Albo has finally united Australians - by disappointing everyone

theaustralian.com.au

The PM has finally united Australians… by disappointing everyone
The Mocker
8–10 minutes
Furious Indigenous activists, like many before them, made the mistake of believing Anthony Albanese could be trusted.
He has done it. Finally Anthony Albanese has made good on one of his many promises. Think back to election night in 2022 when he gave his victory speech, declaring, he “wanted to bring Australians together”.
Admittedly he has gone about it in an unusual way, having broken a promise in order to keep a promise. As we learned on the weekend, he has quietly rissoled the proposed Makarrata Commission, which the Uluru Statement had envisaged would oversee treaties and so-called truth-telling.
This has infuriated Indigenous activists. Like many before them, they made the mistake of believing Albanese could be trusted. But in one respect he has delivered, albeit inadvertently. The Prime Minister has brought Australians together, even if their only thing in common is their disdain for him.
All smiles and folksy during his keynote speech at the Garma Festival on Saturday, Albanese had a new vision for Indigenous Australia. “Renewable energy,” he declared, was “the best chance Australia has ever had to bring genuine self-determination and lasting economic empowerment to remote communities”.

Former Labor senator Stephen Conroy discusses the confusion of the stance of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the Makarrata Commission. "The political reality of the defeat of The Voice means that the government needs to recalibrate its position going forward," Mr Conroy said. "I think he gave a very clear sign he wouldn't commit to the former process, in the face of the outcome of The Voice referendum that's wise."
He mentioned Makarrata only once, saying his government remained “committed”. It did not take long for his audience to twig.
“We are not happy. My people and I are not happy that there was no mention about the Makarrata [Commission] in his speeches here,” said NT Legislative Assembly member and Liya-dhälinymirr Djambarrpuyŋu man Mark Guyula. Albanese, he protested, “won’t walk through the fire”.
Not so, Mark Guyula. If ever there was a man who walked through the fire at Garma, it was Albanese. How else do you explain the smoke coming from his pants?
Asked by Insiders host David Speers on Saturday about the Makarrata process, Albanese was coy. What of the truth and justice commission, asked Speers.
“That’s not what we have proposed,” replied Albanese. “What we’ve proposed is Makarrata just being the – the idea of coming together.” Feigning bemusement, he said he was “somewhat perplexed at why people see that as being complex”.
His banal definition of Makarrata was remarkably different from what he previously envisaged. Addressing parliament in 2020, the then opposition leader spoke reverently not just of the proposed voice, but also of what was to follow.
“The liberation of truth must be followed by agreement-making, which the Uluru Statement expresses as a Makarrata Commission,” he said. “Let that great Yolngu word ‘Makarrata’ spread from East Arnhem Land and fill an entire continent. Let everyone feel what those four syllables hold. What does it mean?”
Good question. What does it mean, Albo, or rather what did you want it to mean back then?
“Conflict resolution, making peace after a dispute, justice, the path to national treaty — agreements that acknowledge the pre-existing rights of a people in a land where sovereignty was never ceded, and we have it within us to do it,” he said.
This was no off-the-cuff remark. “The voice will be nothing without truth-telling,” said Albanese in February 2021. “Without it, we cannot be whole. A Makarrata Commission as outlined in the Uluru Statement would oversee a national process of truth-telling, agreement and treaty making.”
And again, six months later: “As a priority, Labor will establish a Makarrata Commission with responsibility for truth-telling and treaty. It will be established through a process of open nominations and review.”
In November 2021 he resumed these parliamentary declarations. “We will implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full,” he said, a commitment that was repeated in his victory speech. Pointing to the members of the Morrison government, he declared this was “something that hasn’t been advanced from those opposite”.
“It’s always just about the announcement and never the delivery for a prime minister who is just not up to the job,” he said, a line of exquisite irony.
So too are the words of Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. Voice, treaty and truth were “the pillars of Labor’s commitment to honouring the Uluru Statement from the Heart,” the then shadow attorney-general told parliament in 2020.
“It is of deep regret to me that the three pillars of the Morrison government’s response to that invitation to reconciliation appear to be arrogant silence, cynical obfuscation and, if forced to speak on the subject, lame excuses and marketing spin trying to justify the government continuing to do precisely nothing.”

And in February 2023, during his second reading speech for the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) Bill, Dreyfus told parliament the Albanese government was “working towards a Makarrata Commission, to respond to the calls for agreement-making and truth-telling.”
This would “continue beyond the referendum,” he declared.
Dreyfus’s words were unambiguous, as was the government’s Budget allocation in 2022 of $5.8 million to “commence work on establishing an independent Makarrata Commission”. Small wonder Uluru Dialogue co-chair Pat Anderson was dismayed following Albanese’s appearance on Insiders.
“Makarrata is not a vague vibe or a series of casual conversations,” she said. “The Makarrata called for in the Uluru Statement is a bricks and mortar body and it was a clear election promise.”
It was. Yet on Sunday Albanese persisted with his farcical attempts to contextualise his government’s delivery of Makarrata according to the narrow definition of that Yolngu word. Asked by a journalist whether he was “redefining” his “commitment to Makarrata,” he stubbornly claimed he was not.
To paraphrase the Attorney-General, the Prime Minister’s actions are cynical obfuscation. When forced to speak on the subject, he offers lame excuses and marketing spin as he attempts to justify his government’s decision to do precisely nothing.
Sky News contributor Prue MacSween discusses the Prime Minister's comments, saying he remains committed to Makarrata, the truth-telling agreement between First Nations people and the government. "The bloke is not only weak and incompetent, he is a slow learner clearly," Ms MacSween told Sky News host Rita Panahi. "He has been in Grama, so he wants to do the grand gesture even though all that talk, all those hundreds of millions of dollars that were wasted on the Voice, have not done one thing to close the gap."
Did I say “nothing”? My apologies. I had forgotten about Albanese’s promise at Garma that “clean energy projects” would deliver “prosperity for Indigenous communities”. How great are those solar panels and wind turbines, otherwise known as the new beads and mirrors?
It was folly of Albanese to endorse the demands of the Uluru Statement in the first place. Irrespective of a sympathetic media’s portrayal, the tranches of voice, treaty and truth, had they been realised, were precursors to separatism and co-governance.
A reckless Albanese pursued this largely because he thought it was politically advantageous for Labor. He thought he could cause a rupture in the Coalition and consign its members to opposition for a generation. Few examples illustrate his expediency better than by contrasting his grandiose and sanctimonious Makarrata Commission avowals with his weasel words of last weekend.
Instead of being honest, he had the chutzpah to criticise Opposition Leader Peter Dutton for not supporting Makarrata.
“I’m not quite sure how Peter Dutton justifies saying he’s against truth-telling,” he told Speers.
Regarding that subject, I have a question, and it was prompted by the footage of the bloke at Garma awkwardly sporting the cheesy grin and Akubra. Is there an equivalent in Yolngu for the expression “as shifty as a hatful of spiders”?