Yes, it was just a cheap shot from Albanese when he pointed out how strange it was that Peter Dutton is opposed to “truth-telling”, but Dutton’s comments left him open to it. It would have been so easy for Dutton to say that his government won’t pursue a truth-telling commission or some form of words that weren’t “there’ll be no revisiting of truth-telling”.
Ok, maybe it’s the most honest thing that he’s said but it does seem like he hasn’t thought his statement through. While we don’t have the sort of journalists who are likely to ask him, “Just to be clear, are you only against truth-telling when it comes to Indigenous affairs or is it a general policy?”
The more I think about it, the more I think that’s a great question…
Of course we now have Labor being criticised for supposedly walking back their commitment to a Makarrata. While this may be a reasonable criticism, we also need to remind ourselves that if they were to reaffirm their total commitment, then we’d have all those people who urged a “No” vote in the Voice Referendum telling us that Labor weren’t listening to the people. And yes, people with long memories will point out that it wasn’t racist to vote against the........