Indigenous Australians Mourn Failure of Referendum to Recognize Groups in Constitution

Yes supporters react

How easily we forget that the LNP wanted to get rid us the UNAHRC. We signed the document and then pretended we didn’t. Abbott even promised to amend the Racial Discrimination Act when Andrew Bolt was found guilty. By “amend he meant to get rid of its teeth”. When Asylum Seekers asked for Human Rights the LNP said No “You’re not asylum seekers you’re “illegals”. Indigenous Australians asked after 5 years of hard work to ask and the LNP simply said No without listening to why? As a Nation we criticize but proudly stand with China, Russia, Nth Korea, and Israel and are only too happy to give NZ, Canada, Taiwan South Africa  Norway and other colonial nations who do give their Indigenous peoples a Voice the finger

“The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was endorsed by Australia in 2009, recognizes that Indigenous people have the right to participate in decision-making in matters that would affect their rights, and that governments should consult with Indigenous people before making laws that affect them,” said Daniela Gavshon, the group’s Australia director. “It is a blight on Australia’s history that successive governments of various political persuasions have failed to uphold the rights of First Nations people.”

“It is a blight on Australia’s history that successive governments of various political persuasions have failed to uphold the rights of First Nations people,” said the Australia director for Human Rights Watch.

Communities with large populations of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders voted overwhelmingly for the referendum, but nationwide, 60.4% of voters sided with a “No” campaign that relied on misleading the public about how the new policies would be implemented.

“That people who have only been on this continent for 235 years would refuse to recognize those whose home this land has been for 60,000 and more years, is beyond reason,”

“If only people down south had seen what Aboriginal people in the bush were voting for, then maybe we would have had a different result,” Marion Scrymgour, a member of Parliament for the Labor Party who represents Lingiari in the Northern Territory, toldThe Guardian. Forty percent of Scrymour’s constitutents are Indigenous, and 74% of the people living in the division’s most remote areas voted for the “Voice” referendum.

Source: Indigenous Australians Mourn Failure of Referendum to Recognize Groups in Constitution