Warren Mundine to launch ‘vision’ at Conservative Political Action Conference

Indigenous entrepreneur Warren Mundine says it is time for Australian conservatives to rejoin discussions they once led on equality and rights.

Indigenous entrepreneur Warren Mundine. Picture: Adam Yip

Indigenous entrepreneur Warren Mundine says it is time for Australian conservatives to rejoin discussions they once led on equality and rights. He flagged the Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney as the forum to set out the movement’s commitments to Closing the Gap and economic prosperity for Indigenous Australians.

Mr Mundine and Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Coalition’s spokeswoman on Indigenous affairs, will speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney on Saturday. They are expected to reiterate their arguments against the Indigenous voice to parliament, as fellow speakers, including Tony Abbott and Pauline Hanson, are predicted to do.

However, Mr Mundine told The Weekend Australian his speech was mainly his vision for building a conservative Australian movement that was not tied to any party. About 2000 people were due to attend the conference. Ticket prices ranged from $119 to $7000 for a platinum package that included access to speakers at a VIP welcome cocktail event on Friday night. “It’s about the battle of ideas, free markets, free speech, freedom of religion, small government and small taxation,” he said.

The former chairman of Mr Abbott’s Indigenous Advisory Council said conservative commitments to outcomes was important, “especially for me, as an Indigenous person”. “We need to talk about Closing the Gap and holding bureaucrats and governments across the country to account for all the billions of dollars they spend on Closing the Gap, and make sure they are getting clear outcomes,” he said.

Mr Mundine said that on this point and some others, he and Indigenous proponents of the voice to parliament agreed.

“The good news is that we are not far apart on some of these issues,” Mr Mundine said.

“And the Australian public too. They want recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution as I do. The Closing the Gap people want practical outcomes like I do.

“We may differ on how we get there and how we do that but I will always open the door to conversations because we can have negotiations about how that happens. For example, how do we get economic prosperity for Aboriginal people? How do we get them living longer lives, better educated?”

Mr Mundine said these questions were the right ones for conservatives in Australia, and said this was in line with a history of post-war reforms by conservative Australian politicians beginning with the Menzies government’s 1962 Commonwealth Electoral Act granting all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections.

“Conservatives were the people who pushed for rights and equality, and now we are going to get back into that space,” Mr Mundine said. “We want to be part of those discussions again.”

Mr Mundine has argued for the merits of local and regional Indigenous voices to give traditional owner groups a say on their own languages, cultures, heritage, land and sea. However, he does not believe a national voice could properly represent those groups.

In an address to Torres Strait Islands residents this month, Cape York Partnerships founder Noel Pearson described how local and regional voices could work there. He outlined a scenario in which the 16 islands of the Torres Strait each chose one voice and the Torres Straits as a whole selected a regional voice from those people.