Letters to the editor, The Daily Advertiser, June 28

I did say that Indigenous Australians were effectively classed as fauna. I never implied it was legislated or regulated or formalised in any way.

The simple declaration of Terra Nullius meant that from the beginning they were not viewed by the governing authorities as having the same status or rights as the invading Europeans.

I did do some research and it is a simple fact that Aboriginal people were not included in the census and were not automatically given the rights of citizens, as every other person born in Australia was.

I would like to refer Ms Sleeman to the article about Albert Namatjira that can be found on the National Archives as an example of how Indigenous Australians were viewed and treated:

"Namatjira was granted full citizenship rights in 1957. Unlike many other Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory, Namatjira was then entitled to vote, to live where he wished and to purchase alcohol."

I believe it was Robert Hughes who expressed the view that the main reason Mr Namatjira was granted citizenship was so the government could claim tax on his earnings. I haven't checked that - maybe Ms Sleeman would oblige.

It is a paltry argument against the referendum to split hairs over the word fauna when it is painfully obvious that Indigenous Australians have been treated with contempt and barbarism.

The policy of "assimilation" which I remember from my Social Studies in primary school in the 1950s was designed to erase the Indigenous cultures by suppression.

The stolen generations were a product of this policy.

A decade later enough people had realised this was wrong.

Another five decades have passed and I believe that the Voice is a way forward.

A treaty would be better.

Recognition of native sovereignty would be better.

But the Voice is a start.

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has once again called upon countries to lift their game on tackling the climate emergency.

With devastating wildfires in Canada so extensive that the smoke shrouded New York and even reached Norway, melting ice-caps in Antarctica and record high temperatures in Europe and North America, we are clearly at crisis point.

Yet governments around the world, including our own, cannot seem to muster the political will to act decisively.

At the Bonn Climate Change conference earlier this month, the 'mitigation ambition and implementation work program' meant to initiate urgent action, was not even included on the agenda. The world has gone to sleep.

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