Elder protests government waste of billions in Aboriginal affairs funding

August 12, 2011
Issue 
Video: Ngemba elder protests billions of Aboriginal affairs funding mispent by government. YouTube/GreenLeftOnline.

For the last five days, Feli McHughes, Joel McHughes and Gregory Coffey from the Ngemba Billabong Restoration Project in Brewarrina, NSW, have been trying to hand over a $260,000 cheque to the head of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs.

"We are not going to play this silly game any more: where they pretend to give us money and we end up giving it back to them to mispend", Feli McHughes told Âé¶¹Ó³»­ Weekly, referring to the recently unearthed secret federal government report that $25 billion of government spending on Aboriginal affairs over the last 40 years had failed to narrow the huge social and economic gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities.

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