VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE: How black Australia rejected Tony Abbott

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott… he wants to be the ‘Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs’.

TONY Abbott is the new ‘Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs’. One problem: no-one bothered to ask Aboriginal people if they even wanted him. It turns out they didn’t, if the most in-depth analysis of Aboriginal voting intentions ever conducted is anything to go by. CHRIS GRAHAM explains.

Election 2013: The daze of our lives

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd… or is that Prime Minister Abbott and Opposition leader Kevin Rudd.

Memory is always selective, particularly when it comes to politics. I’ll demonstrate.

I can only recall five decent things John Howard did during his time as Prime Minister.

1. The gun buyback.

2. The Do Not Call register.

3. That ‘delivery’ in Pakistan during an impromptu game of cricket with Australian soldiers.

4. His subsequent attempt to catch the ball and bowl another one.

5. Losing his seat in 2007.

You can lead a nation to slaughter, but you can’t make it think

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anzac Day ceremony, to coincide with NAIDOC Week 2013 in Sydney.

POLITICS is all about the timing, so this column might initially seem a little out of place. But stick with me.

Labor and Liberal wasted millions

Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin poses with Aboriginal dancers from Arnhem Land Benny (left) and David Wilford in Canberra on April 3, 2009 at the ceremony to endorse the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Northern Territory Senator Nigel Scullion last month accused Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin of wasting $150 million on Labor’s Alice Springs Transformation Plan, slamming her for letting down residents of the town camps. But CHIRS GRAHAM* reports that both sides of politics have let town campers down.

Frenetic activity, bugger-all progress: the art of bureaucracy

Old Timers town camp, on the edge of Alice Springs.

THERE are at least two truisms in Aboriginal affairs. The first is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I’ll come back to that one. The second is that the road through Aboriginal affairs, while often paved with good intentions, is sometimes paved with bad ones.

Grog is a killer, but it’s far less dangerous than politics

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin… the Close the Gap strategy is failing, but it’s the politics behind it that’s doing the real damage.

THERE’S no question that grog kills a lot of Aboriginal people, and destroys a lot of Aboriginal lives. It’s a major problem in many communities around the country.

But for all the damage grog can do to an Aboriginal community, it’s nothing compared to the damage wrought by politics.

Who put the con back in consultation?

NATIONAL: There are at least three reasons why the federal government’s consultations on the Stronger Futures legislation should be condemned. Firstly, the government never really intended to consult in any meaningful way with Aboriginal people. Secondly, when they were shamed into doing it, the consultation process they delivered was a sham. And finally, Aboriginal people never needed to be consulted in the first place – they’d already made their views known on the NT intervention at two federal elections, and in terms that were unmistakeable. CHRIS GRAHAM analyses the farce that was the Australian democratic process on the passage of the Stronger Futures laws.

‘White trash mixed with black blood’: The truth about Toomelah

THE tiny NSW town of Toomelah has made headlines, and once again it’s because of poverty and community dysfunction. But why has a community that’s received so much attention over the years failed to thrive? CHRIS GRAHAM takes an in-depth look at the town, and a bad government policy that, above all others, has set the community back decades.

DREAM STREET: Macklin’s latest address on Aboriginal housing

A humpy in the remote Central Australian community of Irrultja. Rather than provide proper housing, Macklin’s government installed power meters on the edge of the humpy camp.

A REPORT this morning in The Australian says: “Australia has ‘turned a corner’ on Aboriginal housing following the construction of more than 600 homes in communities throughout the Northern Territory, with plans to have 1000 built by June next year.

“I am optimistic that we have turned the corner in Australia. We are building homes to last.”

So said Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, at the World Indigenous Housing Conference in Canada overnight. I’m not sure what corner Macklin thinks she’s turned, but if she’s talking about the intersection of “Fantasy Avenue” and “Spin Boulevard”, then she might have a point.

Making black policy: The HOP, skip and dump

Former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough… his plan to transform home ownership on Indigenous lands has been a policy failure.

EVERY now and then, a story comes along that sums up Aboriginal affairs perfectly. The floundering Home Ownership on Indigenous Lands program – and in particular the media’s coverage of it – is one such yarn, writes CHRIS GRAHAM.