Tony Abbott today showed ‘Closing the Gap’ is failing the aboriginal people of Australia.

Here’s why it’s failing: it doesn’t recognise the history of Europeans separating the indigenous people from their resources by sidelining them to the backblocks. The following preamble to the Australian Constitution would quickly repair this situation in the form of a practical economic treaty. Any treaty without this consideration is doomed to fail.

Necessary Preamble to the Australian Constitution

“As a treaty between the aboriginal people and subsequent settlers, we the citizens of Australia acknowledge the wrongs involved in the dispossession of the aboriginal peoples from their lands and natural resources, often by frontier wars. To rectify European-Australians’ commoditisation of aboriginal land and natural resources, we declare the income from land and natural resources to be the commonwealth, the natural source of the nation’s revenue, wherever exclusive possession has been granted to companies or individuals.

We declare all arbitrary tax imposts upon labour, thrift and industry must gradually be abolished in order to fulfil this revenue switch from labour and capital onto land and natural resources.

We finally understand ‘Closing the Gap’ is impossible unless we thus acknowledge the earth to be common property and the birthright of all people, and that bills purporting human rights must be invalid without this primary fiscal adjustment.”