New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has been criticized for pressing ahead with plans for a treaty with Indigenous Australians despite Voice’s defeat last year.
Warren Mundine, an Indigenous leader who opposed the referendum, urged Minns to “stop wasting money”, saying a treaty would not solve problems within the Aboriginal community.
“It’s not going to…help anyone, it’s just a total waste of time,” he said. “Stop these stupid, stupid conversations.”
Mundine, who started out as a Labor politician before running for a seat as a Liberal, said New South Wales should “start looking at the crime rate”.
“Let’s start getting educated, let’s start getting jobs and start addressing the government issues that need to be addressed,” he said. News from heaven.
On Friday, the state government appointed three commissioners to undertake a year-long “listening tour” across the state.
This tour will look at whether the state’s indigenous communities want a treaty and how it should work if they want one.
But Mundine dismissed the plan as a waste of money and time.
New South Wales has been criticized for pressing ahead with its plans for a treaty with indigenous Australians despite the loss of the Voice to Parliament referendum last year.
“If you take their record so far, you see that in the Voice campaign they did a ‘listening’ tour and didn’t listen because they got whipped in that vote,” he said.
‘My advice to Chris (Minns) is, come on buddy, stop wasting money. We know what the problems are within Aboriginal communities.
‘We know how to fix things and make them better. Putting on these talk festivals is just a waste of time, and even if it goes ahead, it has to be a vote for the people of New South Wales.”
New South Wales is following other states in seeking a treaty.
Victoria was the first to introduce legal frameworks for an Indigenous treaty in 2018, with Queensland, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory also looking to establish their own treaties.
South Australia legislated for a State Voice in March 2023.
But Mundine said state treaties would not help solve the problems experienced by indigenous communities.
New South Wales is following other states in seeking a treaty
“None of them (the states that sign treaties) are going to fix anything, I can say that now,” he said.
“All it… is going to do is fix the pockets of the people who are sitting in those communities.”
He noted that in the First Nations Voice election to the South Australian Parliament in March, more than 90 per cent of eligible Indigenous voters did not vote.
‘We saw in South Australia only… 10 per cent of Aboriginal people actually voted in that election, 90 per cent didn’t. That’s a big… “no, we don’t want this,” he said.
In Victoria, the First People’s Assembly held elections in 2019 and 2023.
But the Assembly, which is supposed to negotiate a treaty with the state government, has had very low voter turnout: Only 7 percent of eligible voters did so in 2019 and 10 percent in 2023.
Mundine told Sky News presenter Danica di Giorgio there was no point in trying to find other ways to get a treaty after the referendum was so comprehensively defeated, with 60.06 per cent of people voting against it.
‘This divides the community. The community has already voted. They voted for the Voice and it was quite clear that the treaty was in that Voice,’ he said.
“They made it very clear: ‘No, we want to unite as a nation, we don’t want to divide.’
The three people appointed to work on the New South Wales treaty process are former senator Aden Ridgeway, academic Dr Todd Fernando and Naomi Moran, editor of the Koori Mail newspaper.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Chris Minns for comment.