John Howard's extraordinary colonisation claims
John Howard has made an extraordinary claim about Australia's history, saying the colonisation by the British was the "luckiest thing" to happen to Australia.
The former Prime Minster was discussing the proposed Voice to Parliament in an interview with The Australian, when he said he believed colonisation was "inevitable".
He said, “I’m totally opposed to (reparations). You have to understand that in the 17th, 18th century, colonisation of the land mass of Australia was next to inevitable."
“I do hold the view that the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British,” he said.
“Not that they were perfect by any means, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent colonisers than other European countries.”
His controversial claims come just days after support for the "yes" campaign has seemingly lost momentum, with the "no" campaign ahead with 52 percent in the Resolve poll for Nine newspapers.
He went on to say he believed the referendum was destined to fail, saying the voice will “create a new cockpit of conflict about how to help Indigenous people”.
“I don’t think the voice is going to produce anything other than regular stand-offs between what the voice is asking for and what the government of the day is willing to do with a fair dollop of constitutional adventurism thrown into the mix. That’s what I think will happen.”
“The idea that a sovereign country makes a treaty with part of itself is just preposterous. It is constitutionally repugnant.
“Treaties are made between sovereign states. They’re not made between the sovereign state and part of the sovereign state. The very notion of this treaty is antagonistic to national sovereignty.”
Instead of a Voice to Parliament, Howard believes Australia should be “just talking about how to lift up Aboriginal people, and put them in the mainstream of the community, finding out ways of doing it”.
Mr Howard said, “Shouldn’t we just be sitting down talking to each other?”
“It’s going to be hard. It’s going to take a long time. It’s going to be less successful than we would like. But why are we doing this to ourselves?” he added.
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