In an emotional speech where he dealt with the failed voice referendum and three years of policy inaction in its aftermath, Mr Pearson accused governments across the political spectrum of allowing vice industries to grow and profit within vulnerable communities.
Read the full speech here.
He also told participants at Australia’s premier festival of Aboriginal culture that young Indigenous people are stuck between the “soft bigotry” of low expectations from Labor and the left, and “hard bigotry” from the right.
As he laid out a vision to take Aboriginal policy forward after claims Anthony Albanese has failed to act after losing the referendum in 2023, Mr Pearson called for a direct funding relationship between remote communities and the federal government.
The founder of Cape York Partnership also called for scrapping state and territory Aboriginal departments, calling them a black hole for their governments’ budgets that merely duplicate services the commonwealth should already be providing.
“Remote Australia must become the sole jurisdiction of the commonwealth,” Mr Pearson said
“These communities and their lands would still come under the shared jurisdiction of the relevant states and territories for most functions governed by the state’s constitutional responsibilities, but the administrative relationship for Aboriginal affairs would lie with the commonwealth,” he said.
“There should be no need for Aboriginal affairs departments in the states and territories.
“This would rationalise duplicated governmental systems and institutions. It would stop Indigenous affairs being the black hole for state and territory government budgets.”
Mr Pearson returned to Garma for the first time in three years this weekend, as he said he had to take responsibility for the referendum and for helping to set a new course.
Standing in front of an Australian Electoral Commission map [see below] showing the overwhelming Yes vote in remote Australia as blue dots, the Cape York leader said he had to speak up for the “blue dot communities” that voted Yes in the 2023 constitutional recognition referendum.
While Mr Pearson attended it, the Prime Minister was absent from Garma for the first time since he came to office. He had previously said he intended to attend every festival while he was in The Lodge.
“The Uluru Statement from the Heart was our prayer to the Australian people. There was hope in its words,” Mr Pearson said on Saturday.
“The statement was written with love. It stands as probably the most beautiful unrequited letter of love in Australian political history.
“What right has anyone to raise hopes when those hopes were so badly misplaced? What right has anyone to offer a vision that turns out to be a mirage?
“That is the source of my hesitation to speak of these things. But I cannot allow the failure of the referendum to excuse me from my responsibility, my duty on behalf of the blue-dot communities.”
Mr Pearson said Indigenous children in Australia were “caught between the Scylla of the soft bigotry of low expectations of Labor governments and the Charybdis of the hard bigotry of the Liberal Nationals”.
“The inability of governments to deliver the reforms our people need is no longer only a moral failure but a civilisational one. The destruction of the blue-dot communities of remote Australia is truly at stake,” he said.
“The commonwealth provides much of the funding, while the states and territories control many of the systems through which it is spent. What can you do if your state chooses to spend it on detention, over education?”
Mr Pearson in his speech explained how he believed communities and their organisations were capable of finding good solutions to local problems, while state governments had a record of acting slowly or undoing good work.
“When I started my advocacy, grog was the main problem,” Mr Pearson said.
“It took 15 years before governments were forced by us to act.
“When they finally implemented the alcohol management plans we advocated, the results were fundamental … Royal Flying Doctor injury retrievals fell by more than half.
“That should have taught us something. Instead, governments repeated the same mistake. Cannabis, previously unknown to our communities, spread unhindered.
“Now ‘ice’ [crystal methamphetamine] is the neglected crisis of our communities.”
Mr Pearson also warned that any progress to tackle alcohol in remote communities was being undone, as he demanded governments of all persuasions “sever ties” with the grog and gambling industries.
“Whatever progress we made with alcohol has since been undone by governments of both persuasions, conservative and Labor,” he said.
“Alcohol supply has expanded, and women and children are experiencing the worst recorded violence in more than twenty years.
“In 2025 alone, more than 1100 women and children were recorded as victims of assault across Cape York’s discrete communities. So far this year 513 women and children have been victims of assault.
“Until political parties sever ties with vice industries grog and gambling little will change. The poor are a gold mine, said the economist Thomas Sowell. The CLP [Country Liberal Party in the territory], LNP and ALP when in power, believe it is the divine right of the vice industries to make a profit from the immiseration of our people.”
Mr Pearson also singled out the former Queensland Labor government of Peter Beattie in the 2000s – of setting up “parasitic” out-of-home care sectors.
“Queensland is a serial inquirer, yet children entering out-of-home care has continued to rise. Under the Beattie Government, Queensland spent a decade building an outsourced industry around the management of child and family crisis,” he said.
“They turned our children into fodder for a parasitic industry.”
Mr Pearson argued that if the federal government dealt directly with local organisations that understood local problems, it was more likely to result in effective responses like the Personal Responsibility and Opportunity Act that he and other Cape York leaders had introduced in the far north Queensland communities they knew and understood.
Mr Pearson presented his proposal alongside Cape York leader Fiona Jose, described by him as one of a new generation of women Aboriginal leaders.
Ms Jose explained the Cape York Institute’s plan for Australia’s bottom million, half of whom are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The institute “has been advocating for an educational guarantee for those bottom million, regardless of whether they are Indigenous,” she said.
“That guarantee works on Cape York as a pledge to struggling parents in remote far north Queensland; if you start saving early for your child’s education and contribute regularly to their education fund managed by the institute, the institute will find the shortfall from somewhere to ensure your child goes to an excellent city high school as a boarder,” Ms Jose said.
“On the conservative side, there is a belief that if individuals simply tried harder, they would succeed. Too often, this means policies that preach responsibility but withhold opportunity: a morality that demands people stand on their own feet while pulling the ground from under them.”
Ms Jose said the Cape York Institute was now advocating for a jobs guarantee.
“We know there is much work to be done in our communities and meaningful jobs can be created through the reinvestment of money spent on dead-end employment services,” she said.
Mr Pearson said this was why the Cape York Institute had an agenda.
“After the rejection of the Voice, the conversation about structural reform of the federal arrangements governing Indigenous affairs, must resume,” Mr Pearson said.
“If not a Voice, then let us ask the question Dr [Martin Luther] King asked in two years after civil rights [legislation in the US] and one year before his assassination: ‘where do we go from here?’”
Paige TaylorIndigenous Affairs Correspondent, WA Bureau Chief