Indigenous Australians Want a ‘Voice to Parliament.’ What Does That Entail? - The New York Times

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Isabella Kwai, a reporter with the Australia bureau.

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In May 2017, hundreds of Indigenous Australian delegates from around the nation gathered near Uluru, the sandstone monolith in Central Australia, for the delivery of a landmark statement.

Formed after months of rigorous consultation, the Uluru Statement From the Heart symbolized a unified call from Indigenous Australians to the government: enshrine a First Nations voice in the Constitution.

Now, the government may be taking steps to heed that call, saying this week it will hold a national referendum within the next three years on the question of recognizing Indigenous Australians in the country’s governing law.

It’s unclear exactly what form this recognition would take — which meant the news was met by commentators with a mix of interest and caution. But many advocates say it must include a “Voice to Parliament” outlined in the Uluru Statement — a body of Indigenous Australians that would be allowed input for the first time into policies and legislation affecting them.

“The voice is not a metaphor for voicelessness and powerlessness. It is a proposal for hardheaded structural reform,” wrote Megan Davis, a professor of law at The University of New South Wales who delivered the Uluru Statement in 2017. It would afford political empowerment and a seat at a table traditionally occupied by professional bureaucrats, she added.

It could also pave the way for other reforms mentioned in the Uluru Statement.

“The Voice is an instrument of Reconciliation, designed to pave a pathway towards truth-telling and agreement-making — to Treaty,” wrote Patrick Dodson, an Indigenous lawmaker, in the Sydney Morning Herald.

And changing the Constitution to include such a body for Indigenous Australians in Parliament would give it a level of protection and permanency that legislation, which can be repealed, would not, said Anne Twomey, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney.

Even if the government supports a referendum to amend the Constitution, such measures are notoriously difficult to pass: Only 8 out of 44 have been successful. But they are often “a powerful democratic voice of the Australian people to say what it is that they want, and what needs then to be respected by politicians,” Prof. Twomey said.

As an example, more than 90 percent of Australians voted in 1967 to include Indigenous Australians in the national census, a turning point referred to in the Uluru Statement.

“In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard,” it concludes. “We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”

You can read the Uluru Statement From the Heart here. Do you think constitutional reform for Indigenous Australians will happen in the next three years? Write to me at nytaustralia@nytimes.com or join the discussion in our NYT Australia Facebook group.

Now on to some stories from the week.

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Australia and the Region

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Karla Dickens, an acclaimed Aboriginal mixed-media artist, at her home in Lismore, Australia. She uses discarded material in her work.CreditNatalie Grono for The New York Times

In celebration of NAIDOC Week, we’ve picked three stories highlighting Indigenous Australian achievement:

• 5 Indigenous Australian Films (and One TV Series) Everyone Should See: Penny Smallacombe, head of the Indigenous Department at Screen Australia, shares her picks.

• Finding Beauty in Broken Things, an Aboriginal Artist Finds Recognition at Last: “I just wasn’t a jolly, cheerful kind of child. I was always making crosses for the dead animals in my pet cemetery, things like that,” said Karla Dickens, an acclaimed mixed-media artist.

• ‘It’s Entirely Up to Me’: Indigenous Australians Find Empowerment in Start-Ups: A growing number of Aboriginal Australians are finding success in the entrepreneurial world. “We’re not just good sports people — we’re good science people, we’re tech people.”

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Matt Zurbo works at an oyster farm in addition to writing children’s books. “Imagination trumps violence and ignorance, and always will,” he says.CreditPeter Tarasiuk for The New York Times

This week’s news from our bureau:

• He’s Writing 365 Children’s Books in 365 Days, While Holding Down a Day Job: A full-time oyster farmer in rural Tasmania, Matt Zurbo is undertaking an unconventional labor of love for his daughter by penning a book a day.

• Climbers Flock to Uluru Before a Ban, Straining a Sacred Site: A rush of visitors to the central Australia monolith ahead of an Oct. 26 deadline has brought an increase in trash, trespassing and illegal camping, officials say.

• How Australia Could Almost Eradicate H.I.V. Transmissions: The most recent advance in Australia’s decades-long fight against the virus is the rapid adoption of a preventive drug regimen known as PrEP.

• Papua New Guinea Massacre Kills Pregnant Women and Children, Police Say: At least 20 people, including pregnant women and children, have been killed in an ambush and retaliatory massacre by villagers in Papua New Guinea, according to news reports.

• Australian Police Obtained Journalist’s Travel Records From Airline in Leak Inquiry: The request for the travel records from Qantas Airways has alarmed the media industry and advocates for a free press.

• Student Deported From North Korea Says He’s ‘Pretty Obviously’ Not a Spy: Alek Sigley, 29, an Australian who sometimes wrote about his life in Pyongyang, was accused of “systematically” collecting information for news media outlets.

• Wimbledon 2019: Alison Riske Upsets No. 1 Ashleigh Barty: Ashleigh Barty was the tournament favorite and had lost only 12 games entering Monday’s match.

• As New Zealand Fights Online Hate, the Internet’s Darkest Corners Resist: If anything, the appetite for material connected to the Christchurch massacre is growing, even as New Zealand tries to deny the accused gunman a platform for his views.

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Around the Times

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CreditRose Wong

Some popular stories from the week, picked for you:

• It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done: Voltaire was right: “Perfect is the enemy of good.”

• The Jeffrey Epstein Case Was Cold, Until a Reporter Got Accusers to Talk: The case seemed cold when a Miami Herald journalist started looking into it. Then she persuaded accusers to tell their stories.

• She Was Duped and Shipped to a Brothel at 16. Then the Boat Sank: In April, a boat smuggling dozens of people out of Venezuela, some entrapped by a human trafficking ring, capsized in the sea on the way to Trinidad.

• What if Being a YouTube Celebrity Is Actually Backbreaking Work?: Emma Chamberlain dropped out of school and changed the world of online video. It hasn’t been easy.

… And We Recommend

… this entrancing video of Snowball, the dancing cockatoo, as he headbangs his way to enlightenment.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/australia/indigenous-voice-parliament.html

2019-07-12 02:07:44Z
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Climbers Flock to Uluru Before a Ban, Straining a Sacred Site - The New York Times

SYDNEY, Australia — It is an unusual sight for the famous but remote sandstone monolith known as Uluru: dense lines of eager climbers snaking up its reddish-brown surface, headed toward the peak of a rock sacred to the Indigenous Australians who live nearby.

Tourists are flocking to Uluru because, as of Oct. 26, they will be prohibited from scaling the 1,141-foot-tall rock, whose auburn ridges rise incongruously from the flat central Australia scrubland that surrounds them.

The ban is intended, in part, to prevent environmental damage to the monolith, which sits inside a national park that is a Unesco World Heritage site. But the rush of visitors in the time remaining is putting new strain on the park: Many hotels and campgrounds are sold out, leading to reports of increases in illegal camping, trespassing and trash dumping.

“It is very busy at the moment, and that is largely to do with the closure of the climb,” said Stephen Schwer, the chief executive of Tourism Central Australia. “Popularity has put stress on the existing infrastructure.”

Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a sacred site for the Indigenous Anangu people. For years, signs at the base have read “This is our home” and “Please don’t climb.”

In 2017, the board members of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park decided to turn that plea into an injunction, saying that climbing would be banned in two years.

In addition to the cultural and environmental issues, there were concerns about safety. More than 30 deaths have been recorded on Uluru, which has a steep, unguided climb. Visitors are welcome to trek around the base, as many choose to do instead. In recent decades, the number of Uluru climbers has declined.

But since the prohibition was announced, the number of people visiting the park has increased, and park staff members say more are climbing the rock than usual. More than 370,000 people visited in 2018, a gain of over 20 percent from the previous year. An increase in scheduled flights to the remote region has contributed to the tourist influx, Mr. Schwer said.

While most travelers are respectful, he said, he called the rise in destructive behavior such as lighting fires and littering “disappointing.” He urged people to plan and book ahead, as the increase in unregulated camping threatens the delicate desert ecosystem.

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Uluru in 2016, the year before leaders of the park that surrounds it began the process of banning climbing of the rock.CreditDavid Gray/Reuters

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Micha Gela, a group coordinator who has worked at the Outback Pioneer Hotel in the Ayers Rock Resort for more than four years, said that “it’s the busiest it’s been since I started.” Both the hotel and its campground, in which 2,700 people are currently pitching tents, are at capacity, she said.

Ms. Gela said some guests were angry about the imminent closing. “There was one guest who was complaining to us because his whole family climbs every year, and when the kids grow up they want them to go and climb,” she said.

“I’m Indigenous myself,” Ms. Gela added. “I don’t really approve of climbing. But obviously it’s a dream for them.”

Deborah Symons, a credit analyst from Brisbane, climbed Uluru with her husband in June and trekked the base with an Indigenous guide. She said the decision to close the rock to climbing “probably triggered our momentum to plan the trip.”

“It was always something we wanted to do, and we do not believe climbing the rock undermined any cultural or spiritual beliefs of the local Indigenous people,” she said.

Uluru has a long history as a spiritually, culturally and politically significant site for Australia’s Aboriginal people, especially the region’s Anangu people.

“It is an extremely important place, not a playground or theme park like Disneyland,” Sammy Wilson, chairman of the park’s board of management, said in a 2017 statement before the ban was approved. “We want you to come, hear us and learn.”

The Oct. 26 date will represent 34 years since Uluru was handed back to the traditional Anangu owners.

In 2017, a group of Indigenous leaders assembled at the rock to present the Uluru Statement From the Heart, a manifesto calling for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to Parliament. On Wednesday, the Australian government announced that it would hold a referendum on constitutional recognition within three years.

Mr. Schwer, the tourism official, said he expected the high rates of visits to Uluru to continue after the Oct. 26 ban, saying many hotels were already near capacity for the months afterward.

Until the prohibition comes into effect, he asked that people reconsider the climb. “There are so many other ways people can feel the spiritual impact of the rock without climbing it,” he said.

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2019-07-11 10:17:28Z
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Australia Will Hold Referendum on Indigenous Recognition - The New York Times

MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia will hold a national referendum within the next three years on the question of formally recognizing Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, a government minister said on Wednesday, a significant step for a marginalized population that has long sought an official voice in government.

Ken Wyatt, the minister for Indigenous Australians, said the conservative government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison would commit more than $100 million to holding the referendum, but he provided few details on what the government planned to include in its proposal.

“The Morrison government is committed to recognizing Indigenous Australians in the Constitution and working to achieve this through a process of true co-design,” Mr. Wyatt, the first Indigenous person to hold his ministerial post, said in a speech in Sydney.

Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples have sought to be recognized in the Constitution and given a formal representative role in the government since the document was ratified in 1901. Those years of activism came to a head in 2017, when a group of Indigenous leaders presented to the public the Uluru Statement From the Heart, a road map for recognition.

Among the statement’s proposals were the formation of a new government agency that would serve as an Indigenous advisory board, and treaties between the government and Indigenous groups. The prime minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, rejected the proposals, saying they would amount to the creation of a third chamber of Parliament.

Constitutional recognition is “really about bringing the wisdom and experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people closer to the Parliament,” said Dean Parkin, a member of the committee that helped draft the Uluru Statement.

Mr. Parkin and other Indigenous leaders said that they were glad that the government had finally promised to hold a referendum after years of false starts, but that they were wary of the governing Liberal Party’s lack of details and a perception that it was unwilling to wholly embrace the recommendations of the Uluru Statement.

Sean Gordon, chairman of Uphold and Recognize, an Indigenous think tank that supports constitutional recognition, said in a television interview that it was unclear whether the government would be “true to what Indigenous people asked for in the Uluru Statement.”

Mr. Wyatt, the Indigenous minister, said he expected the process of drafting the referendum to take several years, adding that the government would not hold a vote if it believed it would fail.

“Constitutional recognition is too important to get wrong, and too important to rush,” he said.

Ministers from the opposition Labor Party said they welcomed the government’s announcement. “It is critical that First Nations people, communities and leaders are consulted and listened to, and that we stay true to the principles of the Uluru Statement,” they said in a statement. “Bipartisanship is vital to the success of constitutional reform.”

Indigenous Australians have been subjected to decades of discriminatory government policies, which in the past have included internment, forced sterilization and the removal of children from their families.

Today, Indigenous Australians experience higher rates of incarceration, youth suicide and illness compared to white Australians. Such disparities, Mr. Parkin said, were intergenerational and required intergenerational solutions.

To pass, the referendum would need the support of a majority of voters nationally and at least four of Australia’s six states.

Of the 44 referendums previously held in Australia, only eight have succeeded. The most successful, however, was a 1967 vote to remove discriminatory references to Indigenous Australians from the Constitution. More than 90 percent of Australians agreed.

“Without the truth of the past, there can be no agreement on where and who we are in the present, how we arrived here and where we want to go in the future,” Mr. Wyatt said. “History is generally written from a dominant society’s point of view and not that of the suppressed, and therefore true history is brushed aside, masked, dismissed or destroyed,” he added.

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2019-07-10 10:34:51Z
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Australia vows vote on recognition of indigenous people by 2022 - Aljazeera.com

Australia will hold a national vote within three years on whether to include recognition of indigenous people in its constitution, the government said on Wednesday.

The country has struggled to achieve reconciliation with the descendants of its first inhabitants, who arrived on the continent about 50,000 years before British colonists but are not recognised in the national constitution.

With public support on the issue growing, Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt, the first indigenous Australian to hold the portfolio, promised a referendum before 2022.

"I will develop and bring forward a consensus option for constitutional recognition to be put to a referendum during the current parliamentary term," Wyatt said in a speech in Canberra.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison's conservative coalition government was returned to power in a surprise election victory in May and the next polls must take place by 2022.

Australia: Surprise victory for governing coalition

To meet the timetable Wyatt will need to work out an agreement between the government and indigenous leaders, who have demanded a bigger voice in the running of the country.

Marginalised people

In 2017, indigenous leaders proposed establishing an advisory body made up of elected indigenous Australians, but the government rejected the proposal, claiming it would create a de facto third chamber in parliament.

The government has come under growing pressure since then to revisit the issue, with several corporate giants insisting that meaningful recognition is the only way to bridge the divide in Australia's population.

"A first nation's voice to parliament is a meaningful step towards reconciliation," BHP Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mackenzie said earlier this year.

Indigenous Australians account for about 700,000 people in a total population of 23 million and are near the bottom in almost every socio-economic indicator, suffering disproportionately high rates of suicide, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and imprisonment.

Denied the vote until the mid-1960s, they face a 10-year gap in life expectancy compared with other Australians and make up 27 percent of the prison population.

SOURCE: Reuters news agency

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2019-07-10 04:51:00Z
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Australia issues RfI for Tiger helicopter replacement - IHS Jane's 360

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2019-07-09 10:37:35Z
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Indian billionaire defends controversial coal mine in Australia - Al Jazeera America

The Indian billionaire behind the controversial Carmichael coal mine in Australia is hitting back at criticism the endeavor will be both unprofitable and too dirty.

In an interview in New Delhi, Gautam Adani took aim at two major faults opponents have flung at the development: that the mine's low-quality coal won't earn enough money to justify his $2 billion investment, and that the world must abandon the fuel in favor of renewable energy to avoid catastrophic climate change.

"If the project wasn't viable, we wouldn't have pursued it," said Adani, whose net worth of $9.8 billion makes him India's sixth-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. "Renewable energy is good for the nation, but it can't meet our baseload power needs."

Adani bought the resource in Australia's Galilee Basin in 2010 as Indian companies rushed for overseas energy supplies amid forecasts of booming demand. But as coal prices fizzled through the first half of the decade, Carmichael's output - closer to lower-quality Indonesian coal than the high-value varieties Australia is known for - is seen unable to fetch a price strong enough to be profitable.

"The commerciality of Adani's Carmichael mine remains challenging given the significant capital spend and low-quality thermal coal product expected from the mine," said Brent Spalding, a principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie Ltd.

Climate warnings

Australia's Newcastle coal, a benchmark in Asia, would need to rise above $100 a metric ton, from about $78 now, for Carmichael to break even, according to Spalding.

Carmichael, which cleared final state approvals last month, will open up a new mining basin in the Australian outback amid increasingly dire warnings of the need to cut carbon emissions to avoid the ecological and economic havoc of climate change. Though coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, Adani has found a relatively friendly host country in Australia, where the economic heft of the resource industry helped re-elect a pro-coal federal government and overcome staunch opposition from environmentalists.

"We entered Australia with two overarching goals; contributing to energy security in India and creating job opportunities for the locals," said Adani, 57, who started as a diamond trader in Mumbai before setting up Adani Group in 1988. His conglomerate - spanning ports, energy and mining - has become one of India's key infrastructure service providers, while also venturing overseas.

Surplus generation

Coal's use has been on the decline in Europe and the U.S. amid cheaper alternatives and pressure to ditch the most-polluting fossil fuel. Yet it dominates power production in much of Asia, a position it's expected to sustain despite a boom in cleaner sources, such as wind and solar, as energy demand continues to grow.
Adani said the board approved 10 million metric tons of annual output from Carmichael's first phase, which will head to his power plants in India, including Mundra and Godda. Adani Group is headquartered in Gujarat the state where current Prime Minister Narendra Modi served as the chief minister for little over a decade before he swept national elections in 2014.

India's per-capita consumption of electricity "is way below the global average," Adani said. "India's development is linked to the availability of more power. And coal will play a big role in this as a baseload supplier."

India's challenges supplying reliable power to every home have been more about distribution than whether it has enough power plants or coal. The nation already has a surplus of generation capacity, but it's money-losing, debt-saddled state utilities struggle to purchase and distribute enough power, leaving some power stations shuttered and homes in the dark.

When the company decides to raise the capacity of Carmichael - peak annual capacity is now seen at 27 million tons, down from an original 60 million - it will explore selling washed coal to buyers in Japan and Korea, according to Adani. Construction has already begun, he said, reiterating the company's two-year timeline for first output.

"The need of the hour," Adani said, "is to get started."

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2019-07-09 04:03:00Z
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4G speeds topping 5G in Australia: Opensignal - ZDNet

(Image: Opensignal)

Of eight nations where Opensignal conducted real-world testing during April to the end of June, Australia is the only nation where 4G speeds were better than the much-hyped speeds of 5G.

According to Opensignal, Australia's maximum 4G network speed was 950Mbps, while 5G topped out at 792Mbps. This left it as the only country with 4G outpacing 5G, although Spain only had a 6Mbps difference between the two.

For the rest of the world, the US hit 1.8Gbps on 5G, followed by Switzerland on 1.1Gbps, South Korea just below 1.1Gbps, UAE registered 665Mbps, with Italy close by on 657Mbps, Spain just above 600Mbps, and the UK bringing up the rear with 569Mbps.

This meant 5G sits in a range of 0.8 times to 2.7 times as quick as 4G.

In tests conducted by ZDNet last month, 5G speeds failed to crack 300Mbps, with the one exception being in Telstra's Sydney headquarters.

See: Real world 5G not ready for primetime in 2019

Opensignal said the quick speed exhibited by the US was due to the use of millimetre wave spectrum.

"This is extremely high capacity and extremely fast spectrum but has very limited coverage compared with the 3.4-3.8 GHz 5G 'mid band' spectrum typically used in most of the other countries we analysed where mmWave spectrum is not yet available," it said.

For its tests, Opensignal said it wanted to look at "the true end-to-end network experience" and does not use servers located "very close" to users.

On Monday, Telstra released a set of electromagnetic energy readings on its live 5G network in Queensland that showed similar readings to 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi.

"In the testing we completed inside apartments and cafes near our 5G Innovation Centre at Southport on the Gold Coast, we measured 5G EME levels consistently under 0.02% of the ARPANSA standard limit -- that is more than 5000 times below the safety limit put in place by the Australian government body responsible for EME," Telstra principal EME strategy, governance and risk management Mike Wood said.

"It is also important to note that existing safety standards for EME cover 5G, including children, are conservative and will also include the higher mmWave frequencies to be used in the future."

Telstra presented its data to the World Health Organisation and International Electrotechnical Commission.

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2019-07-09 01:07:00Z
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