Give National Congress of Australia's First Peoples 'fair go': Lowitja O'Donoghue

ABORIGINAL leader Lowitja O'Donoghue has called on members of the new National Congress of Australia's First Peoples to rebuild unity among indigenous people.

ABORIGINAL leader Lowitja O'Donoghue has called on members of the new National Congress of Australia's First Peoples to rebuild unity among indigenous people and for "naysayers" to give the organisation a fair go.

As the keynote speaker at the opening ceremony of the National Congress yesterday, Ms O'Donoghue said she was comfortable with it as a "working model" but that it should and would be improved over time.

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton has described the congress as an unrepresentative "club" without political legitimacy. And former ALP national president Warren Mundine has labelled it a waste of time that would do nothing to improve Aboriginal lives.

Ms O'Donoghue, the inaugural chairwoman of the Congress's predecessor ATSIC, said the reasons why the new advocacy body should succeed far outweighed the reasons why it could fail.

She issued a direct challenge to the "tide of naysayers who are standing by, waiting and even hoping for this organisation to fail".

"Would you have the courage to submit to the same rigorous process as those involved in the National Congress?" she said. "How would you fare? And do you, too, have what it takes to be a builder, not a wrecker?"

The National Congress is a private company, independent of government, and set up to advocate for indigenous people's rights. It is headed by a board of eight directors, including two co-chairpersons, which is overseen by an Ethics Council designed to provide advice on standards and guidelines. The congress yesterday announced the election of its first six directors by the 120 delegates to its inaugural meeting.

Ms O'Donoghue said the new body could learn a lot from the experiences of the much-criticised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.