What on earth was the Labor government thinking when they created the highly paid position of \u2018Ambassador for First Nations People\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s important to look at the timing. Justin Mohamed was appointed in March last year when Labor was still thinking there was strong support for the voice to Parliament, seven months before the referendum. In May last year, Labor\u2019s Budget allocated $13.6 million to the new \u2018ambassador\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs, the \u2018first nations ambassador\u2019 is supposed to \u201cimplement a First Nations approach to foreign policy\u201d and \u201cembed First Nations perspectives and interests across the Government\u2019s trade and investment activities\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t close any gaps. It doesn\u2019t lift aborigines living in remote communities out of disadvantage. It doesn\u2019t bring law and order to Alice Springs and other communities plagued by crime and dysfunction. It doesn\u2019t stop the corruption and nepotism in the aboriginal industry. All the \u2018ambassador\u2019 position appears to do is be a \u2018voice\u2019 \u2013 not to Parliament, but to DFAT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the current \u2018ambassador\u2019 appears to have done is rack up frequent flier points. He\u2019s made a bunch of trips to the United States, and one to Switzerland. So far his travel has cost taxpayers almost $150,000 on top of his $300,000+ salary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peter Dutton has said he\u2019ll scrap the worthless position. One Nation never supported it in the first place, but we\u2019ll scrap it too. Australian diplomacy needs only one perspective: the Australian perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What on earth was the Labor government thinking when they created the highly paid position of \u2018Ambassador for First Nations People\u2019? It\u2019s important to look at the timing. Justin Mohamed was appointed in March last year when Labor was still thinking there was strong support for the voice to Parliament, seven months before the referendum. … Continue reading “Indigenous \u2018Ambassador\u2019 Racking up the Frequent Flier Points”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29290,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29289\/revisions\/29290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}