Greens Have Trapped Aborigines In Poverty Says Warren Mundine

WARREN Mundine has launched a stinging attack on green groups and inner-city types who “tweet about welfare reform”, accusing them of preventing Aboriginal people from escaping poverty and building a real economy.

The Prime Minister’s chief adviser on indigenous affairs told a Perth indigenous business conference that the anti-development ideology of environmentalists resulted in leaving Aboriginal people “frozen in time”.

“Aboriginal people are amongst the poorest people on the planet; a people whose main assets are rights over land and sea,” he said in a speech to the indigenous Business, Enterprise & Corporations Conference on Monday night.

“After years of dispossession and being forced off our land, we’re slowly getting some of those rights back — only to be told by Green groups that the music has stopped.

“The Greens’ agenda will keep indigenous Australians in poverty and is the greatest threat to the preservation of traditional language and culture.

“Green groups in Australia want to keep indigenous Australians and their land frozen in time.

“This is wrong. Aboriginal people are not museum pieces.

“Traditional owners treasure their rivers and land. They also treasure their culture and languages. Most want to remain on their country. But the greatest threat to their languages and culture, their way of life and their desire to live on country, is the inability to build a real economy.”

Mr Mundine said public reaction to the recent review by mining billionaire Andrew Forrest had focused on recommendations about a cashless welfare card intended to stop welfare recipients spending their income on alcohol and gambling.

But the review was mainly about how to get indigenous people into jobs and businesses and how governments could establish the conditions for economic development.

“The whole point of the Forrest Review is to get people off welfare,” he said.

“And when people earn their own wage they can spend it however they like.

“While people in capital cities drink their lattes and tweet about the injustices of welfare reform, indigenous people out there on country want the shackles lifted and want the opportunities to build and grow their communities in the way that they see fit.”