Subjects: Comments made by the Voice Referendum Working Group member Professor Marcia Langton; Federal Coalition to overturn ACT Government drug laws; Labor driving up cost of living pressures with building regulations.
E&OE
RAY HADLEY:
Well, we’ve spent the last couple of days playing all sorts of audio from Marcia Langton; and the point I made earlier in the program is, the Professor held certain views a long time ago and we can start tracing her views back 10 years ago when she said:
[excerpt]
MARCIA LANGTON:
By and large, Australians don’t really understand the swamp of racism that they live in, and they find it difficult to disaggregate these issues.
[end excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
So that’s a fair while ago that you’d say, ‘well, everyone can change’. That was, I think, 10 years ago, but then six years ago she said this:
[excerpt]
MARCIA LANGTON:
What fantasy world do they live in that would make them even ask the question? Of course Australia is racist. It’s a horrible, racist country.
[end excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
So you fast forward three years ago and again, another one, this time after declaring social workers were mostly racist and all coppers were racist, she had this to say about teachers:
[excerpt]
MARCIA LANGTON:
Teachers are, by and large – that is the majority, have a range of excuses, and it’s a bit like the you know, ‘I’m not racist, I’ve never seen any racism’. That’s because their whole world is white and it’s so normal for everything to be so white, that they can’t imagine a world where, you know, the African Australian community down the road actually have jobs – like Behan pointed out – in the police force and other institutions. So it’s that normative racism. They can’t see racism because they live in the soup of their racism.
[end excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
So, again, that’s three years ago. So we go, you know, chronologically: 10 years ago, six years ago, three years ago, but then we get to last week:
[excerpt]
MARCIA LANGTON:
Every time the No case raises one of their arguments, if you start pulling it apart, you get down to base racism. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s where it lands. Or just sheer stupidity.
[end excerpt]
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, so you’re either racist or you’re stupid. Or maybe a combination of both.
Then I come to this and her apparent hatred of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. She wrote a piece probably five years ago now, and it’s really offensive: ‘No one with a revulsion for the influence of the alt-right or neo-Nazis in our body politic would be surprised to learn that an aspiring Aboriginal candidate for the House of Representatives could graduate from the role of children’s entertainer “Yamba the Honey Ant” to darling of the Country Liberal Party. Still, the average pundit would not be aware that the majority of this person’s social media followers are the rabid racists who claim to support a pro-Aboriginal cause by backing the aspirant’s bizarre political agenda. This hopeful candidate is Jacinta Price, Alice Springs Town councillor and daughter of an Indigenous woman, Bes Price, and David Price, an enigmatic white Australian who’s lived in the Northern Territory for more than four decades’. Enigmatic.
I wonder what Marcia Langdon’s background is – her parents: were they both indigenous or one perhaps not Indigenous? One was Indigenous? I have no idea, but it’d be worth asking, given that she’s slinging off the enigmatic white father of Jacinta Price. And she talks about Bes Price and her deficiencies – Jacinta’s mother – even though she was in public service in the Northern Territory Government for some time.
But then this hateful, hateful, hateful paragraph: ‘it’s important to communicate with all Australians on this issue, as I have a number of times myself, but speaking at the Bennelong Society for the Centre for Independent Studies to the exclusion of other organisations raises the suspicion that Bess and Jacinta Price have become the ‘useful coloured help’ in rescuing the racist image of these conservative outfits’.
This woman would be on the Voice – there’s no doubt about it, she’s one of the architects of it. I mean, the level of vitriol and bile displayed by her – historically and more recently, beggars belief.
We have a regular chat with the Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who’s apparently going to get sued for what he put on Instagram.
Mr Dutton, good morning to you.
PETER DUTTON:
Good morning Ray.
RAY HADLEY:
I just, I mean, you know, I can hate, but the level of vitriol towards another Indigenous woman by this Indigenous woman just beggars belief.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, it’s not an off the cuff remark or something she said, you know, in passing that she now regrets. This is a common theme over a long period of time, and there’s something in, you know, the motivation that I guess we don’t know about, but it’s certainly very bitter and vitriolic and it deserves further examination, too Ray, because Marcia Langton is likely to be one of the people who will form the body of the Voice. She’s been front and centre to discussions with the Prime Minister.
Remember when the Prime Minister went into the meeting trying to limit the words to put into the Constitution? They basically, you know, told him ‘there’s the door, out you go’. And you can see now why, because he, I think, would have got pretty quick advice from Marcia Langton and others.
I suppose Australians have got to ask themselves between now and October 14, whether somebody like Marcia Langton as part of the Voice, and advising government on every issue that the government is contemplating, whether or not that’s going to help Indigenous people in remote communities? Is it going to help school attendance? Is it going to reduce the crime rates? Is it going to help people into jobs? Is it going to lift people out of squalor?
The other point to I suppose Ray, is that many of these people have been advising governments of both persuasions for decades – and we see the images out of Alice Springs now that are no different than, or maybe worse than, they were 20 years ago.
So, I hope we can get some younger people and people who are a little more objective, and like Jacinta, who has lived in Alice Springs and in regional communities and has a passion for wanting to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians instead of this hatred that just continues to come out of Marcia Langton’s mouth.
RAY HADLEY:
I don’t think the Prime Minister is ever going to say it, but I’m tipping that privately he’s saying, ‘Oh, Marcia and Thomas, can you just be quiet?’ Just, you know, ‘disappear for a little bit’. ‘Go and have a couple of weeks off, maybe a month off before, you know, up until October 13 and then come back into the fray’. Because I would imagine – based on the level of support I’m getting here for Jacinta Price after I spoke with her yesterday – that they’re doing more harm than good to the Yes campaign.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think they’re just providing, you know, a sort of a look through the window of what the Voice might be as a body if it’s successful on October 14. It will be divisive, it will divide Australians, and you hear it in the language of Marcia Langton, but some of the others as well – the members on the committee who have got union affiliations, or Labor Party backgrounds, or sympathiser to the Communist cause – I mean these people are the ones who would have all of the power under the Voice that the Prime Minister’s proposing. I suppose in part it’s why the Prime Minister said early on, remember that ‘it’d be a brave Prime Minister or a brave government that ignored the advice of the Voice’.
As Linda Burney demonstrated again in Question Time yesterday, the Voice will have a say on every issue that it wants to. That’s the reality because Linda Burney yesterday couldn’t nominate one area of public policy that doesn’t affect Indigenous Australians.
So this nonsense of saying, ‘oh, the Voice is just going to be restricted to issues that affect Indigenous Australians’. It’s a complete nonsense argument; and the Prime Minister can scoff all he wants, but he’s made a decision about the company he keeps and I think Australians are seeing a very different person than they thought he was in the election of May of last year.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay, just on to another issue. I note that the Federal Opposition is trying to run some interference for the ACT Government being the ‘drug capital of Australia’. October 28 reforms come into effect decriminalising small quantities of ice, heroin, cocaine, other drugs.
Now, when you got someone as high ranking as the man in charge of policing in the ACT – their Commissioner saying ‘this is a bad thing’, worrying about bikies coming down and people visiting Canberra for the reason to buy drugs because they’ll be legalised, you know, for personal use and the like. Obviously – and other people have spoken about it, spoken out about it, and then we came to the stage where the Health Minister in the ACT, she clearly said that this was on the agenda and they snuck it through, the blindside. So we don’t know too much about it, we sort of quietly took it to the election, but they’ve been in power for 22 years.
Now, what can you do in Opposition to in some way prevent this from happening?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Ray, we’ve introduced a Private Senator’s Bill, and that will pass the Parliament if the Prime Minister supports it. So far, Labor said that they won’t support it, that they support the ACT Government’s decisions around decriminalising – and you’re talking here about cocaine, MDMA, speed, heroin, ice.
It’s remarkable that somehow the Labor Party believes that this is going to reduce crime in the ACT. As you point out: the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Border Force, others have advised against this, they’ve warned against it, and as the AFP have said, you’ll end up luring drug users into Canberra. That’ll be the tourism attraction for people coming from all over the country – as you see in states in the United States – I mean that’s the reality of what happens there.
So, I don’t think any good can come of it. You know, I’ve delivered death messages to parents whose kids have died of overdoses. I’ve been to countless domestic violence incidences where blokes are as high as a kite and they commit crimes that they wouldn’t otherwise. How they could in good conscience do this and why the Prime Minister won’t stand up to it is beyond me.
RAY HADLEY:
So, I mean, will it be in vain? I mean you’ve got people on the crossbenches and the Greens sympathetic to all of this because they’re part of the ACT Government. So while you are well-intended, do you think you’ve got any hope?
PETER DUTTON:
We’ve only got hope if the government supports it, and that will be a decision for the Prime Minister. It’s not interfering with the Territory’s rights. There are federal agencies here who are advising against this Act, and the Prime Minister’s responsibility is to stand up for all Australians, and at the moment I think the Bill we’ve got is sensible, it’s measured and it should be supported and I hope it will.
RAY HADLEY:
Look, just one question without notice and it only came to my attention overnight and this morning and you may – it’s not really a federal matter, it’s a state matter for the various states and territories – and it’s about this seven star energy rating, which you probably have read about that’s being introduced in New South Wales on October one and other states and territories delaying it or on October one this year. In New South Wales they’ve said, ‘look, if you sign a contract to build a house before October one, you won’t be subjected to the seven star energy rating’. Queensland we’ve been trying to get an answer, but Annastacia’s has been on the Amalfi Coast and not too much interested in what’s happening back home. But from October one, new rules will be enforced in Queensland and the ACT and the Northern Territory, strangely enough, where if you build a home you have to include step free access, hallways wide enough to fit a wheelchair in – this is every home, not just a home where a disabled person might reside – it also includes disability access requirements to bathrooms, toilets and shower. Basically, all new homes built in Queensland will need to be wheelchair accessible from October one this year.
I mean, at a time when the Prime Minister is throwing $10 billion towards housing, at a time when the Queensland Government are allegedly trying to get more homes built – as is the case in Queensland and other states and territories. When I was first told this yesterday via an email, I said ‘oh can’t be right’, but it’s 100 per cent right. I’ve got notes from architects and builders today telling me this will add somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000 for the cost of a home when it’s not necessary.
PETER DUTTON:
Ray, the problem is that they just don’t have any regard for money and they don’t have any regard for cost. If you’re a young family building a house or, you know, you’ve decided to upgrade your house because your family’s grown or whatever the scenario, the thought that people can afford another $40,000 on top of what’s already an expensive project to build a house in Australia at the moment, you’ll just price people out of the market and they don’t have any regard for that and there’s no discussion about it.
I met actually with a builder in my electorate and the Master Builders representative as well, and when you go through what it is that’s being proposed – I mean everybody supports reasonable access and support for people with disabilities, etc – but for every house at a cost of $40,000, there are some projects that just can’t go ahead now because of the grade of the land.
At a time when we should be getting more housing stock into the system and trying to bring some pressure downwards on the prices, you’ve got these sort of decisions being made and the builders are ripping their hair out, but it just seems one blow after the next in terms of destruction to the economy.
I mean Labor’s out of control in Queensland, we can see that, but at a federal level as well, they condone all of that. The industrial relations laws now and the impact of that on the building sector, it is quite staggering. I’ve never seen all of the business groups and a lot of others – particularly small business groups, come together united in the way that they are against what the government’s proposing down here. It just passes more cost onto Australians at a time when they can’t afford it.
RAY HADLEY:
Well, I’ll be speaking to the HIA Chief Executive from Queensland, Mike Roberts, in the next 10 minutes, so I’ll get a better handle on what he’s got to say about it, but I’m interested that you’ve spoken to local builders in your own electorate, and I mean it’ll come as a shock to many people in Queensland, maybe not builders and architects, but to many prospective home owners building their own home and you know, ‘the dream home’, all of a sudden, wider hallways, wider doors, no steps, ramps, even if they don’t have a disabled person anywhere near them. It just is bizarre.
PETER DUTTON:
That’s right, and I think a toilet on that ground level as well is required, even if it’s a steeper site where you might walk up stairs, or walk in the front door onto a landing and then upstairs to get into the house. As I say, like it’s near impossible to build on some of those sites the builders say to me. So, yeah, let’s hope they reconsider it.
RAY HADLEY:
Okay. Thanks for your time. We’ll talk next week.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Ray. See you mate.
[ends]