A leading No campaigner says an ex-Labor minister should remain a member of the No camp despite making comments that blood tests should be taken to prove Aboriginality.
Key points:
- Ex-Labor minister Gary Johns has doubled down on controversial comments made in his book and at speaking engagements
- Yes campaigners have called for Mr Johns's resignation from the committee of No campaign organisation Recognise a Better Way
- Prominent No campaigner Warren Mundine says there is "no credibility" in calls for Mr Johns to resign
Speaking on Sky News, Gary Johns, who is campaigning against the Voice to Parliament, said if the country provided people with "race-based benefits" it needed to ask First Nations people to prove their heritage, adding that people were "embarrassed to ask".
"We will lose credibility here if we don't test or otherwise prove that you are or are not an Aboriginal person," he said.
Yes campaigners have called for Mr Johns to resign from the No campaign after his comments emerged.
In his book The Burden of Culture, Mr Johns wrote: "If the current three-part test on Aboriginality is to remain then, just as Aborigines insist in native title claims, blood will have to be measured for all benefits and jobs."
Opponents to a politically enshrined Indigenous voice in the constitution, Recognise a Better Way, list Mr Johns as a committee member and have not responded to ABC's request for comment about his future with the group.
"Why should it be based on race? It's such an awful concept, but if you're going to do it, you're going to have to measure it, you're going to have to say who is and isn't an Aboriginal person — at the moment we're too afraid to ask," Mr Johns told Sky News on Monday night.
"I would rather there be none of these embarrassing discussions, there should be no race-based programs and no race-based benefits."
Prominent No campaigner and Bundjalung man Warren Mundine said while he doesn't agree with all of Mr Johns's comments, he doesn't believe he should resign from the No camp.
"He's entitled to his views, I'll keep on having conversations with him and that is the way I am. I don't talk to people that agree with me, I talk to people that disagree with me and I change people's viewpoints and this is how you make the country a better place," Mr Mundine said.
Comments 'repugnant': Liberals for Yes
Mr Johns also doubled down on other notions he had mentioned in the book, such as a public holiday celebrating "interracial marriages" between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people, and abolishing Welcome to Country practices.
He was also critical of the landmark Bringing Them Home report, tabled in the federal parliament in 1997.
The Human Rights Commission's report detailed the damage caused to Indigenous Australians because of the government's policy of forcibly removing children from their families.
"The inquiry was jumping at the shadows of history instead of responding to contemporary events of the period that it covered," he wrote.
"Consequently, it got it wrong. Taking children was a necessary instrument, because saving Aboriginal society was thought at the time to be a forlorn hope."
Liberal NSW Shadow Minister for Health Matt Kean, who has urged his federal colleagues to back the Voice, said Mr Johns's comments were "repugnant to everything the country stands for".
"There are good people on both sides of the Voice Referendum debate making serious and considered arguments for and against the Voice," he said.
"However, Mr Gary Johns's call last night for all Aboriginal benefits recipients to be blood tested, and for a national public holiday celebrating intermarriage between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, as well as his belief that Aboriginal people will find a period in jail a 'respite from a distraught life' means he has no place in this national conversation.
"If Mr Johns refuses to resign from the board of the official No Campaign today, the No Campaign should do the decent and honourable thing and fire him."
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said while she didn't agree with Mr Johns's statements: "He has a right to make them"
"My view is that is not the role of other people [to] determine one's Aboriginality — that is something that is very clearly articulated, that you identify, that you are accepted, and you are recognised by the community."
No campaigner Mr Mundine said he did not take lectures from anyone affiliated with the Yes campaign, likening one board member to a Nazi.
"They've got a communist sitting on their thing [board] and a communist is just as bad as a Nazi," he said.
Mr Mundine said no one from the Yes campaign has "any credibility" in asking Mr Johns to resign.
He added that comments from Yes campaigners had prompted him to receive treatment after his mental health had deteriorated.
"I'm getting a lot of support, which is great, but other people are continuing to do what they're doing — I will just continue to work with my doctors and get on with life."
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2023-07-25 03:51:52Z
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