Sir Bob Geldof has angered thousands of Australians by giving an impassioned ‘speech of shame’ outlining the country’s treatment of its indigenous people.
Anti-poverty campaigner Geldof called Australia ‘economically stupid’ for exiling Aboriginal people from the rest of the population, and urged businesses to stop ignoring the talents of the nation’s indigenous.
Geldof made the speech at a GenerationOne breakfast in Brisbane, Australia, held by mining magnate Andrew Forrest to encouraging businesses to pledge to provide 50,000 jobs to Aborigines.
Geldof said: ‘You’ve removed from your society, from having a go, 500,000 of your own. That is absurd. It’s economically stupid.’
The former Boomtown Rats singer and Live Aid organiser said that while Australia had taken steps to improve the lives of Aboriginal people, many of whom experience much higher rates of unemployment than other Australians, it is not enough.
He added: ‘You are beginning to deal with a problem that has been festering but can be resolved and needs to be resolved if the potential of this country is to be genuinely realised.
‘And I don’t mean that in any emotional sense or a cultural sense, I mean it in an economic sense.’
Geldof also said he could compare the treatment of Aborigines in Australia to situations he had witnessed in third-world Africa.
He said: ‘I said on the radio back in 1984 that to die of want in a world of surplus is not only intellectually absurd, it is morally repulsive.
‘Well, let’s add economically illiterate to that.’
Geldof added that ‘just like those 44million African children’ – a reference to those given access to education from his Live Aid campaign – ‘will be a massive driving force in the world economy, so your own Aboriginal people require to be allowed in.
‘The access point is education.’
On Australia’s foreign aid, something Geldof described three years ago as ‘pathetically embarrassing’, the Irishman said the situation was improving.
‘Australia is coming up… they’re on track,’ he told news agency AAP.
His comments angered some Australians who believed he had no right to interfere with the country’s affairs.
One Australian wrote on a Brisbane newspaper’s website: ‘Dude, you have no right to comment on this topic. Worry about your own country.’
Another wrote: ‘Geldof needs to stay in the UK and put that house in order before he tries and tells what Australia needs to do.’
However, Aborigines praised his words, and insisted they support his views.
One supporter wrote: ‘He does have a point. Maybe we need someone like him to tell us straight.’
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