Practise what we preach

AUSTRALIAN governments present a different face on the international stage from the one they show when dealing with indigenous people, the ''father of reconciliation'' Patrick Dodson said in Sydney last night.
Speaking five days after a fracas embroiling the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, he said: ''I struggle with this hypocrisy, particularly when they seem happy to intervene in the affairs of other countries but become very defensive when criticised for their treatment of the first peoples of this land.''
Mr Dodson was delivering the inaugural Gandhi Oration at the University of NSW.                                    Advertisement: Story continues below                                        Mr Dodson defended the expert panel he co-chairs against criticism that it had gone too far in recommending changes to the race powers contained in the constitution to allow positive discrimination for indigenous people. He said there should be no referendum on it if politicians did not agree.
''If there is no cross-party support for the proposition, it will more than likely fail,''  he said.
Earlier in the day, Anne Twomey, the director of the constitutional reform unit at Sydney University's law school, warned that the ''complexity and extensive reach'' of the panel's proposals would probably result in their failure if put to a referendum.
Mr Dodson defended the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra, which was the source of the protests on Thursday that led to a security scare involving Ms Gillard and the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.
''It would be simplistic … to condemn outright the behaviour of protesters associated with the tent embassy last week, without considering the sense of oppression that some of our people still feel toward our governments on a whole range of matters,'' he said.
''I will always condemn bad manners and unnecessarily aggressive behaviour by whomever. But I will always defend people's rights to assert their political position and try to look to