KEN Wyatt is the first Aboriginal person elected to our House of Representatives. He is the only Aboriginal parliamentarian at the federal level: one Aboriginal person out of 226.
However, Aboriginal Australians represent about 3 per cent of the Australian population so proportionately we should have at least six Aboriginal federal MPs.
As the only Aboriginal voice in Federal Parliament, and with his long background in education and as a director of Aboriginal health, Ken should be considered for either a ministry or junior ministry, whether in government or in opposition, engaging with remedies for Aboriginal rights and the elimination of the present disparities.
The opportunity should not be wasted.
It is high time to review the Australian political landscape to eliminate the under-representation of peoples, as was achieved with women in politics. Every year 300,000 migrants rightly enter Australia, so every two years 600,000 migrants outnumber the 550,000 Australians who identify as Aboriginal.
We cannot continue to let people be subsumed into under-representation.
With the present system of first-past-the-post preferential voting in the House of Representatives and the quota voting system in the Senate, our Aboriginal Australians, and other contextually minority groups, will rarely get into parliament.
Affirmative action by all political parties in ensuring Aboriginal candidates are in winnable seats assists.
However, the introduction of half a dozen fixed seats for Aboriginal candidates, four in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate, would secure just representation.
The introduction of tiered levels of proportional voting in the House of Representatives would ensure all genuine, significant minority voices enter Parliament.
By doing this we will erode the conservative-prone two-party system and evolve a more apt participatory democracy.