Despite the endless yammering of the left, Australia not only “recognises” its “first peoples”, it can’t shut up about them. Everything from football games to school awards nights to something as mundane as a plane flight is marked by the sonorous genuflecting to “traditional owners” and “Elders past, present and emerging”.
Does anyone actually take this fatuous pap seriously? Its essentially useless virtue-signalling was driven indelibly home to me in the early 2000s, when a wedding party of exclusively middle-class white suburbanites was introduced with a “traditional acknowledgement”. Who is supposed to be impressed by this nonsense?
More importantly, just who are these so-called “Elders”? And who gets to decide?
This is not mere curmudgeonly grousing — these are consequential questions. After all, being an “Elder” is not just a nice little earner — any old “Aunty” or “Uncle” can easily pocket a few grand a pop, just for putting on a bit of warpaint, donning a possum-skin cloak (get yours here) and waving some burning gum leaves around — but a pathway to significant, unelected power.
Big Four consultant PwC has grappled with this conundrum in a report handed to the Victorian Treaty Advancement Commission (VTAC) in December. The brief was to advise how an “Elders’ Voice” top-tier structure could work with the First People’s Assembly on Treaty, representing traditional landowners […]
PwC has 60 consultants in its indigenous specialty group, which rivals calculate entails $15-20m in annual fees. Other Big Four firms likewise jostle for jobs in this sector. Analogies with flies and honeypots come to mind.
Left-wing state governments are falling over themselves to sign “treaties” with “traditional owners”. There’s no small bickies on offer: just one de facto treaty in WA has allowed Aboriginal communities to pocket a cool $1.3 billion (don’t ask how the money benefits, say, Aboriginal kids being bashed nightly by drunken parents — that’s “racist”). The insistent push for a “Voice” (in other words, a de facto third chamber of Parliament) also promises massive political clout, without a single ballot being cast.
But for all that, even defining an “Elder” proves elusive. PwC spent 5000 words defining an “Elder”… and then conceded that:
there is no agreed definition of an Elder, no authority to determine Eldership disputes, “and no obvious existing entity that could take on this role”. It says, “Eldership is subjective … a person may be considered an Elder by one group (such as family, clan or other) whilst not being considered an Elder by other groups.”
Even other “Elders” are well aware that there’s no end of shonks trying to get in on the scam.
More than 80 per cent of the Elders want a way to challenge spurious Elders. PwC quotes one Elder: “There is no existing process to confirm ‘who is an Elder’. It’s hard enough to confirm Aboriginality, who would confirm Eldership?” Adds another: “Eldership should be by self-identification, but I am not going to sit in a room with a 20-year-old telling me they are an Elder” […]
Case in point: Waywurru, Ngurai Illum and Dhudhuroa Elders have lodged a 115-page complaint claiming Bangerang Elder Fred Dowling, 82, is not Aboriginal, let alone an Elder. Dowling states his grandmother is a niece of Mary Jane Milawa, a Wangaratta Aboriginal at the time of white settlement.
So, he has a far stronger claim to Aboriginality than Bruce Pascoe, at least.
The Fauxborigines and hangers-on are clearly unhappy at the gravy train being derailed.
The Assembly for Victorian land-owners has annoyed Elders in suburbia and “Stolen Generation” claimants living locally but born interstate.
Just to give an idea of what a bunfight this whole process is:
Rather forlornly, PwC noted the vast range of Elder views even on routine matters like the size of the Elders Voice executive. Most thought 8-15 members was right, but some insisted that every family group should put forward one male and one female rep. That would create “a group size of hundreds/thousands”, PwC noted, adding that some Elders wanted an executive of just two – one female, one male. Incidentally, the “vast majority” of the 200 Elders consulted was female. PwC didn’t suggest why.
Quadrant Online
Such is the can of worms that’s opened when governments start peddling racial politics and handing out money and unelected power to chosen racial groups. With not a blush of irony, race-baiting academics wring their hands at the idea of a “racial register”. Quite rightly. Yet, without some process to establish, not just who is an “Elder” but who is even “Indigenous”, why would anyone in their right mind hand billions of dollars and massive power to “Voice” groups?
