Anthony Albanese has endorsed telling the truth about historical and current Indigenous experiences of colonisation in Australia but stopped short of committing to establishing a commission to facilitate the process.
Speaking on ABC TV’s Insiders program at the Garma festival in north-east Arnhem Land, Albanese suggested consulting Indigenous organisations on ways to better address Indigenous disadvantage and boost economic development in their communities fits the definition of the Yolŋu word “makarrata” – coming together after struggle.
“Obviously, there has been a struggle for First Nations people,” Albanese said in an interview recorded on Saturday. “That’s why we talk about closing the gap, or what is really a chasm in some areas. And coming together is a principle of walking together – that engagement. It’s not a moment in time. It’s a process of coming together after struggle.”
Makarrata is one of three key ambitions of the Uluru statement from the heart, alongside a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament – rejected in a referendum last year – and a treaty or treaties.
The prime minister defended taking time to consult on next steps – what leaders at Garma have called a “deafening silence” from government in the 10 months since the referendum – because feelings were still “raw” and people needed time to process the result.
Albanese’s interpretation of the concept of makarrata appears to differ from the one Indigenous leaders have promoted, involving the establishment of a commission to oversee a formal process of airing truths about relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and their real-world impact.
The prime minister backed the landmark formal apology by Northern Territory police commissioner, Michael Murphy, to Indigenous Territorians, offered at Garma on Saturday, for what Murphy said had been their racist treatment by police reaching back 154 years.
The prime minister said there should be more of it.
“That’s a good thing, of course,” Albanese said. “Who’s against it? I’m not quite sure how Peter Dutton justifies saying he’s against truth telling – telling the truth about history – or against people coming together in dialogue.”
Returning to Australia from Israel on Friday, the opposition leader said that if he won office, there would be no makarrata, or truth-telling. He said spending $450m on the voice referendum was “an outrage”.
Albanese also declined to commit to pursuing the third ambition of the Uluru statement – treaty-making – at the national level, pointing instead to the processes under way in the states and territories, which he said he supports.
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He said the Indigenous disadvantage laid bare in statistics – including those Murphy quoted in his speech about the disproportionately high numbers of Indigenous people in detention and jail in the NT – was for no “inherent reason” other than “obviously … the circumstances of their birth”.
“You have intergenerational disadvantage if you have people born into an existence which doesn’t have a secure roof over their head, that doesn’t have access to education that has different health outcomes,” he said.
Albanese said he was not inclined to set up an Indigenous Voice through legislation as an alternative to enshrining it in the constitution – a move not endorsed by the leaders of the Uluru dialogues that led to the statement from the heart.
“We accept the outcome of the referendum,” he said. “So what we need to do is to work on ways which do make a practical difference. The voice was never the end in itself. The Voice was the means to close the gap by listening to people. And the Uluru statement from the heart made that very clear.”
Along with recognising and addressing the entrenched problems, Albanese said he – like his Garma hosts from the Gumatj clan – was determined to be positive about what had been achieved and what more was possible.
“One of the things that I want to do as well is to celebrate the successes,” he said. “We need to be optimistic if we’re going to move forward.”
In an address to Garma on Saturday as a pre-cursor to the prime minister’s own address, Yothu Yindi Foundation chairman Djawa Yunupingu called for government to invest significantly in permanent infrastructure in remote communities as a first step and empower local traditional owners to make a living from their land.
Albanese committed $20m to further develop the Garma Institute as an on-country tertiary and vocational education centre and announced other measures to invest in Indigenous housing and encourage private investment in Indigenous-led climate-action measures and heritage innovation.