‘Racist’ minister called on to resign

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

Several government ministers – including 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

Sydney

of antiwhite racism”.

Luke Pearson, the founder of influential antiracism 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 ... makes his position as minister entirely untenable,” Pearson wrote.

Australia’s treatment of its indigenous population has long been a festering historical and political sore.

The Aborginal population, who have occupied Australia for 50 000 years, were dispossessed of their lands by the arrival of settlers two centuries ago.

They remain among the most disadvantaged Australians.

Believed to have numbered around one million at the time of British settlement, they now make up only about 3% of the total population of 25 million. –