2010 Federal Election

August 2010

As a Senior Aboriginal Elder, I write with deep concern regarding the campaign taking place on the eastern seaboard leading up to the election.

We watch with interest that you, Prime Minister and Tony Abbott walk amongst white people. Your interviews are always with white men or women nursing white children. It slings a very dark shadow on Aboriginal People who are the first inhabitants of this country.

You are never seen talking to Aboriginal men or women or nursing Aboriginal children or patting them on the heads. This applies to you, Prime Minister and you, Tony Abbott and you, Bob Brown. When are you going to be seen walking amongst the Aboriginal Communities which are spread the lengths and breadth of the whole continent – the creek beds of the Todd River, Broome of Western Australia?

Big gaols are built in the Northern Territory to house Aboriginal men on charges to keep them away from their Land and their Culture. Julia Gillard, your campaigning to become Prime Minister is a farce and the dictators of the past such as Bob Hawke, and John Howard who inflicted the Northern Territory intervention upon the Aboriginal People when? he got kicked out of Parliament, and You, Prime Minister, and Kevin Rudd, you continued on with that intervention against the Aboriginal People in the Northern Territory to kick them out of their Communities and rudely push your way through the creek beds and waterways and capital cities. In Broome, Western Australia, they have started clearing the coastlines of Aboriginal People telling them to piss off.

You mention not of the Muslims or Indians. You are not seen walking among other ethnic groups. Your campaign says to the Aboriginal Nation that your campaign is based all on the White Australian Policy.

You destroy our waterways, you rip our grounds, you shove Aboriginal People from one camping ground to another. You attack the boat people which you yourselves are. You are migrants coming to our shores and our lands without Our, the Aboriginal Peoples’ permission.

All you are seen is walking amongst white people and standing up and praising up the mining companies - how good and how powerful they are ripping up our Land and then you sell the body parts of our Mother such as coal, gold, iron to China. The naked truth is yet to be told and you, Prime Minister and Tony Abbbott and the Government you represented before Kevin Rudd was kicked out the Government did not tell the people of Australia the intentions they had and what action they were meant to take to assist the Aboriginal People before they got into power. All Mr Rudd said when his Government got into power was ‘I’m Sorry’. Then he continued on with the Northern Territory Intervention, breaking up Communities.

All the Spiritual Dreaming along the Broome Coast is going to be destroyed by greed, power and the building of cities for white people to live in and the silver towers of industry in where the Aboriginal People are forced to be out of sight, out of mind in vacant blocks as holding pens for the time to keep them out of the road of industry and development.

Also to you, Julia Gillard the Acting Prime Minister, your Government was asked when Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister to support us in restoring the homes to the Women and Children of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community of Lockridge Western Australia. You lately have come out and supported Schappelle Corbey of her mental illness in Bali to return home yet you have not supported the Women and Children of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community to go back to their own Home. You and the State Government are dragging you feet by refusing to recognise our rights over our Registered Sacred Site of this whole area. You have set a very bad example for all women, both Black and white, because you by choosing who you will help and who you won’t help you are heading towards racial discrimination.

We challenge and we ask Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott and Bob Brown to a debate in front of Parliament House Canberra of all Aboriginal Elders and People from all over the breadth and length of Australia to attend and ask questions.

Robert Bropho
Senior Elder
Swan Valley Nyungah Community