Here’s a bunch of Senators (and others) during a committee inquiry into the deaths and disappearance of Aboriginal women and children.
They went off the Western Australia where a smoking ceremony and welcome to country were held.
You can see some of the pics here.
And here’s a picture of the Senators holding their ‘fire sticks’ - that’s my name for them, I don’t actually know what they are officially called but they are actually just sticks.
So what’s The big deal? We see this stuff all the time.
Here’s the kicker. After the committee returned to Canberra , the invoices arrived.
Insiders tell me there was a $1500 cost for the smoking ceremony, its not confirmed but allegedly another $1500 for a welcome to country and a further $2000 for the six cultural sticks.
A total of $5,000 for lighting a fire and giving a bunch of politicians some cultural sticks.
Apparently the bills were somewhat of a surprise to the committee who, after a lengthy discussion decided that charging the taxpayers for sacred sticks wouldn’t wash and they decided to pick up that tab themselves.
To my mind, they should have picked up the entire cost of this pantomime.
It’s not like we don’t pay enough for fur parliament to function already.
We don’t need expensive pagan religious rituals added on to our extensive bill.
Imagine how out of control this will all be if we enshrine a race based voice into our constitution.
Only then, it’ll be all of us picking up the bill, whether we want to or not.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
