Pauline Hanson has made claims about why most ns voted no to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament – before hitting out at the term ‘Traditional Owners’ in a fiery speech that sparked uproar in the Senate.
On Monday the One Nation leader Senator Hanson read out to the Senate a comment on her Facebook page from ‘Rebecca’ while delivering a stinging post-mortem on the defeated Voice referendum.
‘Can we stop using the term Traditional Owners?’ Senator Hanson quotes the post as asking.
‘Aborigines did not and do not own . They were original inhabitants, and that is it.’
‘Mother Nature provided all what Aboriginals claim as theirs. They did not build Ayer’s Rock, the Three Sisters, Kakadu, the river systems, the mountains etc.
‘They used the land and its natural resources and structures that were already there.
‘They did not construct or design a damn thing and just as they continue they do today they use and take whatever is available to them.
‘That’s how a lot of ns feel.’
Senator Lidia Thorpe’s interjected, saying ‘Not all ns’.
But Senator Hanson continued, saying: ‘What people tend to forget, like Senator Thorpe, is that I was born here too, and so were millions of other ns and the migrants who have come here.
‘All I have asked for is equality for all ns. If you need it, you get that helping hand. If you don’t need it, then fine, you don’t.
‘If you work hard for what you need and that’s been proven by the 11 Senators in this Parliament who actually are of Aboriginal descent and yet you want special treatment.
‘And you don’t deserve it, no more than millions of other ns,’ Senator Hanson said with a glare across the chamber.
Senator Hanson said Indigenous ns should be acknowledged solely as the original inhabitants of but that should confer no special privileges
The shouted interruptions increased until Senate president Sue Lines intervened and told both Senators to take their seats.
After a telling pause she told Senator Hanson to resume but to address remarks to her as the chair.
Senator Hanson resumed and asserted that ‘does not only belong to the Stone Age hunter gathers discovered by the British explorers and settlers’.
‘I have to ask the question what special or unique contribution entitle Indigenous ns to special or unique rights greater than anybody else. The answer is none whatsoever,’ Senator Hanson said.
‘There has only ever been one nation on this continent founded on the first of January 1901 so there cannot be a legitimate treaty and this means there is no requirement for so-called “truth telling”.
‘This is rewriting history to maximise settlements in a treaty, just forget it.
‘We are all ns together and should be treated equally.’
Earlier in the same speech, Senator Hanson singled Senator Thorpe out for special mention.
‘There is no war on Indigenous ns as Senator Thorpe pretends,’ Senator Hanson said.
‘That she sits in parliament along with other Indigenous people shows this claim for the lie that it is.
‘The Senator is no victim on her taxpayer funded salary and most Indigenous people reject the idea they are victims.’
Senator Hanson also accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other proponents of the Voice of being ‘out of touch’.
Senator Pauline Hanson has angrily rejected the term ‘Traditional Owners’ in a fiery speech
Senator Lidia Thorpe (pictured at a pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne on Sunday) was singled out for special mention in Senator Hanson’s speech
‘ns understood the Voice was a crucial first step towards a treaty, and they knocked it back,’ she said.
‘They understood the Voice, treaty and ‘truth-telling’ would divide this country by race, and they knocked them back.
‘They understood that failure to close the gaps would not be fixed by more bureaucracy and more billions of dollars wasted on the Aboriginal industry gravy train.
‘They were lectured by big business, big banks, academics, activists, the Greens, the Teals, Minister (Linda) Burney and Prime Minister Albanese.
‘They heard these out-of-touch leaders tell them they were racist and stupid if they didn’t do what they were told.’
Senator Hanson said the ‘Aboriginal industry and the ‘Indigenous elites’ were ‘living large’ on the n taxpayer ‘while Aborigines in remote communities continue to suffer poverty, crime and welfare dependency’.
Senator Hanson argued ‘governments do not sign treaties with their own citizens’.
‘Equal rights for and special rights for none is an essential principle of n democracy,’ she said.
The proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament was resoundingly defeated by a referendum that saw over 60 per cent of voters reject it.