“If you want to a move a mountain, you start by chipping away the stones … and I think we have to keep trying,” Aurukun Shire Council acting mayor Kemuel Tamwoy told 7.30.
“[But] the people from the community, from the grassroots level, they have to be heard, otherwise it will just be another broken promise and a waste of time.”
Former Aurukun mayor Derek Walpo agrees.”I think it [the Voice] is a good thing, but it’s got to be someone local who sits on that panel, not from outside Aurukun,” he said.
7.30 travelled to Cape and Gulf communities with the longest serving member of federal parliament and former Queensland Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Bob Katter.
‘Listen to the people’
Mr Katter said he wanted to show how the Indigenous communities in and next to his electorate were missing out on what the rest of Australia takes for granted.
But he doesn’t support the concept of a Voice to Parliament as developed by elders in the Uluru statement.
“If you go out and listen to the people and ask them what they want, they are not going to tell you they want a voice,” he told 7.30.
Mr Katter is pushing for the re-introduction of market gardens to Gulf and Cape communities and changes to land tenure to allow private ownership.
“If they can get a block of land, they can put in market gardens for themselves up there, but they can’t,” he said.
None of the leaders 7.30 spoke to raised the market garden idea, but they all cited access to fresh, affordable food as a major problem.
“The transport cost is the main issue up here,” Pormpuraaw councillor Ron Kingi told Mr Katter and his son, state MP Robbie Katter, at a meeting in the western Cape community.
“It’s just expensive to have stuff shipped up, but then by the time it comes up from Brisbane, it’s off,” he said.
“Diabetes and hypertension, that’s a major thing in the community here.”
Another issue is basic health services. Aurukun leaders said they had no ambulance.
“The health system is failing people in this community,” Kemuel Tamwoy said.
“I believe everyone should have the same access, the same chance to live a healthier life.”
Both Aurukun and Doomadgee in the Gulf have been grappling with rheumatic heart disease, a condition that is mostly absent from non-Indigenous communities.
The Queensland Health Ombudsman recently found poor record keeping at the Doomadgee hospital led to three preventable deaths from the disease.
“It’s just an ongoing problem we face here every day,” Doomadgee mayor Myron Johnny told 7.30.