Q: “Do you believe colonisation continues to have an impact on some Indigenous Australians?”
A positive impact, absolutely. I mean, now we have running water, readily available food. Everything that my grandfather had when he was growing up, when he first met white fellas in his adolescence, we now have. Otherwise he would have had to live off the land… Aboriginal Australians, many of us, have the same opportunities as all other Australians and probably have one of the greatest systems in the world – in terms of a democratic structure – in comparison to other countries. It is why migrants flock to Australia, to call Australia home, because the opportunity exists for all Australians. But if we keep telling Aboriginal people they are victims, we are effectively removing their agency and giving them the expectation that someone else is responsible for their lives. That is the worst possible thing you can do to any human being, to tell them that they are a victim without agency. And that is what I refuse to do. 
– Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Jacinta Price at the National Press Club today
It is worth noting… that these minority groups, in reaction, perhaps, to the enforced hardships of their present situation, or to historical circumstances, frequently tend to magnify unduly characteristics proper to their own people. They even rate them above those human values which are common to all mankind, as though the good of the entire human family should subserve the interests of their own particular groups. A more reasonable attitude for such people would be to recognise the advantages, too, which accrue to them from their own special situation. They should realise that their constant association with a people steeped in a different civilisation from their own has no small part to play in the development of their own particular genius and spirit. Little by little they can absorb into their very being those virtues which characterise the other nation. But for this to happen these minority groups must enter into some kind of association with the people in whose midst they are living, and learn to share their customs and way of life. It will never happen if they sow seeds of disaffection which can only produce a harvest of evils, stifling the political development of nations.
– Saint John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, April 1963. The beloved pope didn’t like apartheid either
Impressive speech and answers at the press club
I screen-grabbed this at the ABC today.
Rails.
Johannes Leak.
Of course colonisation has an impact, it impacts on everyone on this continent. I’m yet to hear one aboriginal activist argue that they want to return to a primitive hunter gatherer lifestyle. Without colonisation that was the only lifestyle that would exist.
Perhaps for historical perspective the media could ask the aboriginal activists do they believe the migration of those from southern India 5,000years ago had an impact on the lives of those that were living on the continent prior to that migration.
Did the ‘journalists’ give her a standing ovation, too? Funny how none of that lucid response made it into the ABC’s report of the event last night.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
The laughing and applauding of the press club would make a great ad for the No campaign. Aussies love it when the elite bs gets taken down a peg by straightforward logic. If enough people see that clip, it will be a killer blow.
Just who would all these angry entitled fauxborigine grifters and their braindead lamestream meeja fluffers have preferred colonise this continent?
The Dutch?
The French?
The Spanish?
The Portuguese?
The bloody Belgians?
Incorporation into the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere?
Jacinta Price’s magnificent speech has been the key moment in this entire idiotic screeech farce, with Perfesser Plankton’s regrettable and less than timely “taken out of context” remarks running a close second.
And there’s still a month of all this tiresome denial to play out. At this rate the screeech will lose in every state and the No vote end up above 70%. I will be “with champagne” on that evening.
Hear hear, Rabz.
I actually laughed out loud at Chris Kenny last night as this whitest of white men took the Territory’s Price to task for not understanding what an Aboriginal voice is all about.
I’ve stopped watching any of these pathetic excuses for…what exactly? Journo’s? No. Reporters? No. Commentators? No. Intelligent human beings? No and No.
But this gem from Kenny takes the absolute cake for utterly insulting bullshit that is patronising to Jacinta specifically and the rest of us generally.
He should offer a grovelling apology, but hell will freeze over first. Oh, wait…global boiling puts an end to that.