Abbott vows to engage - Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Abbott. Photo: Andrew Meares

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will vow that ''a new engagement with Aboriginal people'' will be one of the hallmarks of an incoming Coalition government from ''day one'' if it wins this year’s federal election.

Mr Abbott will announce on Friday that the proposed wording of an amendment to the Constitution recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would be released within 12 months of taking office.

He will use an address to the Sydney Institute to lay out his approach to indigenous policy, declaring: ''As long as the first Australians are unemployed and poor at rates that would be a scandal among any other group, we are all diminished. We will never be able fully to enjoy our nation's wealth until it is more widely earned by Aboriginal people too.''

Mr Abbott will identify the biggest challenge for a successful referendum as the need to reassure ''the wider community that we are not creating two classes of citizen''.

''We should be prepared to work on it until we get it right because such an amendment is too important to go forward, yet fail,'' he says in a draft of the address.

A Coalition government would begin a bipartisan process to assess the amendment's chances of success when it was released, with Mr Abbott expressing confidence in the outcome because ''Australians' hearts are in this now in a way we've never been before''.

Mr Abbott will argue that if a government neglects symbolic change it is unlikely to succeed with practical measures ''because it will be seen to lack the respect that's essential for success''.

''Practical and symbolic reconciliation are opposite sides of the same coin, so the next Coalition government will pursue both.''

Mr Abbott will also commit to spending a week each year living and working in remote communities with ''senior decision makers'' including bureaucrats, and to fund job training trials developed by Andrew Forrest and Warren Mundine through the non-profit organisation GenerationOne.

''An incoming Coalition government will fund four trial sites to further test their model with the prospect, should it prove successful, of a more general rollout of job guarantees for long-term unemployed people,''Mr Abbott will say.

''Coupled with strict enforcement of job search rules, this focus on work rather than on training has the potential to transform all employment services, not just indigenous ones.''

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