Commentary

The Albanese government has appointed an ambassador for First Nations People. Not an Australian ambassador to the United Nations, where there is a Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, but an ambassador for small groups of Australians whose interests may or may not coincide with the interests of the rest of Australia.

The unravelling of Australia begins.

Justin Mohamed will lead the Office of First Nations Engagement in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We are told he will work “in genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people” to “progress Indigenous rights globally” and help grow “First Nations trade and investment.”

To the extent that it exists, how is First Nations trade and investment different to other Australian trade and investment? As for rights, these are secured in democracies and not otherwise. How will this indulgence in identity politics end?

An illustration of the likely end to the indulgence in identity politics that is this ambassadorial appointment is the Waitangi Treaty in New Zealand.

Once thought to be a final settlement, the Māori side of the Waitangi Treaty regularly seek to improve their lot by updating the deal rather than concentrating on contributing to the whole of New Zealand society.

More recently, and not happy with Waitangi, the New Zealand government has embarked on a radical program to reformulate its constitutional arrangements, driven largely by a desire to recognise the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and import the Treaty of Waitangi into the New Zealand constitution.

The recent report—He Puapua—suggested a pathway to what the report calls “constitutional transformation.” This includes exploring the option of creating an upper house in Parliament to scrutinise legislation for compliance with the Waitangi Treaty and/or the United Nations Declaration.

Other options proposed include a Māori court system and the abolition of prisons.

Is this on Mohamed’s agenda?

The foreign minister, Penny Wong, fresh from telling the UK government to confront its colonial past, crows that the “First Nations people” were “this land’s first diplomats” and that the position would enable “deeper engagement with many of our closest partners including the Pacific family.”

Would this help our relations with Fiji which has been at war with itself for decades, the struggle between native Fijians and Indians? Perhaps he could provide a First Nations perspective on the tribal conflict in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, or, heaven forbid, West Papua.

Mohamed is presently the Deputy Secretary of Aboriginal Justice in the Victorian government, the group steering the state to detribalisation via treaties among Victorians of Aboriginal descent and all other Victorians.

He is part of a mindset where the individual and their humanity is ignored, and the common humanity shared by all Australians is ignored. Instead, the treaty focuses on people through one prism—race. So much so that people of Aboriginal descent are assumed to think alike and that their needs and aspirations can and must, be addressed as a group.

The modern Victorian Aborigine does not speak an Aboriginal language, and they mostly reside in suburbia. On what basis could these groups be regarded as sovereign, let alone nations? Is this the mindset that Mohamed will bring when he represents Australia?

While there is as yet no Treaty in Victoria, a Treaty Negotiation Framework has been established, which has specified who can enter Treaty negotiations, how negotiations are conducted and what the subject matter of these negotiations can cover.

Treaty-making in Victoria will include state-wide treaty negotiations and also local traditional owner treaties.

In addition, a Self Determination Fund has been established to provide “First Nations peoples” with “equal standing” with the State in Treaty negotiations. The complexity of this exercise is extraordinary, and this is for fewer than 60,000 residents of Victoria, most of whom live alongside their fellow Victorians and are, indeed, married to other Victorians. This thinking may well infect foreign affairs, and it will not end well for Australian interests.

Mohamed was previously chief executive officer for Reconciliation Australia, the group charged with finding a path to reconciliation, which has ended in a treaty talk via the Uluru statement that is bound to lead to the retribalisation of Australia.

Mohamed will be steeped in the language of ethnic identity, and disparage Australian unity at the very time Australia faces serious threats to our sovereignty from a rampant foreign regime, the Chinese Communist Party.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.