13/12/2025
From a position attained by, UNEARNED structural advantage, his gender, his cultural background, and the privileged political machinery that delivered it to him, the Mayor of the Hawkesbury chose to lecture the community about the supposed danger of First Nations people “being put ahead of other sections of the community”. A statement as historically uninformed as it is morally obtuse. The only reason this kind of claim can be made with such naïve conviction is because the enormous disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians has been so ignored, so denied, so normalized that attempts to correct it can be easily framed as indulgent rather than necessary. The mayor’s objections were not merely ignorant; they were meanness wrapped in the language of fairness, denying both the history of this place and the living reality of the people whose land it is.
Let us not forget that the Hawkesbury has been built on the dispossession and forced displacement of the Dharug and Darkinjung people. From state sanctioned murder, child abduction, controlled movement and forced labour, to exclusion from voting, welfare, housing and full participation in civic institutions, the treatment of First Nations people is a shameful stain that can’t be washed away. The effects of that history remain today: shorter life expectancy, lower educational attainment, higher child removal, and stark over-representation in the justice system.
Reconciliation policies respond to this measurable ongoing inequity, they do not “favour” First Nations people at the expense of anyone else. Targeted measures to address disadvantage are not preferential treatment, they are necessary steps to achieve equity. Even the poorest white Australian has historically occupied a position of structural advantage over First Nations people. Poverty can limit opportunity, but it did not strip white Australians of legal personhood, political agency or cultural legitimacy. Soon after colonisation, First Nations people were systematically excluded from the most fundamental rights. For example, they couldn’t own land, vote, access wages, move freely, marry without permission, keep custody of their children, and participate fully in society. Even white convicts held structural advantages. Their punishment was temporary and operated within a legal system that still recognised their rights and offered a path to freedom, land and social inclusion. First Nations people, by contrast, were excluded. This is the historical baseline that makes claims of “favouring” First Nations people not only inaccurate but profoundly mean-spirited.
Whenever I hear people talking about the Aussie spirit and the notion of “a fair go”, I do wonder when that is going to kick in for our First Nations people.
