The Labor senator and Aboriginal elder also criticised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton over his calls for a royal commission into sexual abuse in the Northern Territory.
Labor senator and Aboriginal elder Pat Dodson has warned Australians won’t get another chance at reconciliation for another generation if the proposed Indigenous Voice to parliament fails, urging the federal Opposition to back the referendum to avoid electoral oblivion.calls for a royal commission into sexual abuse of Indigenous youth in the Northern TerritorySenator Pat Dodson says the government will never be able to satisfy the critics of the Voice with more detail.
Dodson said he had previously committed to not attacking opponents of the Voice because “they are entitled to their opinions, as wrongheaded as they might be”.“I’ve held to that pledge. But let me tell you, with so much nonsense and mischief being peddled out there, there have been times where it’s been hard to hold my tongue,” he said.
Dodson noted that he recently turned 75, which makes him a “very, very old man in Aboriginal society”. “There won’t be another opportunity like this... in my lifetime,” he said. Dodson said there was something going on internally in the Liberal Party “that’s causing them to ... stay in oblivion – we’ve seen the results in some of those teal seats”.
Dodson also criticised the then-Labor opposition in 2007 for backing the Howard government’s Northern Territory Intervention that involved sending the army into the jurisdiction.was also evidence of why the Voice is needed.
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