Genocide and the Law, with Robbie Thorpe and Len Lindon

In this episode Lidia yarns with Uncle Robbie Thorpe and Lawyer Len Lidon, about genocide happening around the world, the ongoing genocide here in this country, and what needs to change to achieve justice.

Uncle Robbie Thorpe Robbie, a Krautungalung Elder of the Gunnai people, is an activist who has been fighting for First Peoples and against genocide for decades. He hosts Bunjil's Fire on 3CR Radio.

Len Lindon is lawyer who has fought alongside Robbie for decades pursuing various genocide cases, including recently against Charles Windsor King of the United Kingdom. 


LEARN: Go Robbie Thorpe's Crime Scene Australia website here

LEARN: The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide here

TAKE ACTION: Make a submission to the Genocide Inquiry, learn how here


These recordings took place on the unceded sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.

Music by Associate Professor Ted Wilkes, respected Nyungar Elder.


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Transcript

[A song by Ted Wilkes called Kudjil Didj" is playing in the background. It features a rhythmic and resonant sound of the didgeridoo, creating an atmospheric and immersive auditory experience. The deep, vibrating tones of the instrument are interspersed with natural pauses, evoking the essence of traditional Indigenous Australian music]

00:00:09:04 

[Music level drops to the background]

LIDIA:

Before we can move forward. Before we can heal, we must tell the truth. This is truth telling with me, Lidia Thorpe. I'm a proud Djab Wurrung, Gunnai, Gunditjmara woman. I'm an independent Senator fighting for justice and working to bring people together around truth and treaty. 

This is a place to listen, stay open, and learn, as I yarn with First Nations Elders, experts and activists about the injustices facing our people, and importantly, the solutions and opportunities that come from self-determination through the right policy. 

Self-Determination is Aboriginal people deciding our own future, our own destiny.

[Music level rises to the foreground briefly then drops again]

The thank you to Ted Wilkes, respected Noongar Elder, for the beautiful didgeridoo playing in the background of this podcast.

[The music begins to fade]

00:01:20.22 – 

LIDIA:

Today I'm speaking with Uncle Robbie Thorpe and Len Linden. Robbie is a Kruatungalung Elder of the Gunnai people, who are also my people. He's an activist who has been fighting against the genocide of our people for a long time. And Len Lawyer. 

And Len is a lawyer who has been pursuing genocide cases with Uncle Robbie for decades.

So could you give me a kind of a short, sharp, understanding of what the Genocide Convention is and how this country is obligated to it?

00:01:56:15 

LEN:

The short, sharp version is everyone knows what homicide is.

There's a lot of different ways of murdering people, you know, you can start to torture them. You can probably even drive them to suicide. I don't know why this and genocide is just, murdering, etc. members of the group.

So it's not just against individuals, against members of group

It's not a political slogan. Genocide, just like homicide, there's a legal definition and it includes killing members of a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part.

And that one you can see includes suicide, includes ecocide, the conditions of life, deprivation of cultural meaning, and so on. And finally, imposing, measures intended to prevent births within the group. 

Well they’ve sterilizing women in Australia after the 60s, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

And that's one that the inquiry into the removal of children actually termed it genocide.

So that for the first time that a government report had used Genocide. 

00:03:00:10 

LIDIA:

That's the bringing them home report from 1997.

ROBBIE:

It's very Clear. In fact, everything in the act. 

And I’ll Challenge anyone out there to tell me what part of that act Australia is not guilty of. I’m telling you, anybody, but they can’t. And they can’t because it’s all true. 

And the fact that they never legislated for this crime back in 1948 -1949, when they ratified it, they never legislated for it.  Which makes it a criminal act again, the fact that they failed to prevent or punish anyone. 

That's, that's the whole spirit of the United Nations Act. Prevent it. Never again. So they failed on that front there. 

LEN:

Most people don't understand that in Australia, genocide was completely legal up until the year 2000. All of Robbie’s cases that were going on in the 90s and even up to the 2000’s demonstrated that genocide was quite legal, because the court said that even though the genocide had been an international crime for 50 years, and because Australia hadn't incorporated it into its own law, even though it was customary international law, it didn't apply.

So all the cases that Kevin and (…) and Isabelle Coe, and Kevin Buzzacott, always ended up with this point of the court saying, well, unfortunately, it's not a crime in Australia.

And then in the year 2000 Australia actually made genocide crime in Division 268 of the Criminal Code. It defined the legal definition of genocide. It's killing people, removing children, causing serious mental harm, conditions of life, and son. 

And they did that because there was a development the United Nations called the Rome Statute. Lots of countries signed on to it. 

But what Australia did, they made it a crime, but they said that the only person that could actually prosecute for that crime was one person, the Attorney General, and of course, that's a White attorney general and there's never been an investigation or prosecution in the past 25 years for that very reason.

So,  we would argue that genocide is still not a crime in Australia. They say it's a crime, but it can't be a crime if you can't bring charges for it

LIDIA:

Well, have a look at Palestine. I mean, you know, what we're dealing with now and the fact that this country doesn't acknowledge genocide, the ongoing genocide that's  on everyone's TV screens every day, this country is complicit in the genocide in Palestine.

00:05:33:10 

ROBBIE:

It was, it was very clear since even despite the convention for the prevention of genocide [being] ratified in Australia in 1948, we still claim that they were committing genocide on Aboriginal people, it was very clear. 

And the cases that we took to the high court, we actually brought genocide into the vernacular in this country. No one even understood what it meant.

00:05:56:07

LIDIA:

What led you both to the fight against genocide? Uncle Robbie?

ROBBIE:

I’d ask the question why people are standing up for Palestine at the present time, because there's a genocide going on. And anybody in their right mind would be standing up about that issue. 

That most heinous of all known crimes, I’ve always believed that genocide has been fundamental to the occupation of Australia. If it wasn't for the acts of terror and the policies, the sustained policies of genocide, Australia wouldn't exist.

It's all premeditated from the get-go. I've always understood that. So, I've been looking at ways to actually get involved with this system, or actually, attempt to evoke laws that are supposed to prevent genocides. 

For a long time,

00:06:57:04 

LIDIA:

How long, Uncle Rob? Because it's been all my life, and that's 50 years.

ROBBIE:

When I went to the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972 I think  it was, it fundamentally altered my life in the direction I was going. And I heard the stories from my people there. And it was all the same, right around this continent there was genocide going on, it was very clear. 

And if you look at anything in that convention, you'd be hard pressed to find anything in that act that Australia is not guilty of.

So, the opportunity when it came along, we tried to take it on in the High Court. If I had of had the resources when the Mabo case happened, when they decide this wasn’t an empty land, there was actually  people here.  

That would have been the trigger if I had of had the ability to do it then.

00:07:44:04 

LIDIA:

Well, there was no law against genocide at the time. 

ROBBIE:

If Australia had of had the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide, if that had happened in 1948, there would have been a lot more Aboriginal people around today. 

The acts are still continuing, like the forced removal of our children, the killing members of our group, creating this serious mental harm with this condition of life, with intent. All those things, birth prevention, you name it. So, if that had been stopped in 1948 alone, it would have been a different scenario today for our people. 

LIDIA:

Thank you, Uncle Rob. Len?

LEN:

Yeah1988, around Pine Gap time, I got arrested with hundreds of other people at Pine Gap protesting about the imminent nuclear meltdown of the world. 

And this lawyer there, called Pam Ditton said; because we're all pleading not guilty and trying to subpoena the head of Pine Gap, Infant Marcia Langton  subpoenaed Bob Hawke, she was the only one that could get close to him.

ROBBIE:

What happened there?

LIDIA:

There’s one for you listeners, even Marcia was there. 

LEN:

And this lawyer Pam Ditton said: do you know that there's a Genocide Convention Act? 

And then she showed me these musty blue volumes of the act,1948 -1949, and there it is, the Genocide Convention Act, prohibiting removal of children, sterilization of women, causing serious mental or physical harm, killing members of the group.

And you think you see it in black and white? You think what the? This is like already 50 years ago. And so, you know.

LIDIA:

Black and white. Absolutely. Isn't it literally?

00:09:27:01 

LEN:

So, in 1982, you know, Foley was speaking in the Hyde Park in Sydney, the big march and everything.

And then I was in Melbourne and there was an ad in The Age for a for a lawyer saying, was it Aboriginal Provisional Government one, hours negotiable, salary nil. I thought, that’s me. I don't know how many applicants there were, but I got the job. And the rest is history.

LIDIA:

And I worked there unpaid also. I had to gather the papers for the APG meetings, the Aboriginal Provisional Government, I think I may have been about 11.

ROBBIE:

There is also Len, the whole United Nations is basically premised on the idea on the genocide that went down in World War 2, that was created as the global police to make sure that that never happened again and prevent it and punish people for it.

So, without that act, if you're a country who says, I can't prevent genocidal punish it, you are hardly a civilized society. 

That's the most heinous of all known criminal acts. And if you can't prevent it, well, what good are you?

LEN:

That’s the crazy thing, thing. I mean, right now in the Criminal Code of Australia for the past 20 years, this legal definition of genocide has been there, it's a criminal offense. So why has no one ever been charged? You know, this is not just last year. This has been that since the 2002. Why has no one ever been investigated and charged?

Because the  only person that can bring a charge of genocide in Australia is the Attorney General.

ROBBIE:

Well, that's since 2002

LEN:

Yeah, that's right. And you'd have to say, doesn't that prove that Australia has the intent to commit genocide against Aboriginal people?

00:11:13:14 

LIDIA:

But then we go to the Redfern speech by Paul Keating (ROBBIE: It’s an Admission) who then says: we took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life,

we brought the diseases and the alcohol He went on, 

we committed the murders, 

we took the children from their mothers,

we practice discrimination and exclusion.

ROBBIE:

That sounds like a very clear admission to genocide to me. But it didn't pan out that way.

He went on to impose what I call naive title on young people after that, you know, Native Title, thinking was a good thing for our people. 

Colonisers haven’t got the right to make laws for our people. Where did they get that from to start with  ? Do they acknowledge that we have a law here, a pre-existing law, a precedent law, sustainable, longstanding. Why didn’t they recognize that in Mabo?

00:12:13:17 

LIDIA:

Well, it seems that they do, they do an acknowledgment on the on the planes, they do an acknowledgment at the police station, when they have a morning tea for reconciliation week. Isn't that acknowledgment enough?

ROBBIE:

Even acknowledging, you’ve got act on it as well. And if you say that we’ve never ceded our sovereignty in this country, where does that leave the law in this country, the colonising law. What are they doing? I Have they got a right to be here?  Have they got a right to act? Have they got a right to apply their law to our people?  

Have they got a right to imprison our people, to do anything? This is our land and our law. Always was. Always will be. 

LIDIA:

So it seems that people are happy to do an acknowledgment to country and to Elders, past and present, but they're not willing to acknowledge the sovereignty of First peoples in this country.

ROBBIE:

What are they doing? What's the action? What do they say, faith without action is blasphemy.  Blasphemy, you know what I mean, right? So it’s no good just talking about it, act on it. That means releasing our people from your prisons. Right? That means giving us land back.

But not only giving it back, restore it how you found it. If you can't do that, restitute our people for the damages and pay the back rent, and compound interest on all that.

Australia is just a crime scene from the get-go.

It was calculated, premeditated, around a round table in England as far as I'm concerned. Did Lieutenant Cook discover New Holland, did he? There’s lots of problems here, it’s all lies. 

You don't expect a murdering, lying thief to offer himself up and give himself up, you need to drag his sorry arse into the into the court and get admissions from him.

And we can't do that here because the court is part of the whole criminal process. You know, we need to take it to the International Criminal Court. And by doing these cases here, hopefully we're exhausting the domestic remedy. They're (Australian courts) not interested. We know we can't get a fair hearing here. It’s biased and partial. We need to get outside of this system.

00:14:37:12

LEN:

We just need one country to take Australia to the International Court of Justice for a ruling that in fact, Aboriginal law applies and it's all Aboriginal land. We just need one country to refer to the International Criminal Court for there to be prosecutions of the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice, government ministers. And the funny thing is that last week Jacinta Allan, the Premier of Victoria acknowledged that sovereignty had never been ceded. 

And the Aboriginal Treaty Minister,  [Natalie] Hutchins did it the week before. And for the past year, people at the Yoorrook [Justic] Commission have been coming out representing the State of Victoria, government ministers, the police minister, the prisons minister, all saying we formally acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. Now what does that mean?

In fact, Robbie got them to ask a question of Jacinta Allan saying, do you of do you agree that you can't get jurisdiction by invasion and genocide? Guess what her answer was: ‘Commissioners, I don't think I can really answer that question at the moment.’ (LIDIA: Laughs) 

And the second question was, given that you acknowledge that sovereignty was never seated, doesn't that mean that without a treaty, every piece of land in Victoria is Aboriginal land, and Aboriginal law applies to everyone in Victoria?  [Jacinta Allen  Answers] ‘Well, commissioners, again, I think that's a bit challenging, but I'll just refer to my earlier evidence that Victoria is a parliamentary democracy of the Victorian people.’ That was her answer. 

I mean, that is no answer. What does that mean, that if all the people of Germany agree that Jewish people should be exterminated in 1938 then that's okay. I mean, the whole point about genocide is there's no immunity. You know, and that's why Robbie charged King Charles with genocide, and that's currently actually in the court.

00:16:25:00 

LIDIA:

And that is the instrument to continue the genocide.

ROBBIE:

If you think of it, if they can commit genocide on a people, they do what they like to anybody else, women or anyone.  They’ve allowed this unchecked genocide, violence against the original people to go on unchecked, or allowed it to manifest. There is going to be problems. 

You know, I remember looking at a documentary about the first women who arrived on the island.

The convict boats [that] were brought to Australia. What happened to those women? It’s disgusting. Australia is totally racist and sexist. And there mental illness. And also,  denialism is a mental illness. It means that they can't deal with the reality. Of what they are and who they are.  

We had law here; we had settled country. We had a law that was long standing, sustainable, and fair and just.  We had that, otherwise we wouldn't have been the people we were. We lived in harmony with all the other black nations and everything on this land. 

That’s a law. 

LIDIA:

And that law from the travels that I've done in the last three years around this country, is very real in every community and every family group that I've ever sat and yarned with. That law is the same as our law and the laws that I've been taught and raised with culturally are no different to those an Larrakia country. 

And even though, we've had to contend with almost 250 years of an invasion, that's, being responsible for genocide, not only genocide, but the ongoing genocide, our people who are continuing to resist their laws very strong and connected right across this country and are united on this front

00:18:26:03 

ROBBIE:

The laws for our people are about sharing and caring, and that goes right across the board. That’s not what came here came here on the boats, they were terrorists, they were pirates, they had bad intent. 

They bought weapons of mass destruction, and they brought disease here deliberately. 

I think Australia was the last continent to be colonized, which meant they were very adept on how to deal with the original people by the time they got here.  It was very swift and brutal. The colonisation and the control of these lands. We went from 100% of the population to 1%. 

If that’s not genocide, then I don’t know what genocide is. 

The haven’t got consent, they haven’t got treaty. They haven’t got jurisdiction. Even the fact that even in our country is a problem. They branched out into actual waters back in 1778, on Krautungalung  Land, Point Hicks, where they were firing cannons at our people. You know that our people knew what the intent was that. In fact, our people got a story about. The story that went with that was like the beginning of the end as we knew it.

And 75 years later those people were basically exterminated. And the survivors of that Holocaust ended up in a concentration camps and treated really badly for the next 3 or 4 generations.

LIDIA:

Then what happened to the land, then there was a land grab right? And so, colonizers came in and just took the land, set up for their own families. And even today we say generational wealth from the land that they that they took, (ROBBIE: They Stole) that they stole, that they squatted on.

00:20:07:06 

ROBBIE: 

And they raped, and they pillaged, and they plundered, they chopped all the trees down. They stole all the gas and the oil, the gold.

Anyway, we survived that. It’s an incredible story of survival for our people, just incredible. It’s been going on for 250 years, 

Been gone for 250 years. It's incredible that you got people with the spirit to continue that fight.

There hasn't been a lot of corporate blacks singing up sovereignty, unseated sovereignty. They are sitting on the gravy train; anyway, ready to smash shortly. I think they're seeing the light there, that’s why they’re starting to sing up sovereignty again.

LIDIA: 

And that's part but that's part of colonization, right? In the old days, it was native place and native police were hired by the coloniser to look for the blacks and help shoot the blacks, license to kill. So, in 2024, there is still that native police identity out there. It's obviously in a different form. However, there are unfortunately, Aboriginal people who help the coloniser to imprison us, to take our children away, to destroy our land. And, you know, I have to say that you only need to look at what happens in the federal parliament of this country, and you'll see for yourself what a native police person can look like.

ROBBIE:

Totally divisive!  

And it's been a major issue in the colonialism of this country. You have a look around the world, they’ve got scouts. All of these guys, the aren't really saying exactly what they are, they were trackers, they were killers, that were insiders you know, like, they could be on both sides of the fence. They could do a lot of damage and that's how they were used against us. They were mercenaries, they were death squads. You know that the truth about this place, and what they did carries a lot of inter-generational trauma. 

These things need to be dealt with. It's not a joke. An treaty, done properly needs to be done at international law. Australia has got the capacity or the right intent to do treaties. 

Criminals don’t make the law, they need to get dealt with by it, and that's what needs to happen in this country. That's why we need international law to intervene. We need an intervention, and only international rule of law need to be brought into this country and sort this country out because it’s basically a crime scene, and it’s ongoing

00:22:42:09 

LIDIA:

So, on that, and because collectively, and if you look around the country, the fight that so many of our staunch sovereign warriors have fought. How do we get more public awareness and understanding on what is going on so that we can get the whole country coming with us on this? 

Because ultimately, this is truth telling is about healing. You actually heal from being truthful, owning the truth so that you can move forward together. And that's ultimately what a treat provides the mechanism for. But how do we how important is it that we get it out there into the public ?

ROBBIE:

It’s totally important. 

You know, this is unsettled country. It's got problems, major ones, this country oppresses its greatest asset, It’s very negative, isn’t it? 

LIDIA:

Which is the oldest continuing living culture on the planet.

ROBBIE:

It so critically important to the whole history of this place and its future survival.

Out law is the blueprint for survival in the long term. It's proven. 

Get the jack boots of out of our neck. You saw what happened at Camp Sovereignty. We took some land back and lit a fire. That needs to be supported by the wider community.

Australia is a country where it never had a revolution, it still has a foreign sovereign operating. Most other countries celebrate the day they through the Crown out of their country and become independent. 

How to do that, I believe is create a thing called the Sovereign Treaty Republic. We can do that, and we can even take the law down to the lower , down, back to the ground, take it to the shires and the tribes. Let them sort out the law on the land, people going to live here.

LIDIA:

That's where the people are.

ROBBIE

They’ve gotta worry about the environment they live in, and that's where the healing needs to happen. That's where the massacres happen. 

LIDIA

We must swear allegiance to the coloniser to even do our job. If I hadn't have done that, I wouldn't be a senator today. It's really disturbing and kind of weird that any time decisions are made by the people or the parliament, that those decisions then have to go to the governor, who is the king's representative. It's so out of date and not what we're dealing with as a people in this country today.

00:25:20:05

LEN:

It's not just federal Parliament. Every Victorian cabinet minister, every Victorian judge, every Victorian Kings Council, lots of commissioners, even the Yoorrook commissioners are appointed by the king. You know, there's these things called a Register of Letters Patent, we're trying to get hold of them and get them into court because it will show what everyone already knows it, but it will show in black and white everyone's commission from King Charles and before that, Queen Elizabeth.

LIDIA

So what can people do out there who are listening to this podcast who support our rights, our human rights, our sovereignty? What can they actually do?

LEN:

If you haven't got a treaty, it's very hard to argue that you've got no intent to destroy and that you’re not committing genocide because there's been no formal peace treaty, no end to the hostilities. And the thing about people talking about negotiating a treaty is, that the people that need a treaty are the people that came here in part of the invasion.

You (First Nations people) don't need a treaty was, what’s to negotiate? What are you going to change, the law of the land. Everyone knows the Basic Law is caring for country, having relationships with each other and with the creatures of the land, the sea, and the sky. It's not hard to grasp. 

That's one of the great beauties of Aboriginal law, it's really sophisticated because everyone has a totem, everyone's locked into it and they learn it from an early age. 

Most white people don't even know what the law (Commonwealth Law) is. It's all written down. It's hard to say. So, basically, everyone has to grasp is that a treaty doesn't involve a lot of negotiation. What it really involves, in very simple terms, is changing the Sovereign from King Charles and his family, his genocidal crime family,  to each mob, each people here, there should be at a local government level swearing allegiance to each mob, Krautungalung etcetera, etcetera, each mob by name, not as First People, but by the name, you know, the name of the people. It's pretty simple.

00:27:07:07 

ROBBIE

What I’d like to see is an official end of hostilities.

An official event, where there is an admission of facts, in a statement of agreed facts we can start to build from, (LIDIA: Yep) and then go from there. 

We’ve had to do this the hard way. You don't expect, a murdering, lying thief to give himself up. You need to drag him into the court and get the admissions.

It’s a little bit tame, you know the Yoorrook Truthe Commission because it’s a colonial construct, but it's a step in the right direction. We’re dealing with the truth, and truth is like weapon in its own right, it’s got a spirit of itself. 

LIDIA

Absolutely.

ROBBIE:

At the end of the day, the truth will emerge. And the truth has got a lot to do with the law of our country.

LIDIA

I just want to say on that, a thank you to uncle Rob because Victoria would not be talking about treaty if it wasn't for you, if it wasn't for your, resistance and your activism, there wouldn't be a Yoorrook truth telling commission.

And I remember back on that day when the government asked our people whether they wanted to be constitutionally recognized in the colonisers Federal Constitution. And that meeting,  through your leadership said, no, we want a treaty. 

ROBBIE: 

We want treaty justice first.

LIDIA:

And it's not the perfect treaty, but we got to get it right.

ROBBIE:

I believe in treaty. I believe in peace and ending wars.

LIDIA

Yes.

00:28:55:09 

ROBBIE:

But it means that international legal scrutiny.  

Think about the idea of a sovereign treaty republic which removes the crown. That's a win-win is a lot little less tax to pay, you got a lot less bureaucracy to deal with. 

We're the Sovereigns we never ceded it. You get that into you and It can be a win-win for everyone on this land. 

At the moment, there's no protection for the Sovereign here, because no one recognises it.

LIDIA: 

Now, just very quickly, because we can yarn for a long time, but just again, quickly, for the listeners out there, what can they do to help right now?

ROBBIE:

Well, you can check out crimesceneaustralia.com. That's lower case one word causing.

LIDIA: 

Crime scene australia.com.

ROBBIE

You can go there and you'll see a list of our cases current which is in the Supreme, the High and the Magistrates court concerning people like, Jacinta Allen, Charles Windsor, all the members of the Parliament, the 60th parliament of Victoria all notified, Ann Ferguson who is the Chief Justice and Margaret Gardner who's the Governor.

We're talking about some pretty legal fundamental changes here and acting out what unseated sovereignty means. 

And one of the things I should point out, there needs to be a proper education program. We're doing the hostile community who don't know really nothing. (LIDIA: So) That's a really dangerous situation to be stepping into treaty without education.

00:30:37:07 

LIDIA:

So, number one, go to the Crime Scene Australia website  (ROBBIE: well that mighn’t be number 1) I mean, it's about informing yourself, getting informed about what it looks like, so that in your environment, talk to others about this.

There is also a genocide inquiry happening, it's through my private senators bill, on removing the attorney general's power. It's called the attorney General's Fiat, which is the power to decide upon any genocide case in this country. Only the attorney general can make a decision on whether a genocide case happens in any court, in any jurisdiction in this country.

So the genocide bill is to remove that power.

[Music fades in to the background. A song by Ted Wilkes called Kudjil Didj" is playing in the background. It features a rhythmic and resonant sound of the didgeridoo, creating an atmospheric and immersive auditory experience. The deep, vibrating tones of the instrument are interspersed with natural pauses, evoking the essence of traditional Indigenous Australian music]

LIDIA: 

So if there's anyone out there that believes there is a genocide in this country or genocide anywhere in the world, I encourage you to make a submission to the Genocide Inquiry. We need to pressure the government to hold more than one hearing on genocide in this country. So get your submissions in soon.

LIDIA: 

So what else can they do, Len? I'll give you 30s.

LEN:

I think what you talking about, the more people that can put a submission into this inquiry, the more I mean, basically if genocide was a crime, we wouldn't be here talking about this stuff because it would be sorted because, you know, it was, you know, bully. One thing bullies understand is being bullied, you know, so these people like getting away with a crime. 

When they're charged with a crime. Suddenly they understand, they can suddenly hear what you're talking about.

LIDIA: 

Uncle Rob, last words.

ROBBIE:

I think we're the only country in the world where we have an Attorney General with oversight of oversight of international law of the Genocide Convention, it's really offensive and insulting once he's removed, and congratulation on attacking that, that’s fantastic. Once that's removed, we can access the convention and then apply that.

00:32:48:07

ROBBIE:

That'll straighten that this country hopefully, theoretically. 

Don't worry about his little Fiat thing. It’s gone. 

LIDIA:

Thank you, Uncle Rob and Len.

These are the conversations I've been having personally for the last 50 years. I think, I was hearing it when I was in mum's belly, and, you know, here I am as a federal senator standing up for our people's rights, but particularly stopping or ending the genocide, acknowledging our sovereign rights in this country and moving towards a treaty.

But part of that, as we know and as we saw with the referendum, truth telling is fundamental to any healing, any maturity of this nation, so that our children in the future can have a healthy environment, have clean water, and to live in harmony so that, everyone prospers and not just the ones the government decides on the day.

So, thank you all for listening.

look at the links provided.

And look forward to our next truth telling podcasts. 

Thank you very much.

ROBBIE:

Thank you.

[Music ends abruptly with a boom from a Didjeridoo]