by MONICA O’SHEA – SINGING legend Kamahl has changed his mind again on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and will now be voting No.
The 88-year-old broke the news to shocked The Project hosts Hamish Macdonald and Rachel Corbett on a live television broadcast Sunday night.
- What I am saying is No.
- I apologise, call me a hypocrite or uninformed but I am informed now.
- According to recent polls, the Yes vote has been losing significant support.
“What I am saying is No,” Kamahl said on live television.
“If you do the Voice this way, it becomes a racist issue. You are putting a whole race of people separate from the rest of the country.
UNINFORMED
“I apologise, call me a hypocrite or uninformed but I am informed now. Whatever I said before now, wipe it out, but start all over again and forgive me.”
Kamahl said there were 1200 dialects spoken among indigenous communities and added “I am not sure if they have a common voice amongst the people”.
The singer then quoted a widely reported $40b figure that he believed had been spent on the indigenous community each year.
This prompted Mr Macdonald to “fact check” Kamahl on his statistics.
“I feel like we should just probably fact check the $40b figure because you’ve used it a few times and I know a lot of people are listening to you,” Mr Macdonald said.
“That’s been fact checked as false. The government agency says it’s never administered funding of $30b a year on Indigenous programs, its total budget for 2022-23 was $4.5b.”
Kamahl then said he had “made a mistake” in response to Macdonald’s fact check.
The 88-year-old Malaysian-Australian, originally said he would be voting No at the referendum.
“I’m voting No because I don’t understand it!” Kamahl wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on September 13.
CHANGED
However, he then declared on X that he had changed his mind and would be voting Yes.
“Once again, my sincere thanks to everyone kind and caring enough to join me in support of the Yes vote,” he said on X on September 22.
Kamahl’s first change of heart even prompted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to declare “Kamahl-mentum” during a press conference in West Ryde last week.
“So, we have now a new term that we’ve coined today, Kamahl-mentum, in the last couple of weeks,” the prime minister said.
“I would just encourage people to not be focused on what this isn’t about, but be focused on what it is about
“It is about just recognition, and is about giving people a Voice, over, a say, over their affairs, because then you’ll get better outcomes.”
The 2023 referendum will be held on Saturday, October 14.
ADVISORY
Australians will be asked if they agree to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, a permanent advisory body comprised of 24 Indigenous individuals who will make representations to the parliament.
According to recent polls, the Yes vote has been losing support.
The AFR/Freshwater poll result showed support for the referendum was at 33 per cent while The Guardian/Essential poll had support at 42 per cent.PC
Isn’t it long past time to abolish State and Federal race based Departments for Indigenous Affairs?
State and Federal social services have provision to assist people with special needs.
And since 1901 there are still approximately twenty per cent of Australians who identify as having Indigenous ancestry, at least in part, but most are living far from city and large town services and/or have cultural based problems including domestic violence, education not given much consideration more often than not for young people and other issues. Obviously, spending $40 billion every year and retaining a small army of bureaucrats is not cost effective. So direct action within communities using culturally aware qualified councillors and other qualifications must be a better way.
And stop the grab for land based on vacant public land, as compared to claims for traditional country in accordance with the Mabo decision and related Land Rights legislation. Investigate Aboriginal Land Councils and activities, how are communities being managed.
The Uluru Statement has revealed the objectives of the Aboriginal Activists and the politics involved, so vote no.
Quote
“During her editorial on Monday night, Credlin declared Kamahl was “spot on” with his claim about funding for Indigenous Australians.
“The Project hosts, well, they did a good job of trying to verbal him into thinking that his macro $40 billion budget number was somehow related to Canberra’s National Indigenous Agency,” she said on Credlin.
“He didn’t say that, they said that.”
Credlin believed the singer was referring to overall budget numbers from all state and territory governments across the country.
“And the truth is that Kamahl was right. Taxpayers do spend around $40 billion a year on Aboriginal Australians,” she said.
Credlin then cited the 2017 Indigenous Expenditure Report from the the federal government’s Productivity Commission.
She pointed to an excerpt of the document which states that the total direct government expenditure on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians was roughly $33.4 billion in 2015-2016.
“Then there’s all the specific Indigenous programs run by state and federal governments, such as the $4.5 billion spent by the National Indigenous Australians Agency,” she continued.
“Adjusting the 2016 figure in the Productivity Commission’s report for inflation, well, that gives us now a figure of $39.5 billion in Aboriginal spending today.
“So, Kamahl last night on The Project was actually spot on with his $40 billion figure.””
What I find annoying about this, is people suggesting he is a dithering old fool because he changes his mind. I think changing your mind when different facts come to light is sensible and most sensible people do it. Unlike people who started out in believing in climate change, when presented with facts disproving this ridicules idea, refuse to change their mind.
Climate hoax based warming scare is of course global politics and money based.
As former Prime Minister Tony Abbott observed, and was misquoted by the leftists, the UN IPCC computer modelling is “crap”, the leftists claimed that he said climate change not modelling.
Climate, weather, naturally.
Prepare for natural disasters, do not create myths about the Earth Cycles involved.