MEDIA

This week’s Federal Court ruling that the Wild Rivers declarations introduced by the former Queensland Labor Government were rushed and invalid was the long-awaited result many Cape York Indigenous groups had been hoping for.

I HAVE been close to the epicentre of indigenous policy for 20 years now. During this time I have dealt with premiers and prime ministers, ministers and public servants, both great and small, smart and dumb, committed and careless. I think I have seen every permutation of policy and program, and the swings of the policy pendulum from left to…

THE country around Hope Vale in far north Queensland is stubbornly equivocal. It can’t decide whether to be rainforest or desert. The mangroves and thick vegetation nod to the tropical seasonal wet, and the red soil to the dry.

CONSTITUTIONAL recognition of Aboriginal Australians should go beyond symbolism and drive a new approach to indigenous policy that is capable of transforming lives, according to the Cape York Institute led by Noel Pearson.

Queensland’s Liberal National Party will overhaul the state’s controversial Wild Rivers legislation if elected at next year’s poll, leader Campbell Newman says.

I HAVE just put down Jason Stearns’s book, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters. It tells the hidden story of what has gone on in the Democratic Republic of Congo since Laurent Kabila seized power in 1997.

UNEMPLOYED people have invisible bar codes tattooed on their foreheads. This makes them commodities in the employment services industry.

Cape York Institute director Noel Pearson has hit back at a Queensland Opposition MP who questioned the value of welfare reform trials in Indigenous communities.

When daughter, mother and grandmother received their new package, the moment brought a flood of unexpected emotions, and they sat together crying in the public square at Hope Vale.

Family First Senator Steve Fielding’s decision to withdraw support from a bill which would have overturned Queensland’s controversial Wild Rivers laws has shocked and outraged indigenous leaders.

THIS week I put forward two ideas for the constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians. The first was obvious: that any successful proposition will need to be supportable by persons such as indigenous Australian elder Lowitja O’Donoghue and former prime minister John Howard. When asked by The Australian whether she could find common ground with Howard, O’Donoghue responded: “Why not? Yes…

  I think this referendum is important in terms of moving forward with unfinished business. What is absolutely critical is that everyone is not going to get everything they want. There has to be an element of give and take in all of that. What I’m looking for is what I describe as meaningful reform. – Mark Leibler, co-chairman of…