Gunnai Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman Senator Lidia Thorpe introduced a bill in March last year aimed at upholding First Peoples’ rights across all law prior to federal Labor being elected.

It finally went to the Senate on December 6, but was voted down by Labor.

Thorpe’s bill proposed a process, reflected in the decades long drafting of the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) to uphold First Peoples’ rights in a system previously denied them: it does not create new rights.

See also

But Labor, which had championed an Indigenous voice to parliament, voted against Thorpe’s bill.

“It is another day in the colony. This is Australia, everybody,” Thorpe said. “This is a government — the so-called progressive Labor government — that waves the Aboriginal flag, wears the Aboriginal earrings and says it’s our friend.

“Yet it denies the rights of Indigenous people in this country. To vote down the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People is an absolute disgrace.”

First introduced in March 2022 and restored in July of that year after the federal election in May, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Bill 2022, created a........

© Green Left Weekly