27/09/2026
Close the Gap on Racism: Former Aboriginal affairs minister Ken Wyatt says comments by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson about Indigenous people being “primitive” come from ignorance and a refusal to connect with Australia’s First Peoples.
The West Australian former politician, who was the first Indigenous Australian to hold the Aboriginal affairs portfolio, says he was deeply saddened by the senator’s description of Aboriginal people as “the most primitive race on Earth”.
Hanson’s comments, which included her view that Indigenous Australians had “achieved nothing”, were aired in a September 2025 podcast that was recently reported in the media.
“I was sad that a woman who has been in the Australian parliament for as long as she has can hold such a view,” Wyatt said.
“It’s disappointing that we can still reach for language that reduces an entire people, their cultures, knowledge and achievements to a single dismissive description after all the years Australia has spent trying to understand its history more honestly.
“There are non-Indigenous people who live in low socioeconomic circumstances but we would never call them primitive. It’s easy to say it’s racism, but I see it as ignorance and a lack of understanding.”
In an open letter to Hanson, obtained by this masthead, Wyatt urged her to “talk with Indigenous Australians where they live and across the extraordinary diversity of this continent”.
Do not restrict those conversations to national leaders, politicians, commentators or those whose views might reinforce your own,” Wyatt writes.
“Talk with people in metropolitan Australia, regional centres, country towns, remote communities and homelands.”
Wyatt said Hanson should educate herself about the role of Aboriginal labour in rural Australia before she attended an upcoming WA Pastoralists and Graziers Association annual conference next month in Perth, where she will give a keynote speech.
Other speakers listed are Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and former Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles, now chief executive of the Gina Rinehart-owned Hancock Agriculture.
He said his advice to Hanson was simple: “Pauline, talk to Indigenous Australians across Australia. Go to them. Sit with them. Ask the difficult questions and allow them to ask difficult questions of you.”
Read full article
https://www.smh.com.au/national/western-australia/sit-down-talk-with-indigenous-australians-wyatt-s-message-to-hanson-after-primitive-comments-20260928-p610kj.html
NACCHO Aboriginal Health Australia
Katie Kiss - Social Justice Commissioner
Coalition of Peaks
Senator Malarndirri McCarthy - Northern Territory
Reconciliation Australia
Commission for First Peoples’ Children
Marion Scrymgour MP
