The Ambassador’s Worldwide Walkabout

This week it emerged that amongst the first things done by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on coming into office was creating a position of Australia’s Ambassador for First Nations people. We also learnt that Justin Mohammed, a Gooreng Gooreng man from Bundaberg in Queensland, who was appointed to the role has been busy travelling the world on our behalf, and on our dime, since March 2023 in this role.

In case you are wondering, yes, it is a world-first role.

His work is supported by a newly created Office for First Nations International Engagement.

The role and the office were created in anticipation of the Voice to Parliament passing the referendum (remember those days!) to further the “development and implementation of a First Nations foreign policy”, with specific instruction to conduct “international First Nations dialogues on voice, treaty and truth with like-minded countries.”

Talk about putting the cart before the horse. In any case, Voice or no Voice, Mr Mohammed has been putting his $326,000-a-year role and his travel budget of $358,000 (as a state MP I can claim a maximum of $10,000 per year) to use by visiting New York, Hawaii, San Francisco, Geneva, Dubai, Paris, Kansas City, Washington DC and Pacific islands .That’s him below, breaking bread with a  variety of Fijian indigenes.

Much of the reporting on his role has focused (understandably) on the lavishness of his travels – and how Mr Mohammed’s jet-setting lifestyle is (I think it is safe to say) in stark contrast to most of the Aboriginal Australians he is supposed to be representing (dare we say ‘helping’?). Read this somewhat delicious account of his travels and lifestyle here. Leader of the Opposition (and of my party) Peter Dutton has sensibly vowed to abolish the role on Day 1 if he forms the next government, promising to put this money towards fighting the cost-of-living crisis.

To be entirely honest, I wasn’t outraged in principle by the expenses. Mr Mohammed was appointed to travel the world — and travel he has. That wasn’t his doing, it was Albanese’s’. When one thinks about it, it would have been more insulting to have Mr Mohammed travel in any less style than our other ambassadors do. So I get it.

My principal and overriding problem is with the job itself. It is a role that implies we have a nation-within-the-nation, which requires representation all of its own to the world. To me that is deeply damaging to create these kinds of fractures in our conception of ourselves as one nation. Either we are one country represented by one government that we have all elected, or we are not.

What I can’t abide is this tribal idea of leaders of different tribes within our nation. After all, if we are to have an Ambassador for people of Aboriginal descent in Australia, why not those of Lebanese-descent or Indian-descent to further the interests of those people among the Lebanese and Indian people living around the world.

In order to find out if there are others who think like me, I have been running a poll on my Linkedin page. My small sample indicates far more Australians agree with me than not.

Nick McGowan is a Liberal MP representing the North Eastern Region in Victoria’s Legislative Council