‘Kick in the guts’: NSW Labor pulls funding for reconciliation body

Phil Dotti has fighting in his blood. The former Cronulla Sharks player’s grandfather was a World War II soldier-turned-freedom fighter and Dotti has followed his lead, fighting for Indigenous rights and reconciliation all his life.

Dotti, the first Indigenous footballer to play for Cronulla, fought – unsuccessfully – to convince Australia to back the Voice referendum and is now fighting to save the state’s peak reconciliation body after a NSW Labor government decision to axe its funding.

The board of Reconciliation NSW has been told its annual $275,000 funding from the state government would no longer be forthcoming, and the body “will need to consider other options”.

The funding cut will be devastating to the organisation. Reconciliation NSW co-chair Joshua Gilbert, a Worimi man, said the organisation will fold without the injection of money from the government.

Gilbert said Reconciliation NSW had gone “cap in hand” to the government every year to seek funding, which had always been provided through either Aboriginal Affairs NSW or the minister’s discretionary fund.

He said all other reconciliation bodies across the country were funded by state governments.

“On the back of the [Voice] referendum result, this really is a kick in the guts,” Gilbert said.

“This is not a journey we can do alone as Aboriginal people and there should be a requirement for governments to fund reconciliation.”

Gilbert said the organisation had sought multi-year funding to provide more certainty for staff and the programs it supports, but instead the Minns government will withdraw all money.

The move has outraged Dotti. The Gumbaynggirr-Dunghutti man, who earlier this year took possession of his grandfather Private Tasman Dotti’s war medals after they were returned to his family, said he was raised to stand up and fight.

A photo of Tasman on an Australian Aboriginal League float in the 1947 May Day procession, holding a sign declaring “Burn our Welfare Boards”, serves as inspiration to the younger Dotti.

“If governments can invest millions, billions into making our lives better in so many ways, they can invest in reconciliation,” Dotti, 63, said.

Dotti said he was shocked to discover that the state government would discontinue funding, describing the amount of money Reconciliation NSW was seeking a “pittance”.

A spokesperson for the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Treaty David Harris said the state government “had been a strong supporter of Reconciliation NSW since 1997 and remains committed to the shared journey of reconciliation”.

“Over the past decade Aboriginal Affairs NSW has had ongoing discussions with the organisation about the need to secure sustainable funding on an ongoing basis,” the spokesperson said.

“To support this transition, the Aboriginal Affairs NSW will provide an additional $136,000 to support Reconciliation NSW.”

The spokesman said the NSW government worked with the Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Organisations on funding for Closing the Gap programs that specifically focused on funding for Aboriginal community organisations.

The latest budget provided $202 million in new funding to “improve the lives of Aboriginal people in NSW”, the spokesman said.

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