MEDIA RELEASE

The next New Way Summit that was set down for the June long weekend has been shifted to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July, prior to the start on 4 July of the National Aboriginal & Islander Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) week.

This is to take advantage of the greater than usual attention to Aboriginal issues generated by NAIDOC.

Melbourne University

The Melbourne New Way Summit convener Ms Sharon Firebrace said that this is a more appropriate time for it to occur. "This is a week where people will focus on Aboriginal issues and we expect that a lot of people will attend so that they can learn that this grassroots movement is a true opposition to what the Federal Government is dishing up to us in their shameful charade of establishing the First Nation Congress of Australia," Sharon said.

In support of Sharon's comments, I expect that Aboriginal people will have nothing to do with it if they understand politics, but there will be those who will be attracted to it for the money and nothing else, because it has nothing else to offer.

The Melbourne New Way Summit themes are genocide, sovereignty and treaty. We will focus attention on Garry Foley's statement that "Native Title is not land rights".

On the issue of sovereignty, the New Way Summit activists have decided that all governments will be asked to produce documentation that proves that we Aboriginal people of Australia have ceded our sovereignty to them or the British. With the decision in MABO Judgment No.2 the court did correct one error of Australian history and that was that our title to land is continuing, so I find it difficult to understand how the courts can now turn around and say that our title has been extinguished by some act of the white state through a piece of legislation. Once again we are being hoodwinked by the dominant society for their own ends.

The governments know that they do not have authority over Aboriginal people but use force and threats to make us submit to their will. But the New Way Summit participants know and understand this weakness and will address it.

Our understanding of international law demonstrates that Australia as a nation is illegal. There are two questions that the Australian government must answer. Why is Australia registered as a company, "The Commonwealth of Australia", in the United States of America with the SO-CALLED coat of arms their registered trade mark?

It is interesting to know that the English Court of Chivalry has never been convened to consider and approve the Australian coat of arms, the emu and the kangaroo. So the question again is why the Australian government continues to parade it as a coat of arms when they know that it is NOT.

There is another question that the Australian people must ask and that is why did the former Prime Minister Bob Hawke and his Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans fail have the Australian constitution repatriated from England in 1985 as the Canadians did? This government must explain to the Australian populace why they continue to have a constitution that is only an act of its mother country England - or is there another reason?

The New Way Summit will also ask the Australian and state governments to prove when and how civil law came into this country, considering the modern Australia was founded as a penal colony, with the Rules and Disciplines of War being the law at the time of invasion, when the first illegal boat people arrived on these shores.

Many of my colleagues and I share the opinion that the Australian states remain penal colonies that should still be under English Admiralty laws and not civil law. This being the case, then Australia as a nation is falsely representing itself as a free nation. The only law of the land of this country continues to be Aboriginal law.

On the question of genocide, I hope that this New Way Summit will authorise the Task Force to take whatever measure necessary to have the Australian government and Britain held accountable for their killing and falsely imprisoning our people, as we continue to be the sovereign people now under the rule of foreigners whose authority is questionable.

On the issue of 'treaty', the New Way Summit will ask the Aboriginal Nations across Australia to formalise treaties with each other by way of exchanging message sticks of unity and solidarity. The message stick is our way and I encourage people not to use the white man's paper.

I will be asking the New Way Summit to authorise the Task Force to negotiate treaties with other peoples of the South Pacific who have also been invaded by foreign and illegal boat people.

From this we will let the world know that colonialism was wrong and that it wreaked havoc over civil and organised societies, causing them to become politically displaced people within their own countries, and the colonisers must now pay and be accountable for this.