Aussie officials in trouble for ‘okay to be white’ motion

SYDNEY: Australia’s indigenous affairs minister and several of his colleagues faced calls to resign after they backed a failed parliamentary motion tabled by a controversial senator that declared: “It is okay to be white.”

Several government ministers – including those for trade and communications and indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion – backed a resolution drafted by populist firebrand senator Pauline Hanson which railed against what it described as “the deplorable rise of anti-white racism”.

Luke Pearson, the founder of influential anti- racism group IndigenousX, echoed a string of calls for Scullion to resign after the vote.

“The minister for Indigenous Affairs, voting in support of what is widely known to be a white supremacist slogan, ‘It’s okay to be white’, makes his position as minister entirely untenable. He needs to resign,” Pearson wrote.

Scullion, a white senator for the Northern Territory, has held the Indigenous Affairs portfolio since 2013.

During parliamentary debate, Hanson defended trying to codify what opponents see as race baiting.

“Such a simple sentence should go without saying,” Hanson told the chamber, before her motion was defeated 31 votes to 28.

“But I suspect many members in this place would struggle to say it.” — AFP