Exclusive: Former PM accuses John Howard and Tony Abbott of ‘outrageously and wilfully misinterpreting’ result in attempt to return to ‘great assimilation project’
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Indigenous Australians were always “fighting the wrong fight” with a voice to parliament, the former prime minister Paul Keating has said, and the failure of the referendum has now “ruined the game” for a treaty that could have properly acknowledged prior Indigenous ownership and dispossession.
In an interview with Guardian Australia, Keating also accused the former Liberal prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott, and the historian Geoffrey Blainey, of “outrageously and wilfully misinterpreting” the referendum result in an attempt to return to “the great assimilation project”.
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