ACT Fails with Its Own Voice

The Voice referendum taught us a great many things — not least that, given the chance, Australians soundly reject identity politics and wokeism. More particularly, though, it showed us just how glaringly out of step with the mainstream that the redoubts of wokeism — the inner-Sydney and Melbourne, Teal-voting, quinoa belts — really are.

None more so than the Citadel of Woke itself, Canberra.

A taxpayer-funded enclave of the over-educated and private-sector unemployable, Canberra prides itself on its “progressivism”. It’s had a Greens-Labor coalition running it for nearly a decade. It “leads” the rest of Australia on everything from death-on-demand to decriminalising hard drugs.

It was also the only jurisdiction in the country to vote Yes in the referendum, in an almost-diametric opposite result to the rest of the country. In fact, it’s had its very own “Indigenous Voice” for over a decade.

So, why didn’t they want to talk about it, during the referendum campaign?

Aboriginal people in the territory – the only jurisdiction that backed a national voice – are ironically among the most disadvantaged in Australia. There are also dismal results on several closing the gap targets in the nation’s capital and one of the highest Indigenous incarceration rates in the country, despite the ACT having its own voice to parliament for 15 years.

Nothing else quite illustrates the yawning gap between the ego-stroking self-delusions of the Woke left, and the dismal reality of their own elitist policies.

Jon Stanhope, the chief minister of the territory’s last majority Labor government, set up the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body through legislation in 2008.

And how’d it work out?

Pretty much exactly the same as every other Aboriginal Industry troughocracy.

He said the body had been plagued by problems that reduced its effectiveness, arguing its lack of impact suited the Labor-Greens Barr government.

“The ACT voice has, unfortunately, a very low profile and in a recent report the ACT Auditor-General (Michael Harris) was very critical of its structure and efficacy,” Mr Stanhope said.

“He noted for example that the entire membership was ACT public servants.”

No. A Canberra taxpayer-funded boondoggle used as a nepo trough for public servants? Whodathunkit!

At the last election for membership of the voice less than five per cent of eligible Aboriginal voters bothered to vote.

So, a rinse and repeat of the late, unlamented Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, then. ATSIC, for the benefit of Kiwi readers, was abolished by the Howard government as a result of its endemic corruption and utter uselessness at delivering anything other than wads of cash for nepotistic box-tickers.

Canberrans can keep their heads jammed up their rear ends, sniffing the stench of their own moral self-righteousness — the facts speak volumes about just how “progressive” they really are.

“Canberra is a solidly middle-class community with high levels of tertiary-educated citizens and approximately half of the local workforce employed by either the commonwealth or ACT governments or local universities,” he said. “Ironically, however, Aboriginal residents of Canberra ­endure among the worst outcomes in Australia, across almost all indicators, including for example the highest incarceration rate in Australia” […]

The ACT lags behind the national average on several targets including childhood development, with only 27.3 per cent of Indigenous kids developmentally on track in all five domains of the Australian Early Development Census. This is below the goal of 55 per cent and the national average of 34.3 per cent.

The territory’s rate of children in out-of-home-care is also higher than the national average, with 70.8 per 1000 children in the system in Canberra, compared with 56.8 per 1000 nationally.

Do they have anything to show for the no doubt lavish public funding over the last decade?

ATSIEB’s members said last month that its greatest achievements included advocating for three public housing developments to house 15 older Indigenous people, pushing for bus routes to Indigenous health clinic Winnunga Nimmitiyah and restoration of Boomanulla Oval as a community hub.

The Australian

As to the last one:

“It is another failed attempt from the government to step up and do something.”

CBR City News

And yet, still the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith has the unmitigated chutzpah to boast that the ACT is a “progressive and inclusive jurisdiction”, and that objections that a Voice would be a useless boondoggle is just “disinformation”.

To quote Jim Goad, these people have their heads so far up their own arses, it’s a wonder they don’t suffocate.

If only.