National Reconciliation Week, which kicks off on the anniversary of a day that aimed to give Indigenous Australians greater equality, strives to grow the relationship between them and other Australians. The theme for 2021 is 'In This Together'.
Design the 2022 Indigenous All-Stars team artwork nrl.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nrl.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
First published on Wed 12 May 2021 23.47 EDT
Telstra has been ordered to pay $50m in fines for signing up more than 100 Indigenous Australians to mobile phone contracts they did not understand and could not afford.
Between January 2016 and August 2018, Telstra sales staff in five stores in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia signed 108 Indigenous Australians up to post-paid mobile contracts. Many of those signed up for plans were from regional or remote Indigenous communities, who spoke English as a second or third language.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took the telco to court in November last year, alleging a breach of consumer law. The federal court ruled on Thursday the customers were subject to exploitative practices from the sales staff, including signing up customers to more than one contract in a day, not explaining the full costs, manipulating credit assessments, and exploiting the customer’s lack of understanding of the te
Aged care and women’s initiatives are prime examples.
It is perhaps not surprising that the Indigenous affairs portfolio does not feature heavily in Budget 2021-22. This is not an entirely negative development, given that First Nations affairs is better served by good policy rather than opportunistic politics.
From a First Nations perspective, this year’s budget presents a mixed bag of positives, negatives, and unknowns. On the positive side, investment in the community enterprise space appears to be a big plus.
For instance, the Government says that almost $14 million will be allocated over four years to support Indigenous female entrepreneurs to create innovative responses to issues facing their communities and to increase the economic security of Indigenous women through grants and flexible loans.
Share Share on Twitter
The federal budget has promised $500,000 towards improving cultural heritage protection after the destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves in Western Australia placed huge scrutiny over the failure to protect the site.
The government will commit the investment over two years to “improve Indigenous heritage protection and what it describes as Indigenous involvement in Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 decision-making processes”.
It comes after a parliamentary inquiry into the Juukan Gorge incident noted a review into the Biodiversity Conservation Act had identified “serious inadequacies in terms of Indigenous heritage protection”.
“The committee is interested to see how much of this activity will lead to meaningful change, and how much is simply the result of the spotlight of inquiry and media scrutiny,” the report found.