DEAR News Of The Area,

I WRITE in response to J Kelly-Williams’ letter (NOTA 30/06) about discussion concerning the Voice.

I am sure that J Kelly-Williams is aware there are 30 Aboriginal Land Councils, 2,700 Aboriginal corporations as well as the PM’s Indigenous Advisory Council and the Council of Peaks as well as the NIAA already operating in this country.

Each of these bodies provide advice at a local, state and federal level to the government.

If you look at the Council of Peaks website you will read, in part, they have worked to ensure the full involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the shared decision making with Australian governments across the country to improve the life outcomes for their people.

The 2021 Australian Census revealed there are 812,728 people who identify as ATSI living in Australia.

And 55 percent of those more than 15 years old are already employed right across all fields of employment.

Those people have already found their voice, and have assimilated into the Australian communities and suburbs.

They are the urban Aboriginals, and are virtually indistinguishable from anyone else.

They are educated and employed. Almost 40 percent of Indigenous Australians currently live in major cities.

In Sydney, 479 Indigenous people report speaking indigenous languages at home. And 61,814 primarily speak English at home, and 1716 indigenous Sydney people speak a foreign language at home.

Many, 47,677 ATSI people are over the age of 65, so could therefore, by age, be unlikely to be considered for employment.

The remainder are those remote and/or tribal Aboriginals living in isolated communities in outback towns.

It is these communities that need continued assistance in improving their quality of life.

There has been a 73 percent increase in the indigenous population between the 2011 census and the 2021 census.

That equates to a population growth of 5.6 percent.

The life-expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous narrowed by nearly a quarter between 2005-2007, and 2015-2017.

The Australian Institute of Criminology released its 2012-2022 ‘Deaths in Custody’ report, the rate of indigenous deaths in custody has long been half the rate for non-indigenous Australians.

It also states that most Indigenous in custody die from natural causes.

The rate that indigenous people suicide in custody is half that for non-indigenous.

I consider that J Kelly-Williams is under-estimating the successes that existing Indigenous bodies are already having in lifting the quality of life for many ATSI people.

He should be applauding these successes, all of which have been achieved without The Voice.

Many of those organisations work at the local level, not implementing the top-down approach of some.

The proposed Voice is a national solution to a problem that is fundamentally local, remote and tribal.

Why impose yet another bureaucratic organisation over the many existing Aboriginal organisations already giving a voice to local, state and federal governments, when they seem to be working well?

Give them the recognition they deserve. I congratulate them.

If anyone has any issues with the figures/statistics I have used, then I ask them to seek further clarification from the government instrumentalities I have quoted.

In closing, I have enjoyed the interchange of ideas and the banter associated with this subject over the past few months, and, as all I am doing now is repeating myself, as are others, I shall call it quits in relation to this issue, and leave it to others to continue the discussion.

Regards,
Peter WEYLING,
Corindi Beach.