Aborigines greeted Prime Minister John Howard's surprise plan to give constitutional recognition to Australia's indigenous people with mixed views yesterday, with many calling it a stunt ahead of coming elections.
Howard, who has been at loggerheads with indigenous leaders on many issues during his more than 11 years in power, made an abrupt about-face on Thursday, admitting past mistakes and offering a new plan for reconciliation between black and white Australians.
Howard said he would hold a referendum that would ask Australians to enshrine Aborigines in the constitution as the original inhabitants of the country. If successful, the change would not give Aborigines greater rights but would be powerfully symbolic.
Howard said the referendum would be held within 18 months if he is returned to power at elections. He is widely expected to call elections within days, but opinion polls show he will struggle to win them.
Critics said Howard's conversion to the reconciliation cause was too little, too late and appeared to be an election ploy.
"Mr. Howard's actions over 11 years belie his words," said David Ross, the director of the Central Land Council that represents Aborigines in part of the Outback Northern Territory. "When a snake sheds his skin, he has a shiny new skin, but he's still the same old snake, with the same old venom."
Aborigines are a minority of about 450,000 among Australia's 21 million people, and are the poorest and most disadvantaged group, with a life expectancy 20 years shorter than other Australians. While Aborigines form a tiny voting bloc, their plight is a national political issue that has divided liberal and conservative Australians.
Other Aboriginal leaders said Howard's move was a surprise, but he should be given credit for it, no matter what the timing.
"I think that it's a big shift for him, but this is about the nation's reconciliation, it's not about John Howard's reconciliation," Pat Dodson, a former reconciliation commissioner, said on ABC radio. "I think it's a positive contribution to the process."
Howard again ruled out making an official apology to Aborigines for past wrongs -- something he conceded had helped stall relations between his government and indigenous people in the past.
"He has got a problem with that five letter word called sorry, and he really needs to come out and make a proper apology to indigenous people," Aboriginal leader John Ah Kit told ABC radio.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS