‘No evidence earlier Indigenous councils didn’t work’, says Marcia Langton

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton said there was ‘no evidence’ to show previous bodies aimed at improving Indigenous outcomes did not work.

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton in Canberra on Thursday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton said there was “no evidence” to show previous bodies aimed at improving Indigenous outcomes did not work, and past consultative groups and councils had made “dogged” recommen­dations to improve outcomes that had not been taken up by former governments.

Speaking at Anthony Albanese’s announcement of the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment to the Indigenous voice, Professor Langton said: “There have been many advisory groups and consultative groups and councils.

“There’s no evidence to suggest that they didn’t work.

“I have been around since the very first one, and indeed they did make a very positive difference.

“But what has happened in most cases is that with each election, a party will use as its appeal to voters that it will get rid of X, Y, Z body because ‘It’s clear that it’s not working’.”

In a veiled swipe at No campaigners Warren Mundine and Country Liberal Party senator ­Jacinta Price, Professor Langton, a member of the referendum working group, warned against amplifying the views of critics who were not involved in the design process for the voice.

“Before you all rush off and recite what was said yesterday by a person who’s never participated in any of these processes, I’d like you to look for the evidence for such assertions,” she said.

Professor Langton said she and many of the Indigenous leaders present at the announcement had been involved in royal commissions and inquiries, including those into deaths in custody and the removal of Indigenous children from their families.

“In each case, we have doggedly recommended changes to stop the deaths, the incarceration, the early deaths and the miserable lives and it is so infrequently that our recommendations are adopted,” she said.

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which handed down its findings in April 1991, made more than 300 recommendations but a review commissioned by the former ­Coalition government in 2017 found only 64 per cent of them had been fully implemented.

Mr Mundine has said the voice represents the fifth attempt in five decades to create a national Indigenous body, starting with the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee established by the Whitlam government in 1973.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was established by the Hawke government in 1990 to advise government and provide oversight of Indigenous programs.

It took the place of the Aboriginal Development Commission created by the Fraser government in 1980.

ATSIC, however, was embroiled in controversy and was disbanded by the Howard government following a series of controversies, including a series of historical rape allegations made against its former chair Geoff Clark.