John Howard dismisses ‘absurd’ idea of an Indigenous treaty 

Vote No

Keep Mayo and Reed as far from Government money as possible, the bludging grubs.

The Voice is part of a road map in the Uluru statement - This is what the Prime Minister, Linda Burney and the ABC don't want you to see - Makarrata (payback) is mentioned on 5 pages (on pages 1, 7, 21, 22 and 23). Here's an example passage "Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda." "We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement making between governments and first nations". Reparations are mentioned on two pages (pages 12 and 26) "A TREATY could include a proper say in decision making, the establishment of a truth commission, REPARATIONS, a financial settlement (such as seeking a PERCENTAGE OF GDP), the resolution of land, water and resources issues, recognition of authority and CUSTOMARY LAW". What is the strategy, in the words of Thomas Mayo “presenting the strategy going forward, which was simply that, first we would pursue a VOICE so that we could have the best possible say on the makarrata commission”.

Vote NO!!!

vote NO.

Its a no for me

Vote NO To apartheid Government need to stop wasting money on dividing us should be using it to make all Australians lives better,that's the governments job they work for us we don't work to serve there agendas

My son's school are making noises about an apology ceremony and I've made it very clear to him that he hasn't done anything wrong and you don't apologise for other people's wrongdoings. Like John says, you can regret what happened, but can't take responsibility. He won't be apologising.

Look at the contrast between John Howard and Albo... The gap is that of a world leader and an obstinate child.

This man knows what he is talking about. Australia please listen to him!!! Don’t make the same mistakes as Canada did. Canada is horrible stinking mess!!l

Brit here. Please don't divide yourselves and set the parts of yourself against each other (as they have in the US). "Racial politics" belongs in the past with the National Socialists, we fought a war together to get rid of crap like that.

The voice is nothing but a shakedown on every Non Indigenous person in Australia.

Treating someone better or worse because of the color of the skin breeds prejudice!!!!! Does no one see this?

I never thought the day would come that I would be a agreeing with, John Howard, but I do 100% wholly and solely good to hear someone tell the truth about this vote

I’m voting no Don’t know a lot about Howard But I’m definitely voting no

Great man John..

As an immigrant that legally came to this wonderful country Australia 🇦🇺🇦🇺 20+ years ago, I was so surprised when I got here how much aboriginal and torres strait islanders were entitled to and got, compared to other Australians, and still today after all this time and money thrown at them, still there seems to be a problem. Maybe the solution is to treat all Australians equal, no special treatment based on race and see how quickly all these problems get solved. This song sums up why I’m voting NO against apartheid!! We are one, But we are many, And from all the lands on earth we come, We'll share a dream, And sing with one voice I am, you are, we are Australian 🇦🇺.

Well said Mr Howard.Just plain truth and commonsense !

Absolute legend. Never apologise. This man could still lead this country with his eyes closed better than the goose we have now.

perpetual reparation's for life linked to the GDP , and throw in a treaty too. Yeah that will fix it but only for the select few who dont even have to prove their bloodlines . Looking forward to that little tax hike( nope) , and I bet that tax exemption will be thrown in for good measure for the select few , why they may never have to work again a day in their life. How good is that ? This in addition to the billions that is already spent out of GDP solely for aboriginal society , health and welfare .

Howard's Marbo fears were exaggerated? 50% of the entire country of Australia is under native title. 2.5% of the country's population control half the country's land. Howard was spot on.

The most important 12 minutes spoken in the last 12 months in our country.

As a former Labor voter my trust in Labor has been utterly obliterated these last few years. I’m keen to see some party with integrity who wants freedom and equality for all Australians to step up and reinstate some sense of normalcy. Sadly I also see the liberals going the way of Labor, they have been infected to some extent as well. I can only see one nation as that last bastion.

I love the concept of "truth telling", does this mean the Fred ALBO Flintstone will finally tell the truth about the voice?

the last good prime minister Australia had

For all those companies who supported the voice. If the referendum was to also vote that all board member and Directors have to pay 75% tax to pay for reparations I would vote Yes.

Now there’s a former PM who possesses wisdom, intelligence, and the ability to speak in a manner that shows he listens well, and respects everyone. Compare him to the current clown in the lodge ! I can’t believe Albo is the PM of Australia…he is an intellectual lightweight who is in every aspect so incredibly incredibly ordinary, and wholly unqualified to hold his position.

I wish he was back as PM.

I’m just pissed on how much money is spent on this, I heard $100+ million on this, that could of went to housing, cost of living, inflation etc. no let’s spend it on a pointless referendum

One thing that has stuck with me since i was in primary school. Each day when i would go to school the non- indiginous kids used to have to sit out on the playground (even during winter) while a breakfast was held every day for the indiginous kids and i always wondered why, then when i got into highschool i remember wanting to join the school rep netball team but couldnt because my parents couldnt afford the ongoing costs yet the indiginous kids were sponsored by the school to do it. I now have my own children and they go off to school on Friday and the breakfast is still held for indiginous only. It displays a very them and us mentality, the division between indiginous and non-indiginous is very real the non-indiginous really do still pay for the sins of their ancestors. Instead of the government encouraging segregation they really need to put all this tax payer money into uniting the generations to come not keep allowing the indiginous to continue to be victims

it's funny we should trust Politicians, on the gay marriage plebiscite they promised protections for religious freedoms and afterwards a senate enquire recommended the same protections yet there are no protections the some of people who ticked the yes box on good will were ignored do people want to be ignored again?

Damn! Listening to him speak makes me understand that we only truly realise what we had once it's gone😢 great wise leader. ❤ Vote no

... i will never board a Qantas plane again.... i will not have this rot shoved down my throat.

What a very smart articulate man John Howard is.

Best ever PM Australia has ever had unlike the current thing

Well said.The last of the Australian Statesmen…..

People, PLEASE, write NO on the ballot paper, NO TICKS or CROSSES, let your vote be unabiguous. WRITE NO!

He is not wrong. Most people are not deep thinkers. He certainly is.

Never liked him, but in such times I have to agree with old Johnny. Never be blinded just because you are not a fan. No! This was never about equality.

Well said Mr Howard. How come more former Prime Ministers are no standing up to this nonsense. Thank you for your service 🇦🇺

Scary when he speaks sense. Only just found out about the voice. At first I was thinking it was something good. Then I started to see what it really was. We are all human beings.

It is ILLEGAL for any corporation to spend shareholder money on advocate causes. The CEO and Directors should all be sacked instantly, and arrested. The CEO is employed to invest shareholder funds, and maximise the return relative to risk. To do otherwise means they are STEALING shareholder funds. Where is ASIC? Why aren't they doing their job? Why aren't the police acting? Why do the police never seem to act on serious matters, but only seek to inflict the governments will upon the people. We saw that during COVID when the various chiefs of police showed utter disdain to their own citizens.

“No one owns the water. No one owns the lands. No one owns the oceans. No one owns the sands. These are given by our Mother. Our planet provides for free. Only by hands of the greedy Does the Earth require a fee.” Poet Christopher

Thank you Mr Howard. We need another prime minister like you with wisdom, intelligence and integrity. Sadly they no longer exist.

Dividing people by race is the latest trend. It's happening in the USA, the UK, New Zealand as well as Australia. The ultimate aim is a global government, which requires all independent nations to be divided against themselves.

Echoing every single syllable, Mr Howard.

No to a racist voice that gives First Immigrants special privileges. The nation shouldn't be divided by race.

What a legend! I miss politicians with common sense , integrity and courage to speak what they truly think.

I've always held a very unpopular opinion. Aboriginals were so far behind technologically that any of the worlds nation states that turned up essentially would have taken the whole place as the Brits did, with one big difference. Just about all of them didn't have the same pompous "make the world as good as us" perspective. Many of them just would have killed the aboriginals on sight and just expanded or as a very minimum straight up slavery. I don't have to just make this position up as the conduct of the seafaring nations is well documented historically. The Spaniard conquest of the Americas is probably one of next least damaging invasions and that was pretty horrific by British standards. The Dutch East India company would just turn places in to slave camps and extract everything of value. The reality is that the Aboriginals got a very light hand compared to what was being doled out elsewhere. The technological divergence between invader and locals is a key determining factor in how well\poorly the native population is treated. Stone age people always came off worse. No, I'm not saying this are 'justified' but asking us, todays people who are mostly migrants or people that had nothing to do with anything here is clearly not about recognizing harm done but entirely about grabbing some cash. Go speak to the new migrant citizens and try to work out how you would justify it. The only reason this is 'in government' is because you can't have a lawsuit against dead people and hence, can't get cash. Go look at indigenous people of the world at what happens to their lives and communities on "free cash". The outcome is always alcohol, trash literacy and unemployment.... of course and without needing to survive and struggle and excel in life, whats the purpose of it?

NO NO NO HELL NO

After George W Bush and Tony Blair both were forgotten by history for their involvement that war - how does Howard keep a straight face?

Ludicrous one nation one flag 🇦🇺

Just like he said there will be ‘NO’ GST! Liar liar pants on fire!

I never thought that I would agree with anything that John Howard said but I have to admit that I agree with him on this occasion.

You make treaties with enemies so I will always regard anyone who wants a treaty with Australia as an enemy.

In this age of idiocy, we need more voices of reason like Howard

Just call every person living here as Aboriginal ( then problem solved ) - we are all one people then!

Wall to wall labor, and have they helped aboriginals? Have they helped ANYONE? Is your electricity cheaper? Do you trust them to change the constitution?

One of the Best Prime Ministers Australia ever had .Great interview John Howard👏👏🇦🇺🇦🇺

He's kidding ! Him and his GST totally moronicly absurd too. The country was never the same ! Yeh, The Voice is absurd though, I agree on that.

He sounds very uneducated esp in the content of colonial history

Speaks wisdom , keeps it simple .

While Howard may not be perfect, no one is, we haven't seen a person like him in politics for DECADES. Well, since Howard in fact LOL. He's intelligent, balanced, with wisdom, considered, and while his background s accounting, he can still be funny too. I have always had the highest respect for him. Which is truly saying something, as I absolutely categorically despise almost every politician since then. There are only a few exceptions.

This letter was written by an ordinary Australian (who shall remain nameless) about ‘The Voice' referendum. I believe it probably sums up pretty well the views of the 'quiet Australians' who don't answer telephone polls and remain quiet for fear of being accused of being racist: I was born in Australia fifty-four years after the Australian Commonwealth was formed in 1901. Australia is my country as much as it is the country of any other person who was born here. I haven’t stolen anyone's land. I have purchased legal title to the land I own and have paid it off with the sweat of my brow. To be forced to pay a reparation tax as rent or a special land tax on my land is abhorrent to me. My paternal grandfather was shot through both legs fighting to defend this nation; my great-grandfather was killed by a shell in the same struggle. My maternal grandfather and two great uncles on both sides gave up four years of their lives to defend Australia against the Germans, who had colonised New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville and Samoa. Twenty-five years later, the Japanese invaded these countries. My mother served in Bougainville, patching up Aussies who had been shot by the Japanese. My father and two paternal/maternal uncles gave up six years of their lives to fight off the Germans and Japanese, with Dad spending three-and-a-half years as a POW in Germany and coming back weighing eight stone. Every road, building, home, farm, mine, school, hospital, airport, port, railroad, city and town that exists in Australia was built by European settlers and their descendants. Hunter/gatherer Aborigines built nothing prior to 1788 and have contributed very little to modern Australia. Their hunter/gatherer lifestyle became redundant after European farming and technology arrived here and as the benefits of the first and second industrial revolutions spread through the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, no one in the world chooses to live a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Now that the Australian nation has been developed, some aboriginal activists want to take control of it. They are not content to have an equal say in government with the rest of us Australian citizens. They claim they deserve more power, in perpetuity, because some of their ancestors were born here prior to 1788. They label anyone who disagrees with them a racist. What chutzpah! As currently proposed, 'The Voice' is a blatant con job to replace the government of the people, by the people, for the people, with a race-based veto on everything we do. This will be exercised by twenty-four unelected Aboriginal activists supposedly representing the 3% of the population who claim Aboriginal descent. The effective veto comes from the power of the Voice to delay or hinder the government through the threat of litigation. Votes in parliament will be traded for the support of the Voice in return for other programs or legislation favourable to the activists who dominate the Aboriginal Voice. In this way, the Voice will be a shadow government able to make demands of the executive, the parliament, the public service and independent statutory offices and agencies not available to any other Australian citizens. It offends the crucial democratic principle that everyone should be equal before the law. Less than one-third of the 3% of the population who claim Aboriginal descent are living dysfunctional lives in remote areas. We Australians spend $39.5 billion each year trying to fix this problem. The solution is straightforward, although not easy. These Aboriginals need to limit their alcohol intake, provide a stable environment for their kids, and ensure they go to school. Do this every day for twenty years, and the gap between the dysfunctional Aboriginals and the rest of us will disappear. We don’t need to change our constitution for this to happen. Not only am I fed up with being welcomed to my own country, I find the implication in the 'Welcome to Country' ceremony and in the proposed 'Voice' that I and my family are somehow not entitled to be here as equal, legitimate Australian citizens offensive and insulting. I acknowledge the early settlers who came to this land which had stood undeveloped for over 50,000 years and who, in less than two hundred years, transformed it into one of the richest countries on Earth. Together, let’s enjoy and build on the legacy they left us.

Here is a former Prime Minister who remembers what he said years ago, is articulate and putting across his argument as clearly as he did then. Not like some very cringeworthy other 'leaders' I see on the screen....

Vote NO this is total BS!

The last Australian prime minister that cared about the country. It was a dark day when he left office.

A NO sounds good to me.

So you ask a royalist whether natives to any colonial country should gain recognition and they will tell you NO. Long live the King. Little Johny is no exception and as demonstrated in the past that he will shamelessly lie through his teeth for his imperial cause. Remember the Mabo map, did that happen. Children overboard, no GST the list is long.

A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted. - Niccolò Machiavelli.

Albo has opened the Gates of hell upon all Australian's 😈

So much more sense than our current PM. Makes Albo looks like a nervous kid.. 😅😅

Still Australian's most successful politician and it's obvious why.

If we read the details on the other pages, and the Dialogue minutes, we can understand the real purpose of all of this. Looking at pages 17 and 18 we can understand why "the voice" was specifically selected as an option to include in the Uluru Statement summary. The same can be discovered about why "treaty" (defined as Makarrata) was also selected. These weren't the only options on the table, but these were the ones that aligned best with the "guiding principles" (shown on page 16). But most importantly, these options were the ones that were considered best to lead to "self-determination", and "a pathway to recognition of sovereignty and for achieving future meaningful reform for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples." and "the vehicle to achieve self-determination, autonomy and self-government". Howard mentions the absurdity of creating a treaty with ones self, and he is absolutely correct. The idea seems to be the formation of one or many sovereign indigenous states, with which a treaty is formed, communicating through the voice to the parliament. This detail needs to be picked up on more broadly, and the PM needs to be asked these questions specifically.

Apartheid was unacceptable in South Africa and it is unacceptable in Australia. No ,means no.

Straight to the point. Articulate and insightful. One of the best, most instinctive leader we've had. Great feel for the position of the average Aussie, combined with a deep knowledge of Australian political history. I hated John Howard. Then I grew up, started a business, bought a house, got married and stayed married, and raised and educated three kids. Now I wish he was in charge.

A voice of reason.

When it comes to a voice to parliament how members are elected is less of concern because it is predictable that woke indigenous activists and academics who were members of the former Atsic organisation are likely to be elected where indigenous voices in agreement with Jacinta Price or Warren Mundine are unlikely to be elected to the voice to parliament enough said !

Thank God for a little common sense on this absolute RORT of the Australian people.

I’m not Australian, but I would say that there is no such thing as “indigenous rights,” there are only the rights of Australian citizens which includes the indigenous peoples.

Thank you Mr Howard. Another thing has come to mind, in that, we the Europeans have spent years developing this country, and now we are supposed to GIVE it to people who have in the main done, just my observation, done not very much to bring it to the state which it is in . One case which I was made aware of, is in the 😢Mooree area the one local mob, was given a working cattle station. They over a short period ate all the stock , than walked off the place. Is the same going to happen to Australia????????

Howard is a true legend. He had the top job when i was 6 and made me want to be prime minister 🤣

Absolut 👍we don’t want Budweiser happen in Australia how many Billions have Budweiser lost now 😂😂😂😂👍

A yes vote is a treaty vote, if you want a future for your children you must vote no

Freedom speech needs legal protection. And property rights

Little Johnnie, you are WRONG on 2 points! First, Abo is NOT a race. You should know there are only 4 races of man, Abo is not one of them. Next, Abo's are NOT indigenous, they are boat people just like the rest of us, and further they committed genocide on the original inhabitants from New Guinea who walked across the land bridge before it sunk and became the timor straits. But you are RIGHT on the vote NO proposal.

I agree Mr Howard. You’re a very wise man.

This man lead a government that said, with regard to the Apology: “it was not responsible for the actions of past governments and that admissions of wrongdoing could open the door to compensation suits”. The was subsequently apology and 15 years later, no such compensation suits. I suggest everyone takes this into account when listening to his views on the suitability of reconciliation measures.

Yes23 Voice to Parliament, is what happens when the demand for racism, outpaces the supply of racism. While the Yes vote is collapsing, the question should be asked: how the hell did something so absurd ever gain this level of traction in the first place? Honestly embracing a group's cultural ancestry to such an aggressive degree, and using this cultural ancestry as an excuse, is clearly pretty racist. Equally blaming some other culture, and those belonging to this differing cultural ancestry is clearly and unquestionably racist. Equality, egalitarianism, fairness, justness, and equitability are non-discriminatory, evenhanded, and unprejudiced. The opinion that the colour of your skin, or the antecedents of an individual are the defining factors is narrow-minded, backwards, bigoted, racist, discriminatory, prejudiced, unfair, and insulting. Yet it's been the dominant thinking in the Australian government, Universities, the Australian media, (particularly the ABC) and general public discourse for decades. This retrogressive, confused, righteous stupidity has to be walked back. Australia will be burning witches again if this level of ‘objectiveness’ and ‘honesty’ continues. Bring Australia together. Australia is for all Australians equally, with objectivity, fairness, impartiality, and even-handedness.❤🇦🇺🦘

Go Johnny! You have my vote.

I never thought I'd say this..."I love you Johnny".

no vote no consent end governments world wide . time for new ideas on this planet

Well said

VOTE NO IN WRITING..TO SAVE OUR CONSTITUTION OUR SOVEREIGNITY AND OUR FREEDOMS.! NO WRITTEN IN BLACK INK.!

JOHN HOWARD, why don’t you petition the English Government and Royal Family to pay financial compensation to the First Nations people of Australia?

Is it constitutional apartheid? Isn't this one nation? Will a treaty give me parts of Australia, with a different system?

Equal rights for all....vote NO

We as Australians are about to vote in a referendum I personally agree 100% with our former longest serving Prime Minister Mr John Howard his views in my opinion are 100% correct and he makes perfect sense in this interview No division is good division for any nation… dividing a country based on their original race is the definition of racism no matter what miner personal political gain that it may provide For our current leader The whole notion is a disgrace and a waste of taxpayers money in such a desperate financial environment Obviously I will be voting no My kindest regards Nigel WMH Team - Australia 2:23

The demands of the "voice" is quite literally the MOST RACIST demands I've ever heard since Hitler.

Ignorance is bliss!