Pat Dodson wants Anthony Albanese to forge ahead with Indigenous treaty and truth telling

Australia Broadcast Center

26-05-2025

Father of Reconciliation Pat Dodson has challenged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to resume an ambitious Indigenous Affairs agenda in his second term, warning Indigenous people could otherwise face cultural annihilation.
"If you don't participate, you'll end up being the subject and the property of the assimilationists ... that's what the new assimilation is about, completing the obliteration of Aboriginal people from the landscape," Mr Dodson told 7.30.
"We've got to build now, start now, the time has come; we can't keep kicking it down the road."
The Yawuru Man from Broome, Western Australia served seven years in the Senate until early 2024 and has been a lifelong champion of Indigenous rights.
He warned that the next reconciliation pathway must have a strong focus "otherwise it remains nebulous".
Mr Dodson has called on the government to set up a national truth telling commission (Makarrata) and a treaty process, the remaining requests of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart after the voice referendum.
"They can do that because it doesn't require constitutional referendum, it can be done by way of legislation," he said.
The former senator argued the government should also adopt the system of local and regional Indigenous advisory bodies recommended by Indigenous leaders Tom Calma and Marcia Langton in their 2021 report to the Morrison government.
"Whether they call it a voice or whether they call it a regional assembly ... but an entity and that entity will have to be representative of the regional people. That way we can start to manage the awful incarceration rates of young people and the underlying circumstances that's given rise to that," he said
Mr Dodson says he was disappointed when Mr Albanese took a step back from Indigenous reconciliation efforts following the failed voice referendum.
"He had to do that."
Mr Dodson's ongoing cancer treatment meant he was unable to play more than a small role in the voice referendum campaign.
He left federal politics in November 2023, disappointed by the defeat of the voice.
"I felt the sadness," he told 730.
"We saw a response at the poll that I think shocked many of us, many people felt gutted … I thought time will heal this."
He believes underlying the resistance to the voice was a failure to see Indigenous people as sovereign people.
"We don't know how to recognise Aboriginal peoples as sovereign peoples, because we fear this will undermine our own sovereignty," he said.
"They think this is something about (Indigenous Australians) getting something better or more than they might be getting."
Mr Dodson said the bar for reconciliation via a referendum vote was too high due to the double majority required for constitutional change.
"We're never going to see a provision put forward to support Aboriginal people be successful," he said.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price also made a name for herself during the referendum as the opposition spokesperson for Indigenous affairs and the face of the 'No' campaign.
In a press club address she claimed colonisation was not bad for Australia, angering many Indigenous leaders.
Senator Nampijinpa Price criticised Indigenous organisations, claiming they sought to "demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement".
When asked to clarify whether she thought any Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts of colonisation, she at the time responded: "No, there are no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation."
Mr Dodson said those assertions when made by an Indigenous person would mean "one would have to question their loyalties".
"I don't know how that view could be sustained in the light of the historical truth," he said.
Mr Dodson spent his early years running from Western Australian police, when mixed-race families were illegal.
Mr Dodson says he has continued to see the effects of colonisation on his people.
"It's not as blatant as it was back in their day, you were cajoled, put in chains or you're whipped or you're just denied and refused," he said
"it's a lot more subtle (now) and its long-term intent isn't clear."
After a lifetime of attempting to take the richness of Indigenous culture and translate it into Western law and politics, Mr Dodson said there is more to be done.
"It's a path worth travelling on, even though it's with its troubles," he said.
"Now is a time for listening more closely to the waves, to the wind, to the environment, to see how the leaves move and don't move … to discern what is it that's happening?
He believes Mr Albanese has a responsibility to Aboriginal leaders.
"Yunupingu entrusted (him) to carry that fire stick, to bring about the kind of reconciliation and healing this nation needs — he can't drop that."
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