MEDIA

Aboriginal leaders have accused the Prime Minister of being “deceitful” and duplicitous for privately encouraging them to consult the Australian public on enshrining an Indigenous voice in the constitution before publicly rejecting the proposal.

The observance of Australia Day could commence on January 25 — the eve of the proclamation of British sovereignty over the east coast of the continent — and continue into January 26. This would straddle two sovereignties: the sovereignty of the First Nations that possessed this continent since time immemorial, and the crown’s sovereignty that commenced when the British flag…

When Captain Cook made his treacherous voyage to Australia in 1770, he carried with him secret instructions from the British King, authorising him to ‘take possession of convenient situations in the country in the name of the King of Great Britain’ but to do so ‘with the consent of the natives’.

Several thousand Aboriginal people spread across former missions in South Australia, Hermannsburg in the Northern Territory and my own Guugu Yimidhirr people of Hope Vale and Kuku Yalanji of Wujal Wujal in Queensland shared an identity with Florence and Johannes Bjelke-Petersen of Kingaroy.

Constitutional reform activist Noel Pearson has told of how he was dubbed “Lord Byron” by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during discussions about establishing a national Indigenous representative body.

This month marked a quarter-century since prime minister Paul Keating spoke at Redfern Park, admitting the truth of the history of when people who lived in this country more than 600 centuries collided with those people who came from Britain and Europe. This wrought what former High Court judges William Deane and Mary Gaudron described in the Mabo case in…

Community and Indigenous leaders from Cape York gather at a major forum to shift the focus from land-claims to real job opportunities — aiming to turn future native-title successes into meaningful employment and economic development for local communities.

The newly-appointed CEO of a peak body fighting for indigenous communities in north Queensland said the Cape York Land Council wants to “take the power back from government” and flip the current funding model on its head.

Fiona Jose reflects on this year’s developments on a proposal for First Nations Voice to parliament.

Tensions over the Turnbull government’s dismissal of proposals for indigenous constitutional recognition have erupted, with a senior minister lashing out at a lawyer central in the process after being accused of putting his own job above the national interest.

“Don’t get mad, get even.” This was Paul Keating’s advice when I made what only he could so aptly describe as a “jerky move”, channelling my febrile anger at the Howard government’s “Wik 10 Point Plan” into a naive and momentary impulse to join the Labor Party.

Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott used indigenous constitutional recognition as a disposable weapon in their internecine war and had ambitions “only for themselves and not for the country”, Cape York lawyer Noel Pearson has alleged in an explosive new attack.