“It’s a rejection. We can’t afford to lose it. I know we’ve compromised all our lives, but right now, we’re right at the pointy end, and if there needs to be a compromise to get over the line, let’s do it.”
Gooda is leading the Queensland treaty process and ran the high-profile 2016 royal commission into the NT youth justice system. He was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner of the Australian Human Rights Commission, but Pearson said Gooda had no conception of the social justice component of his job.
‘Mick (Gooda)‘s problem is that he thinks he can’t separate compromise from capitulation. He thinks capitulation is compromise.’
Indigenous leader Noel Pearson
“The [royal commission] did not produce any change,” Pearson said. “You think the problems we’re having an Alice Springs with youth justice have got nothing to do with the Mick Gooda inquiry? Of course it has.”
“Mick Gooda’s entire career was in the bureaucracy… It’s people like him who need to hear the voices of Aboriginal people on the ground.”
“Mick’s problem is that he thinks he can’t separate compromise from capitulation. He thinks capitulation is compromise.”
“The day that we allow someone like him to be the arbiter of the position of Indigenous people in negotiation with parliament and the government is the day we get the whole game away.”
Noel Pearson has called Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a “Judas.”Credit: Eamon Gallagher
Asked by ABC Radio National host Patricia Karvelas if he was playing the man not the ball, Pearson said: “When the man’s holding the ball in the way he is. Well, you’ve got to tackle him.”
Coalition figures and No campaigners have criticised Pearson recently for several personal critiques of people with whom he disagrees. Some Voice proponents and Labor figures privately believe his barbs do not help the Yes case because they generate negative headlines, but they have been reluctant to rebuke him on the record.
Pearson has called Opposition Leader Peter Dutton “Judas” and invoked the spectre of Nazis tattooing Jewish people in a debate with Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who took offence as a Jew. Pearson has also strongly rebuked Voice proponents Greg Craven and Frank Brennan, both of whom are pushing for amendments to the proposed constitutional change.
Pearson criticised Leeser on Friday morning, claiming his attempts to alter the referendum wording were detrimental to the cause of reconciliation and motivated in part to return to the Coalition frontbench that Leeser quit over his Voice stance.
Pearson also attacked leading No campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Last November, he attacked leading Indigenous Voice opponent and Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on Radio National, saying she was being used to “punch down on other blacks”.
In a follow-up interview on ABC’s 730 on Thursday night, Gooda said some people attached to the referendum working group had contacted him.
“I’ve had a couple of conversations. I think, I guess, a couple of them tried to counsel me on this but I think it’s important enough to make a stand here.”
“Apart from people on the working group, there’s been a lot of people ringing me today saying, I think you’re sort of on the right track and keep on going’,” he said.
Gooda has been contacted for comment.
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