Indigenous Voice architect Noel Pearson has broken his silence on the failed 2023 referendum, using a major address at the Garma Festival to call for the abolition of state and territory Aboriginal affairs departments.
Pearson urged that responsibility for Indigenous affairs in remote Australia be stripped from state and territory governments and handed to Canberra.
‘There should be no need for Aboriginal Affairs departments in the states and territories,’ he told the Arnhem Land gathering on Saturday.
Pearson argued the current system was fragmented, bureaucratic and ineffective.
While the Commonwealth provides much of the funding for Indigenous programs, he said states and territories control many of the systems through which the money is spent, including education, child protection, policing and youth justice.
‘The Commonwealth provides much of the funding, while the states and territories control many of the systems through which it is spent,’ he said.
‘What can you do if your state chooses to spend it on detention over education?’
He said abolishing state-based Indigenous affairs bureaucracies would cut duplication and allow funding to flow more directly to Indigenous organisations on the ground.
Noel Pearson (pictured) called for the abolition of Indigenous state and territory departments
In his first major public speech since the Voice referendum defeat in 2023, Pearson also reflected on the disappointment felt in remote Indigenous communities that strongly backed constitutional recognition.
‘The discrete Indigenous communities of Australia overwhelmingly wanted the Voice. The rest of the country did not,’ he said.
While he said he did not want to ‘relitigate’ the referendum campaign, Pearson defended the goals of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the proposed advisory body.
‘The Uluru Statement from the Heart was our prayer to the Australian people,’ he said.
‘The Statement was written with love. It stands as probably the most beautiful unrequited letter of love in Australian political history.’
Referring to Australian Electoral Commission maps showing strong Yes votes across remote communities, Pearson described those areas as the nation’s ‘blue-dot communities’ and said he still felt a responsibility to the people who had placed their faith in the reform.
‘What right has anyone to raise hopes when those hopes were so badly misplaced?’ he said.
‘But I cannot allow the failure of the referendum to excuse me from my responsibility, my duty on behalf of the blue-dot communities.’
Penny Wong (centre) was the most senior government minister attending Garma Festival
Pearson said the problems facing remote Indigenous Australia remained unchanged after the referendum and insisted governments already knew what was needed to lift outcomes.
‘The blue-dot communities of our homelands stand in grave need of healing,’ he said.
‘There is no better solution to healing individuals, families and communities than guaranteed work.’
He also called for an education guarantee for children in remote communities.
‘There is no more important economic development strategy than the education of our young,’ he said.
Pearson warned remote communities faced an uncertain future unless governments embraced deeper reform.
‘The inability of governments to deliver the reforms our people need is no longer only a moral failure but a civilisational one,’ he said.
‘The destruction of the blue-dot communities of remote Australia is truly at stake.’
Pearson said more needed to be done in remote Indigenous communities after the Voice defeat
He also launched a broad attack on both sides of politics, arguing governments had failed to tackle entrenched disadvantage despite decades of spending and repeated inquiries.
‘Not because we do not know what to do, but because our governments won’t let us do it,’ he said.
Pearson accused Labor governments of practising the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ and Coalition governments of an over-reliance on law-and-order responses.
Despite the Voice’s defeat, he said the push for structural reform cannot end with the referendum.
‘After the rejection of the Voice, the conversation about structural reform of the federal arrangements governing Indigenous affairs must resume,’ he said.
‘If not a Voice, then let us ask the question Dr King asked … where do we go from here?’
Anthony Albanese was absent from this year’s Garma Festival despite vowing, when he became Labor leader in 2019, to attend annually.
The federal government was represented by senior ministers, including Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
