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Australian General Election 2001

• Aboriginal candidates
• Election news
• Australian political parties
• Other information

Aboriginal Candidates

• Aboriginal candidates are few, but determined
  October 15, 2001 - Four out of five Labor Aboriginal candidates may have been elected at the recent NT poll, but at the federal level there is still little indigenous representation. And safe seats for indigenous aspirants are few and far between.
• Aboriginal Unity Candidates Enter Campaign
  October 2001 - The UNITY PARTY has very good Aboriginal candidates in its NSW team of twenty candidates, who are challenging the major parties in the Federal election. "Unity will be fighting a strong campaign for Aboriginal rights at a time when Aboriginal people are finding it hard to get their voice heard," said Paul McLeod, Unity candidate for Gilmore on the NSW South Coast.
• Matt Rigney: Greens SA candidate for the Federal seat of Barker
  October 2001 - Greens (S.A.) - As a Ngarrindjeri man, I am interested in the interconnection between how we treat the earth and how we treat each other. It is inherent in my very existence and identity as a Ngarrindjeri man that the protection of country and society go hand in hand.
• Black list opens road to parliament
  June 12, 2000 - NSW Labor has never sent an Aboriginal politician to either Canberra or Macquarie Street but the weekend endorsement by the ALP State conference to give indigenous candidates a 20 per cent weighting in preselection contests is aimed at redressing that fact, initially at the local government level.
• Aboriginal party eyed in Australia
  7 May, 2001 - China Daily - DARWIN, Australia: It has been more than three decades since Australia's Aborigines were granted the vote. But the island continent's original inhabitants can boast only one current federal senator and have shown little interest in a political system that long spurned them.
• Matt Rigney - Greens SA candidate for the Federal seat of Barker
• Senator Aden Ridgeway - Deputy leader of the Australian Democrats

Election news

• You can find a complete list of Australian news sources here.
  
  
  
• Oh cry my beloved country
  November 11, 2001 - "Yesterday Australia failed to rise above its political leadership. One hundred years after Federation, when the first order of business was the White Australia policy, Australians turned back the clock."
• Action to speak as loudly as words in push for treaty
  November 8, 2001 - The Australian Democrats have called for a treaty agreement with indigenous Australians to be included in the national process of reconciliation.
• ANTaR - Major Political Parties need to lift their game on Reconciliation and Indigenous Affairs
  November 7, 2001 - "The Coalition's policy confirms its assimilationist and paternalistic ‘practical reconciliation’ approach to Indigenous Affairs. If returned, the Coalition offers the bleak prospect of a further stifled Reconciliation process, already stalled after 6 years of the divisive Howard Government.”
• Winning Australia's Aboriginal vote
  October 25, 2001 - Prominent aborigines have accused the two leading candidates in Australia's federal election of offering nothing to ease the plight of the country's indigenous people
• Coalition plans bigger role for Aborigines
  October 18, 2001 - Aboriginal communities would be given a greater say in how government services were delivered to them under a re-elected Coalition government.
• Both sides playing race card: Dodson
  October 15, 2001 - The Howard Government was highlighting race and cultural difference for political advantage in the lead-up to the federal election, Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson claimed yesterday.
• Putting reconciliation on poll agenda
  October 15, 2001 - Fifty-eight community and welfare organisations attempted to elevate reconciliation as a major election campaign issue yesterday, calling on all political parties to commit to alleviating extreme indigenous disadvantage.
• Tackling Indigenous disadvantage demands new election commitment
  October 14, 2001 - A new call for the major political parties to commit to overcoming Indigenous disadvantage by negotiating an agreement or treaty with Indigenous Australians has been issued by over 50 charities and community welfare organisations in the lead up to the Federal Election.
• Excerpt from leader's debate
  October 2001 - ".. Not while I'm PM. Could I just finish? I think a treaty is divisive. A treaty is something one country makes with another .."
• We must fight for indigenous-led solutions
  News reporting has been dominated by only a few topics recently. You may not be aware that the Federal Government was recently forced by public pressure (including ANTaR's) to release a damning report which it had suppressed for six months. The Commonwealth Grants Commission's report put beyond doubt what ANTaR and many Indigenous organisations had been trying to draw attention to for many years, that: - Indigenous people's access to mainstream commonwealth funded health, employment and education services is scandalously low.
  

Australian political parties

• Australian Democrats
• Australian Greens
• Australian Labor Party
• Liberal Party of Australia
• National Party
• Democratic Socialist Party
• Australian Reconciliation Party (ARP)
• Country Liberal Party
• Australian Women's Party
• Socialist Party of Australia
• Gungahlin Equality Party  - dedicated to ensuring that the Gungahlin community are equitably represented.
• Socialist Equality Party
• Unity Party

Other information

• Australian for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR)
  ANTaR have produced an election kit outlining party policies and with information about indigenous candidates