Cedric Wyatt, the father of Labor’s Victoria Park MLA Ben Wyatt and a former director of the WA Aboriginal Affairs Department, has called for the Department of Indigenous Affairs to be axed.
The prominent Aboriginal and Jigalong community co-ordinator said the Premier’s office needed to take over the role.
Successive ministers of the portfolio had achieved little and had been continually rolled in Cabinet when trying to seek much-needed funding to address the problem.
Mr Wyatt, a staunch critic of Indigenous Affairs Minister Sheila McHale, said the department had delivered nothing for Aboriginal people because it had no relationship with the communities and therefore could not advise the Minister properly.
“Every time governments don’t want to do anything in Aboriginal affairs, they appoint women as ministers so that the men can stand over them,” Mr Wyatt said.
“Sheila McHale wouldn’t have a clue what’s going on and she is being used.
“She obviously didn’t do much good at the Department for Community Development.
“We’ve got over 10,000 Aboriginal people living in absolute poverty because Government ministers have failed . . . they cannot seek the funds required to make lives better for Aboriginal people in remote areas.”
Mr Wyatt’s comments echoed those of the State’s only female Aboriginal MP, Labor’s Carol Martin, who in March called for the DIA to be abolished, describing its function as archaic.
A spokesman for Ms McHale said she would await the outcome of a functional review of the department, due at the end of this month, before commenting.
Mr Wyatt also likened the appointment of Lt-Gen. John Sanderson to that of A.O. Neville, the man who carried out the State government’s policy of forced assimilation in the 1930s.
In an extraordinary attack on the Carpenter Government, Mr Wyatt said the former governor’s new role as a consultant on Aboriginal affairs was a slap in the face to the Aboriginal community.
“We are going back 100 years — why don’t we see if we can get A.O. Neville to resurrect himself?” Mr Wyatt said.
Mr Neville, WA’s infamous Chief Protector of Aborigines, sought to breed out Aboriginality until no part-Aboriginal people remained on Earth.
Mr Wyatt said he had nothing against Lt-Gen. Sanderson but the appointment was akin to the Government admitting it had failed Aboriginals.
“I think it’s extremely paternalistic,” he said.
Jessica Strutt and Ben Spencer