs. Australians checked their superannuation accounts and said no.

They voted for a stable future and the safety net of Medicare and workers’ rights. Did they vote against the Trump-style culture wars policies?

I am not so sure. I would like to think they did, but if the best we can hope for from the victory speeches by Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese on election night are warm acknowledgements of the traditional owners, we should expect more extreme caution from an Albanese government in tackling the acute disadvantages facing a large proportion of Indigenous peoples.

Big-picture innovation in Indigenous affairs will be curtailed by a continuing fear of alienating the majority who voted “no” in 2023 to constitutional recognition and the voice.

The politics of racialised resentment that Pauline Hanson initiated with her irrational complaints about any improvement for us resulting in something being taken away from white Australians was viciously amplified by Peter Dutton and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. This is the stuff of MAGA insanity and it has infected our political system. I want to see great courage from our Prime Minister and his cabinet to stare down those who think it is OK to allow the horrific disadvantages faced by far too many Indigenous Australians: sky-rocketing incarceration and child removal rates, unemployment, food insecurity and stubbornly high chronic disease.

Elevating our aspirations for economic development and accelerated education and employment supports to shift people towards equity sooner, not 30 years from now – that’s what I would like Albanese to lead.

And I know this is the majority Indigenous view because for 15 years I asked people what they wanted. Primarily they wanted a voice to say all of this, and they want to be able to have real agency in these policy issues.

They do not want to be the mendicants at the bottom of a pyramid of bureaucrats. To play along with the traditional Indigenous affairs approach is to doom the larger part of our population to lives of misery. Albanese is a compassionate person and I know this is not what he wants.

Can he lead his government out of the quagmire of the referendum loss?

This is the question most Indigenous people are asking.