A life well lived

The nation has lost a great Australian in the passing of Djungan tribal leader Alfred Neal, OAM. Mr Neal, who was to turn 101 in October, died at Yarrabah just south of Cairns on Wednesday morning about 7.30am, surrounded by family and friends.

He led a remarkable life, and in 2019 was recognised alongside Ruth Hennings with Order of Australia Medals for services to the indigenous community – an acknowledgment of their instrumental work plotting the protest movement across Far North Queensland which eventually helped bring the beginnings of equality for Indigenous Australians.

Mr Neal was born into traditional tribal life at Mount Mulligan (also known as Ngarrabullgan) in 1922.

But he was taken as an infant to the Church of England Mission at Yarrabah and raised in a dormitory.

Growing up, he became known for his skill as a cane cutter and later began successfully negotiating higher wages for Indigenous cutters.

It was later, through his work with the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League, that he and others struggled to win for support for the successful 1967 referendum, which enabled laws for Indigenous Australians and included them in the census. It wasn’t easy, though. Ms Hennings once recalled that campaigning in Queensland in the 1960s was fraught with danger and said the league worked under surveillance, most likely by members of the Queensland Special Branch.

It is hard to understand the injustices which Mr Neal bore witness to and struggled against throughout his life, yet his defining characteristics, according to his son Percy, were his humility, good humour, and his kindness.

“He never put himself forward, he never wanted to be in the spotlight, he always wanted to use his influence in a quiet way,’’

Percy, 73, said.

“He doesn’t like much of what happened to Aboriginal people and to himself, but he never got bitter about it.

“He never stopped finding humour in everything.’’

Vale, Mr Neal.

Thank you, Julian Leeser, Liberal MP, for the strong message you gave in your speech to parliament about listening to each other on the important decision we all have to make about the Indigenous offer to provide constitutional recognition through Voice.

Leeser’s tone and calming message is exactly what the country needs right now.

It is a pity more of our politicians can’t behave with such magnanimity.

Like Leeser, I support the Voice not just because it is the right thing to do after Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have suffered so much exclusion and deprivation, but because I think it will make this country better for all.

Lesley Clark (CP, 23/5), I would like to refer you to Australia’s greatest pieces of intelligent infrastructure, the Snowy Mountains Irrigation Scheme.

She has reliably and environmentally friendly powered industry, provided clean drinking water for humans and agriculture and also created safe habitat for Australian native wildlife, for over 75 years. She has also created life long employment opportunities for generations of Australians. As politicians are no longer interested in building dams, railway lines or housing commission estates, decent roads, highways, bridges and tunnels, like when Australia was the Lucky Country, people are wondering why we have generations of wayward unemployed criminal youth.

The Snowy Mountains Irrigation Scheme has only given Australia great wealth and prosperity, I not know of any type of environmental destruction.

Your useless foreign-owned wind and solar energy, with a life span of just 25 years, dynamite blasting, excavating, bulldozing endless kilometres of forests, annihilating native wildlife, who inhabit forests floors, trees, or lower water ways, or birds, bats and butterflies have little chance of surviving massive spinning blades.

Why is it that your green politicians, with very few tertiary qualifications in environmental studies, with their hand-picked climate scientists, cashing in on the great green gravy train, refuse to publicly debate or challenge eminent professors who have dedicated their lives to the study of environmental issues, who have publicly spoken out about the critical need for dams for FNQ.

The stupidity of wasting mega millions of dollars to pump the Mulgrave River dry . . . is beyond a joke and money better spent building dams.