Latest news with #FirstPeoples
West Australian
an hour ago
- Politics
- West Australian
Approval of Woodside's North West Shelf gas extension to 2070 slammed by religious leaders
Faith leaders say they are 'deeply troubled' by the Federal Government's decision to approve the extension of the North West Shelf gas processing facility to 2070. On Wednesday, Labor approved a 40-year extension of the country's largest gas plant. While Environment Minister Murray Watt's decision to grant the approval for Woodside's North West Shelf extension in Western Australia's Pilbara has been praised by industry and unions, others have condemned it due to the threat to the Murujuga cultural heritage. President of the Uniting Church in Australia, Rev Charissa Suli told reporters in Perth on Sunday, she is 'profoundly disappointed' about the approval of the North West Shelf gas processing facility. 'As a daughter of the Pacific, I have witnessed first-hand the devastating impacts of climate change on culturally rich but environmentally vulnerable nations in our region,' she said. 'These nations — many of which are home to Uniting Church partners within the Asia-Pacific — contribute the least to global emissions yet suffer the greatest consequences. 'Why then is approval granted to an old, polluting facility to continue emitting vast volumes of climate damaging emissions of a magnitude many times greater than the emissions of all the Pacific nations? This is not loving thy neighbour.' Rev Mitchell Garlett from the Uniting Aboriginal & Islander Christian Congress added he is 'very disappointed' that the decision was made without 'close consultation with the relevant Traditional Owners'. 'The connection we feel to Country is not just a physical thing but a spiritual connection that is deeper than what we see with our eyes,' he said. 'It is heartbreaking that reconciliation is spoken of but our brothers and sisters voices are not being heard, and the land continues to suffer for so-called progress.' Rev Dr Ian Tozer added they are 'deeply concerned' by the threat to First Nations cultural heritage sites, including 60,000-year-old priceless petroglyphs at the World Heritage nominated Murujuga rock art site. 'It is vital that these ancient sites, so precious to Australia's First Peoples and to our history, are not further damaged by industry,' he said. Meanwhile, Woodside has said the approval would support thousands of jobs and supply affordable energy to Western Australia. The project has supplied 6000 petajoules of domestic gas, powering homes and industry in Western Australia with enough energy to power homes in a city the size of Perth for approximately 175 years, the company said. Environmental groups estimate the project will produce 4.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime.
Perth Now
an hour ago
- Politics
- Perth Now
‘Heartbreaking': Gas extension decision slammed
Faith leaders say they are 'deeply troubled' by the Federal Government's decision to approve the extension of the North West Shelf gas processing facility to 2070. On Wednesday, Labor approved a 40-year extension of the country's largest gas plant. While Environment Minister Murray Watt's decision to grant the approval for Woodside's North West Shelf extension in Western Australia's Pilbara has been praised by industry and unions, others have condemned it due to the threat to the Murujuga cultural heritage. President of the Uniting Church in Australia, Rev Charissa Suli told reporters in Perth on Sunday, she is 'profoundly disappointed' about the approval of the North West Shelf gas processing facility. Faith leaders say they are 'deeply troubled' by the Federal Government's decision to approve the extension of the North West Shelf Gas processing facility to 2070. NewsWire/Philip Gostelow Credit: News Corp Australia 'As a daughter of the Pacific, I have witnessed first-hand the devastating impacts of climate change on culturally rich but environmentally vulnerable nations in our region,' she said. 'These nations — many of which are home to Uniting Church partners within the Asia-Pacific — contribute the least to global emissions yet suffer the greatest consequences. 'Why then is approval granted to an old, polluting facility to continue emitting vast volumes of climate damaging emissions of a magnitude many times greater than the emissions of all the Pacific nations? This is not loving thy neighbour.' Rev Mitchell Garlett from the Uniting Aboriginal & Islander Christian Congress added he is 'very disappointed' that the decision was made without 'close consultation with the relevant Traditional Owners'. 'The connection we feel to Country is not just a physical thing but a spiritual connection that is deeper than what we see with our eyes,' he said. 'It is heartbreaking that reconciliation is spoken of but our brothers and sisters voices are not being heard, and the land continues to suffer for so-called progress.' Rev Dr Ian Tozer added they are 'deeply concerned' by the threat to First Nations cultural heritage sites, including 60,000-year-old priceless petroglyphs at the World Heritage nominated Murujuga rock art site. President of the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, pictured here, at the event outside Wesley Uniting Church, in Perth, WA. NewsWire/Philip Gostelow Credit: News Corp Australia 'It is vital that these ancient sites, so precious to Australia's First Peoples and to our history, are not further damaged by industry,' he said. Meanwhile, Woodside has said the approval would support thousands of jobs and supply affordable energy to Western Australia. The project has supplied 6000 petajoules of domestic gas, powering homes and industry in Western Australia with enough energy to power homes in a city the size of Perth for approximately 175 years, the company said. Environmental groups estimate the project will produce 4.3 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime.
Sky News AU
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Warren Mundine responds to Pat Dodson's call for reconciliation and WA scheme offering Stolen Generation survivors $85k
Indigenous affairs advocate Warren Mundine has argued First Peoples of Australia already have sovereignty after former Labor senator Pat Dodson's comments. Mr Dodson spoke at a Reconciliation Week event in Western Australia on Tuesday where he raised hopes of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Aussies, describing it as "unfinished business" that must not be neglected. 'If we are to have meaningful reconciliation in this country, the nation must come to grips with our inherent collective rights as First Peoples," he said in Fremantle. "An approach to reconciliation in which the focus is only on the practical business of Closing the Gap suggests that all (that) the First Peoples are entitled to is equality in the standards of life enjoyed by other citizens and little more. 'To reframe reconciliation as solely practical risks displacing from the national conscience the historical root causes of the structural inequality. 'It reinforces a form of psychological terra nullius that has been likened to a collective amnesia about the past which becomes manifest in an ideological inability to come to grips with and accommodate the inherent sovereign rights of Indigenous people in a modern nation state. The consequences of this have been devastating for First Peoples." Mr Mundine on Sky News argued "we get treated all the same, we're all citizens". He pointed to the 1967 referendum which asked Australia to vote on the recognising of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution. More than 90 per cent supported it which saw First Peoples included in the census and gave the government power to make laws for the the Indigenous community. "In regard to the sovereignty issue, we have sovereignty already. We're citizens of this country. We enjoy all the sovereignty rights of this county," Mr Mundine said. "In fact, we've gotten benefits from the sovereignty rights of this country. And that is in regard to Native title, the High Court decision in regard to the native title saying that we had rights. And that terra nullius is now doesn't exist anymore." The prominent anti-Voice campaigner referred to a recent High Court decision on property rights for Aboriginals, First Nations programs, heritage legislation and mining and energy industries giving royalties to Aboriginals as examples of sovereignty. Sky News host Danica Di Giorgio then asked about a Western Australian government redress scheme where Stolen Generation survivors will be each given $85,000. Those in the community who were forcibly removed from their families in the state before 1972 will be eligible to receive the taxpayer-funded payout. WA Attorney General Tony Buti estimated between 2,500 to 3,000 people in the state are eligible, meaning the cost of the scheme could reach $250 million. Mr Mundine stressed "there has to be burden of proof". Mr Dodson this week also urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to forge ahead with a national truth telling commission, also known as Makarrata, and a treaty process, which are the two other requests in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. "They can do that because it doesn't require constitutional referendum, it can be done by way of legislation," he said on ABC's 7.30 this week. If it went ahead it could be met with mixed feelings given the Voice, also one of the requests, was voted against in almost all jurisdictions in a 2023 referendum. Mr Dodson - also known as "the father of reconciliation" due to his advocacy work - retired from federal politics in 2024 due to treatment on cancer.
ABC News
4 days ago
- General
- ABC News
Push for school curriculum changes to improve First Nations history literacy
When Jegan Sivanesan's nieces began asking him about First Nation's history, he didn't know how to respond. "They would have NAIDOC week [at school], they'd have questions, not really being able to answer a lot of questions was confronting," he said. The first-generation immigrant from Sri Lanka grew up in the northern Victorian town of Mooroopna, but said his schooling barely scratched the surface of Australia's pre-colonial history. "What we did learn was about the First Fleet and a bit about the Stolen Generations but nothing that really went in depth, which was challenging," Mr Sivanesan said. Bombarded with questions from his son as well as his nieces, Mr Sivanesan decided to fill his gap in historical knowledge through further reading and attending the Yoorrook Justice Commission's public hearings. "It was an opportunity to talk about things that I've felt for a while, to be able to bring up that our education system needs to be really reformed so that our next generations can learn about these things," he said. Mr Sivanesan is not alone in his experience, with others raising the issue in submissions made to the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Yoorrook is the first Australian truth-telling process of its kind, led and designed by First Peoples, with the powers of a royal commission. The inquiry is piecing together Victoria's true history, by listening to the experiences of First Peoples through an inquiry focusing on injustices within health, education, country, criminal justice and child protection. Multiple witnesses have told Yoorrook that settlements were illegally established outside of the boundary set by the Crown, in areas across Victoria in the 1830s, including the Henty brothers' settlement of the area now known as Portland. It also heard from researchers involved in mapping the 49 known massacres in Victoria in which 1,045 Aboriginal people were killed. A report is due to be handed down in June and is expected to include recommendations to modify the school curriculum to include the inquiry's findings. Mr Sivenasan was one of dozens of Victorians who made a submission to the inquiry. As was Our Lady of Sion Sister Denise Cusack, who said she learnt almost nothing about First Nations history during her schooling, only becoming aware of it as an adult. "We would have known growing up that the Aboriginal people were here in this country but nowhere near the awareness of their sovereignty, what happened to them, what happened to the country," she said. "I realised much, much later on that there was a tangible grief in the country, that people carried, they weren't setting out to put all this on us. "But there's something in the country, I think, that carries that grief." Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan was the first Australian leader of a state or territory government to appear before an Indigenous-led truth telling inquiry last month. Ms Allan said she was distressed and ashamed to learn of the brutality involved in massacres of Aboriginal people on Dja Dja Wurrung country, where she lives in Central Victoria. She said her government was committed to ensuring Yoorrook's findings on Victoria's full history was better taught at schools. "Growing up and living as I have all my life, in Central Victoria, on Dja Dja Wurrung country, I did not know about the massacres that occurred so close to home," Ms Allan said. "That was the area that was particularly concerning to me that I hadn't learnt of that, the depth and the extent of the brutality that went on as part of that. "What I see as the legacy of this part [Yoorrook] of the process is to be the writing of the fundamental truth of the history of our state, for that truth to be told in classrooms across the state." Yoorrook Chair Aunty Eleanor Bourke said in a speech at the Melbourne Press Club earlier this month that Yoorrook was expected to make more than 100 recommendations based on the evidence coming before the Commission. "These recommendations include significant reforms to broken systems, and a range of practical solutions to problems the government can implement now," she said. "Yoorrook also wants to see improvements to education, such as the way history and other subjects are taught in school. "This includes better teaching methods for First People's students and for all children to be educated as to the true history of the settlement of Victoria and its impacts on First Peoples." Professor Bourke said learning about the past from First Peoples' perspective would allow students to better understand how the past connects with the present. She said the history taught in schools was different to the history experienced by First Peoples and that the people behind the massacres and the removal of children from their families were remembered as founding fathers, pioneers and heroes. "They were cogs in the colonial machine, which was charging full steam ahead, leaving a wake of death and human devastation behind," Professor Bourke said. "Yoorrook's goal has never been to encourage shame or guilt. Instead, listen and learn, open your heart and your mind to our story. Last week, the Yoorrook Justice Commission began its Walk for Truth, inviting the public to join them throughout the journey from Portland on Gunditjmara country, where colonisation began, to Parliament House in Melbourne. The walk will mark the commission's report being handed down to Parliament. Victorian Year 10 student and Yorta Yorta Bundjalung Wiradjuri woman Gymea said throughout her 11 years of schooling, there were only two pages within a textbook that addressed Indigenous culture, condensing information about Captain Cook, protests, NAIDOC week and Australia Day into just a few classes. Gymea even approached her school's Vice Principal, who spoke with the Head of Humanities, who then contacted the publisher of the history textbook about the lack of First Nations history content. "I don't think that Aboriginal history is taught enough at school because there are so many other things to our history like we have different clans, different tribes, different languages … and people don't know that," she said. Gymea said she learnt about Aboriginal history through her family and many of her peers asked her directly about her culture. "There is more to what happened in our history, I feel like people are living too much in the past," she said. "They're living too much in the protesting of what happened to Indigenous people instead of embracing our culture more and putting it out there more." Deakin University NIKERI Institute lecturer and Dja Dja Wurrung man Aleryk Fricker said the Victorian school curriculum and the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history was inadequate. He said the commission's report would likely highlight the deficiencies present within curriculums across the country for decades. "It's often quite bitsy, it's inconsistent, and there's no real scope of sequence of engagement," Dr Fricker said. "One of the ways that we can address this is to support teachers to be able to deliver quality content better. "This involves professional learning and involves the provision of quality resources." For the curriculum to change Dr Fricker said recommendations would need to be passed through to the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority which will liaise with the Department of Education before it's reviewed by the national curriculum body, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. He said the challenge in modifying the curriculum was that the content could not be standardised as First Nations history differed across Victoria. Dr Fricker said reform was needed across early childhood, primary and secondary education. "We need to recognise that Indigenous content goes across every single discipline area. Literacy was not invented when the Europeans arrived, nor was mathematics, nor was science, nor was geography. "These are all discipline areas that have had Indigenous knowledge as a part of them for millennia and these need to be featured centrally in all of these different discipline areas."
The Guardian
4 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘Genocide': Patrick Dodson condemns Australia's Aboriginal youth incarceration rates
Former Labor senator Patrick Dodson has condemned the country's Aboriginal youth incarceration rates and child removals as an ongoing genocide against First Peoples and an 'embarrassing sore' on the nation. 'It's an assault on the Aboriginal people. I don't say that lightly [but] if you want to eradicate a people from the landscape, you start taking them away, you start destroying the landscape of their cultural heritage, you attack their children or remove their children,' Dodson said. 'This is a way to get rid of a people.' Dodson said there was no other word for it than genocide. 'It's to destroy any semblance of any representation, manifestation in our nation that there's a unique people in this country who are called the First Peoples,' he said. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Indigenous families are over-represented in child-removal statistics. In 2024, more than 44% of all children in out of home care were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. In Dodson's home state of Western Australia, Aboriginal children make up more than 60% of all children in care. First Nations children are also 27 times more likely to be in detention than non-Indigenous children and young people. The Yawuru elder, whose traditional country centres around Broome, spoke to Guardian Australia before the release of his Reconciliation Memoirs, an annual event held by Reconciliation Australia in which they produce the memoirs of a longstanding champion of the reconciliation movement. Often referred to as the 'father of reconciliation', Dodson has tracked these worsening statistics in his decades in public life. He served as a commissioner on the 1989 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, as chair of both the Central Land Council and the Kimberley Land Council, and as co-chair of the parliamentary inquiry into constitutional recognition, before being nominated for the senate in 2016. He retired from politics last year due to ill health, but has not given up the campaign, calling on prime minister Anthony Albanese to use his overwhelming victory in the federal election this month to press ahead with a national truth telling commission and a treaty process, despite the failure of the voice referendum in 2023. Those three priorities – a voice to parliament, national truth-telling, and a Makaratta commission to oversea treaty-making – were outlined in the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017. Albanese has previously said he endorses the principles of truth-telling and treaty-making but stopped short of committing to establishing a commission. Dodson said now is the time to revisit the issue – and stressed that doing so would not undermine the referendum result. 'He's got time. It's time for us to take stock,' he said. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'There are two other destinations. They can all be pursued by way of legislation, but that requires commitment and will not only of the government but of the people.' He said a national truth-telling process would allow the nation to move away from culture wars and grapple with the history of the land and its contested foundations. 'There's no hidden traps in the whole thing,' he said. 'It's a facing up to an honest way to deal with the First Peoples of this nation, to deal with a contested history, with a view to trying to come to a common narrative about whom we are as Australians in this modern age.' Dodson's Reconciliation Memoirs, written in conjunction with journalist Victoria Laurie, detail his early life growing up in Broome and the loss of both his parents in childhood, followed by his public life which began in the priesthood. It also tackles his disappointment at being unable to take on a greater role in the referendum campaign due to treatment for cancer. The memoirs series has previously featured former senator Fred Cheney, Noongar writer and songwriter Dr Richard Walley, and former head of Reconciliation WA, Carol Innes. Dodson said that the process of examining his long legacy in public life allowed him to reflect on the unfinished business of reconciliation, in a country that is yet to reckon with the legacy of colonisation and dispossession, and yet to afford First Nations people an equitable seat at the table. 'It's a great country, but it's just that the First Peoples are not enjoying a lot of the greatness,' Dodson. 'We should pick up and resolve these issues that are a blight on us as a nation. Our relationship with the First Peoples has not been settled, has not been agreed to between First Peoples and the nation and we've got to do that.'
