Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has flagged a more engaged relationship with Indigenous Australians and believes constitutional recognition will unify Australia. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has flagged a more engaged relationship with indigenous Australians and believes constitutional recognition will unify Australia.
"The problem ... between white Australia and Aboriginal Australia is not lack of good will, or lack of money but lack of engagement," he said at Nhulunbuy in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory on day six of the federal election campaign.
A proposal for a referendum to recognise Aboriginal Australians in the constitution will be ready in the first 12 months of the coalition's first parliamentary term.
"Indigenous recognition won't be changing our constitution but completing it," he told the Garma annual cultural festival on Saturday.
"Until this is done our country won't be whole."
Dawn Casey, chairwoman of the Indigenous Land Council, said she believed Mr Abbott was sincere about reforming the Constitution to include indigenous peoples, and declared that Aboriginal communities wanted to take the lead on their own development regardless of who won government at the election.
"He openly said he was speaking as a conservative, but notwithstanding that I believe it to be sincere, (his desire for) a completion of the Constitution, and if he comes into power I have no doubt that will occur," she told AAP.
Ms Casey warned there was much to be done for the would-be "Prime Minister of Aboriginal Affairs".
"For the general population it sounds really good, but they have have so much to do as Prime Minister that in the end it doesn't always work out as they would envisage." Ms Casey said she was pleased with the appointment of Warren Mundine as chair of an advisory council on indigenous issues, but said that if Abbott became prime minister he would have to ensure there there was a wider representation of indigenous views.
"I do believe he is open to collaboration, but he needs to be open to everybody," she said.
Frankie Deemal, a Guugu Yimithirr man from Cape York, said Mr Abbott had visited indigenous communities in far North Queensland several times.
"We had him for a week in Cohen, twice at Aurukun and once at our community outside of Hopevale," he said.
"I have no doubt about his bona fides, I got no reason to question his integrity and honesty - he's been nothing but honest with us in our dealings with him from Cape York. He's demonstrated time and again his desire to work with Aboriginal people." Mr Deemal said there was bipartisan political will to move on land rights and economic development for Aboriginal communities.
"The land rights giant has been asleep - let's wake him up," he said.
"We're land rich but dirt poor; the massive amount of land we have has not advanced Aboriginal people because we cannot use it as we intended for an economic base."
Mr Abbott says Aboriginal leader and former ALP party president Warren Mundine will head up a prime ministerial advisory council that will meet with him monthly, if he wins the election.
He wants the council to ensure indigenous programmes achieve real, positive change in the lives of Aboriginal people.
"Warren... I want us to walk down this path together as brothers," he said.
"I do want to make sure that the decisions of any government I lead are fully informed by people who ... have lived an Aboriginal life."
Yolngu elder Galarrwuy Yunupingu told Mr Abbott it was time to wake up the issue of Aboriginal land rights from the dead.
Mr Mundine said that it was Aboriginal people's "soul and economic future."
Mr Abbott said Aboriginal land should be both a "spiritual and economic asset".
Nhulunbuy will be the first Aboriginal community he will spend a week in as prime minister if he wins the election.
"I know there will be people who say you can't do that, you're goofing off, you're not doing your job," he said.
"The fact is if these places are home to the first Australians why shouldn't they be home to the prime minister of our country?"
He reiterated his plan to move the indigenous affairs department into the department of prime minister and cabinet and send senior bureaucrats to spend a week in an Aboriginal community.
But Tom Gertz, from Queensland, said he'd heard it all before.
"It's more empty promises," he said.
"Every politician has a door they got to come through ... and if it's telling a lie with a forked tongue and making people believe that's what's going to happen, that's what they do. "
He said he'd heard the same calls from change since the Hawke government but not yet seen any action.
"At the end of the day you can't just come out and spend a couple of weeks in the community and say you've been there," he said.
"It's not about that."
Labor's senate candidate for the NT Nova Peris listened to Mr Abbott's address at the festival and quickly disappeared at the end.
She said she wanted to give it some more thought before making a public comment.
The coalition hopes it can unseat Indigenous Health Minister Warren Snowdon whose seat of Lingiari hangs by a a slim 3.7 per cent.
WATCH: Election campaigning intensifies ahead of debate
