Incentives matter as a country, as a society, as a culture. Incentives matter.

And it’s true always and everywhere that you get more of what you reward. If you reward hard work, you will get more hard workers. If you reward laziness, you will get more laziness. If you reward being disabled, you will get more disabled people, or at least people saying that they’re disabled. And if you reward being indigenous, well, it’s no exception. You will get more indigenous people or at least people saying that they are indigenous. Now, before you rage quit this video because I said the unsayable thing, there are absolutely people who are right now in parliaments and houses of power all over Australia trying to shoehorn some special interest group into that magical category of people, indigenous. Because with treaty and reparations on the horizon, the incentives are very clear. You want to be grouped in with indigenous people.

The question of who is an indigenous person is a forbidden question. Ever since the federal court handed down its Eatock versus Bolt decision in September 2011, journalist Andrew Bolt had dared to point out that many of the people who were identifying as Aboriginal and benefiting from programs intended to address disadvantage among Aboriginal communities actually appeared to be European and it was far from clear that they had ever suffered the alleged disadvantage that these programs were supposed to address. The articles were called, “It’s so hip to be white and white fellas in the black.” And essentially the argument he was making was that if we create incentives for people to be identified as Aboriginal, then people are going to want to identify as Aboriginal to get those benefits, those incentives. And so we need to start making some decisions about who really is and really isn’t Aboriginal so that we can make sure that these programs for as long as they exist really do go towards helping disadvantaged people, not opportunistic freeloaders.

For making that point, Bolt was subjected to a federal court trial and ultimately found guilty of racial and religious vilification by Justice Bromberg. And those articles are now accompanied by huge and clumsy disclaimers which tell readers all about the lawsuit and the hurt feelings before they get to read the hurty words. But whether or not Bolt’s reasoning was offensive doesn’t change the fact that the question of who we allow to benefit from being categorized as Aboriginal was and is a very live question. More so now today that we’re standing now that we’re staring down the barrel of not only native title but also treaty reparations and so much more and we are barreling towards a race-based apartheid and government sanctioned racial discrimination.

And when you understand that background then you’ll suddenly understand why people like Aftab Malik, our special envoy to combat Islamophobia, in his report was so desperate to align Islam with indigenous Australian beliefs and to insist that indigenous beliefs were at least in part learned from traveling Muslims in the past prior to European settlement. More on that in a minute. And you’ll also understand the potential implications of West Australian MP Parwinder Kaur insisting that Indian DNA was introduced to Australia some 4,000 years ago. So they were here first as well. You understand?

Incentives matter. And if you create an incentive to be here first, to be among the first people, which means in the Australian context to be Aboriginal, then you’ll get more people trying to shoehorn themselves into that category of first, first people Aboriginal. And this will only get more common as the stakes get higher with each step towards treaty and multi-billion dollar reparations.

So the question that Andrew Bolt tried to ask more than 15 years ago is more relevant than ever.

And since no one else seems to be asking it, then it falls to me to run that gauntlet. If we’re going to have special rules, special incentives and programs, potentially even special payments and land transfers and ownerships allocated to Aboriginal people, how are we going to decide who that is? How are we going to keep the opportunists and freeloaders out? Because already we can see an increasing number of people and special interest groups who are looking for a way to get on that gravy train.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy people like you to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. And every once in a while it falls to me to ask the unaskable questions like what is a woman? Oh, sorry. Matt Walsh already asked that one. My question is, what is an Aboriginal? Where is the line and what is that line based on? Because people are lining up to jump across that line because we’ve given them an incentive to try.

Now, if you appreciate what I do here at the Topher project, you appreciate that there is an Australian voice willing to ask these questions and tap tackle these topics despite the obvious risks, then please support my work by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos, then you will love my books about government, power, human rights, and civil disobedience, which you will find at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

Okay. I covered the report into Islamophobia in a previous video, Topher Project episode 176, where I talked about how the recommendations made amounted to blasphemy laws and special treatment for Muslims in Australia. However, I also brought to your attention in that report the way in which that Islamophobia report tried to hijack the acknowledgement of country at the very start using it to align Muslim beliefs with indigenous beliefs, claiming that in fact indigenous beliefs were in part taken from Islam. The implications appeared to me to be that Islam was here first before Christianity. And so therefore, if we play the game of reparations and giving power to the first inhabitants, then well, Australia really should be more of a Muslim country.

Now, to be clear, that’s not what the report says directly, and that’s not what the special envoy is saying, at least not explicitly, but that doesn’t feel to me like a far-fetched implication for me to draw out of their report and their efforts to put the Islamic influence on Aboriginal beliefs front and center in that report. Now, you can go back and watch episode 176 if you’d like to know more about that. But now we also have an MP in Western Australia who has made broadly speaking what I consider to be a similar argument. This time on behalf of Indian people. Once again it’s a we were here first type of argument. And this time it’s in the context of people objecting to large-scale immigration from India. Watch.

[From video]

“As per the DNA evidence and it goes back to not just a few generations but approximately 141 generations when the people and the community who were targeted particularly just because of the numbers of migration in this country which is my community the south Asian community or the Indian community in general who’ve jeans have been integrated in the very first people of this nation and it’s not just one there’s some really good evidences I would like to table these for all of you guys to have a look that have been provided by the science and the DNA that it’s approximately 4,000 years back if you go back that was migration from India to Australia happened. And some Aboriginal Australians carry up to 11% of their ancestry from those migrants. And this coincided with the arrival of the dingoes and the tools that were just not that were just not binding our histories long before the Europeans set foot here. And even further back, the southern route out of Africa saw our South Asian forefathers share deep ancestral roots with the first peoples of this land.” [End video]

Now I want to be clear that Dr. Kaur MP is using that information to oppose race-based arguments against more recent immigration from India. She’s not let me be clear she’s not saying Indian DNA got here first therefore Australia actually belongs to India or to Indians. That’s not what she’s saying at all. She’s making the argument simply that, well, Indians should be welcome in Australia. And I agree. And if you’re wondering where I’m coming from on the immigration issue, I’ve been very public about it in my view in my other videos, but I’ll reiterate it here. Immigration is a good thing if we fix the perverse incentives, which is why I’m making this entire video about incentives because incentives matter.

Now, what do I mean by fixing the perverse incentives? Well, we need to remove any and all easy money and welfare.

If you come to this country, you come here to work and to pay your own way. Also, we need to deal really harshly with all criminals, whether they’re citizens or not, whether they’re immigrants or whether they were born here. We need to deal far more harshly with violent criminals, including potentially deportations for serious violent criminals who aren’t citizens of Australia.

But nevertheless, the we were here before you argument has suddenly emerged and become very relevant in the minds of many people. And it seems like it’s a very powerful argument because we’re looking at billions of dollars in land transfers and reparations payments to the first peoples. So surprise surprise, people are lining up to add their claim to being a part of those first peoples.

Now the simple reality is that if you go back far enough, we all came from the same two people, one male, one female. So using 4,000-year-old ancestry as your basis for we were here first is obvious nonsense. Go back further. We were all everywhere. But on top of that, for Aftab Malik, the special envoy to combat Islamophobia to seemingly try to claim some special status for Islam because Islam changed the beliefs of the Aboriginal people, changed them in some way at some point in history would seem to me to be an argument in defense of change, defending cultural or religious colonialism.

That same logic that says it’s okay for Islam to have done that in the distant past to Aboriginal people. Well, surely that same argument also means that it’s okay for Christianity to have done that in the last few hundred years to Aboriginal people. If it’s okay for Indian DNA to have been introduced 4,000 years ago, what’s wrong with British and Irish and all manner of other countries DNA being introduced in the last few hundred years?

If it’s cause for celebration that Islam changed Aboriginal beliefs, then how is it so evil for the rest of us more recently to have done the same?

These are ultimately self-defeating arguments in my view. They remind us that the only constant of history is change. And that trying to go back into the past and make reparations for the crimes of people who are long dead, committed against people who are long dead, is an exercise in offense archaeology. And the evidence is that this exercise is dividing us and bringing bitterness. It is not uniting us and that it is not bringing healing.

And so we come to the question which I think every pro-treaty politician needs to answer publicly before we allow them to continue grandstanding for even one moment longer on their treaty and reparations platforms. The question is what is an Aboriginal? When we speak of things like saying sorry, who are we saying sorry to? And who is it that has to say the sorry? Do I? even though I wasn’t born when any of those crimes were committed? Does a Vietnamese immigrant from the 1970s have to say sorry as well? Or are they different somehow? What about a Sudanese migrant who arrived last year? Are they guilty as well? When we give native title, who are the natives that it’s being given to? How do we define that? When we make reparation payments, who are we repairing?

If politicians are going to bid for re-election, promising that they’re going to rob Peter to pay Paul through treaty and reparations, then we have a right to know who Peter is and who Paul is. What is an Aboriginal? I don’t ask that question with any malice. I ask because it looks to me like other non-Aboriginal special interest groups are sniffing around and trying to find a way to get themselves included in that word in that definition.

And I’d like to close by making the point that if people had actually listened to the question that was asked by Andrew Bolton more than 15 years ago and recognized the importance of that question rather than focusing on their hurty feelings, then maybe things would not be as messy today as what they are. And on that basis, I remind you incentives matter. And sure, you can ignore my question today just like they ignored Andrew Bolt’s question 15 years ago. You can demonize me for even asking the unaskable question just like they demonized him. But this question isn’t going to go away. And sooner or later, the cowards in Canberra are going to have to answer it. And if they don’t, then it’s going to fester and end up in courtrooms all over Australia. As many other special interest groups, which were never imagined to be a part of these reparations, all call their lawyers in the hope of cashing in on the coming gravy train.

Incentives matter. If you create incentives for unemployed people, you have to define what unemployed means.

And if you do that, then it means any opportunists who want into the unemployed benefits have to be denied because they don’t fit the definition. If you create benefits for disabled people, you have to define what disabled means. And that means that any opportunists who want into the disabled benefits have to be denied if they don’t meet the definition. If you create benefits for Aboriginal people, guess what? You have to define what Aboriginal means so that any opportunists who want into the Aboriginal benefits can be denied because they don’t meet the definition.

The argument about what makes someone Aboriginal is an argument that sadly needs to be had because the government is already and plans to continue treating Aboriginal people differently. There’s incentives. So, this argument has to be had and the sooner the better because our politicians have already kicked the can down the road 15 years since Andrew Bolt brought it up. And guess what? The answer to the question is now more fraught than ever before.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy people like you to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds you. I am 100% viewer supported. So, please help me to keep the Topher project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net and check out my books, DVDs, and merch at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

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