Voice to Parliament advisor Teela Reid seeks ‘radical Communism’, ‘rent, reparations’

A senior Labor government adviser on the Voice to Parliament is seeking ‘reparations and land’ for Indigenous Australians – declaring in January that every Aboriginal elder in NSW should live ‘rent-free’.

Teela Reid, a barrister, Wiradjuri wife and speaker, once also described the proposal to amend the constitution as a ‘journey with all Australians to demolish the systems that continue to oppress us’.

However, Ms Reid – who is part of the government’s Voice to Parliament Referendum Engagement Group – says she is not “radical” despite her views.

Ms Reid has said she is ‘concerned about the conservatism of [her] profession’ and urged lawyers across Australia to support The Voice in a lengthy interview – also calling for strong activism, she likened to the push for communism in the 1970s.

In newly unearthed tweets from 2019, Ms Reid said, “Aboriginal people built the nation and now it’s time for you to pay your rent.”

In January this year Ms Reid demanded that ‘every Aboriginal elder in NSW should live rent-free’.

She said such action was the “bare minimum this state has to offer given the displacement and dispossession.”

“How many white people in NSW live on land they got for free and are still benefiting,” she asked in the post, tagging both Prime Minister Chris Minns and former Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet.

In a 2020 tweet, Ms Reid called for “reckoning, reparations and land back.”

“F**k reconciliation,” she said at the time, before saying “burn your RAPs” – a reference to reconciliation action plans adopted by more than 2,400 Australian companies.

Ms Reid is one of 40 members of Labour’s official Referendum Engagement Group, tasked with working with the Referendum Working Group and the Government to prepare the question to be put to all Australians at the end of this year.

In March 2021, she joined fellow Voice architect Thomas Mayo on a panel for the Search Foundation, a left-wing think tank that markets itself as the successor to the Communist Party of Australia.

Ms Reid said: “It is absolutely up to non-Indigenous people to take ownership and be very honest about what their ancestors did to our people”.

She said it was crucial that the Uluru statement of the heart be fully implemented.

“To get to the important point of an honest conversation about that history and to ensure that all the voices of the First Nations are heard in terms of Treaty, it is absolutely crucial to get our nation to receive a voice from the Constitutionalize First Nations,” she said.

“It’s not just about listening to the loudest, most influential voices that have access to Canberra.”

Ms Reid insisted that Australians should be informed that ‘legally and politically … the assumption that Australia was settled peacefully is unfair’.

She described “shifting that narrative as … the core of our struggle.”

During that same panel discussion, Mr. Mayo discussed achieving compensation for indigenous peoples.

“This is the first step, it’s an essential step and it puts all the explanation behind it,” he said.

“For example, “pay the rent,” how do we do that in a way that is transparent and actually sees reparations and compensation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people beyond what we say and do in a gathering?

“It’s a very important campaign and there are very specific questions and a clear invitation to the Australian people to walk with us.”

The ‘Pay the Rent’ movement wants homeowners to voluntarily pay a percentage of their income to Aboriginal elders, without government oversight or intervention.

Like Ms. Reid, Mr. Mayo has also made several comments on social media about his desire to seek reparations, rent and return land to First Nations people.

But their positions occasionally conflicted with the official message of the government and Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney.

When Ms Burney said a Voice to Parliament would have no interest in filing protests on the Australia Day date, Ms Reid spoke out publicly.

She said: ‘It’s really disingenuous to claim that the mafia won’t be demanding on #AbolishAustralia day.

“It started decades before the referendum, it will still be a demand afterwards.”

In a 2022 op-ed, Mr Mayo even suggested that the new date could be the day the Voice to Parliament referendum passes.

Mr Mayo has since told Daily Mail Australia that this is a view he no longer supports, stating that he ‘doesn’t share that particular view on Australia Day anymore’.

Ms Burney was questioned on Sunday about the “scope” of the body and how it would go beyond the four priority areas she outlined.

She stated that it would be a ‘two-way street’ between the government and the advisory body and that the ‘scope should be a respectful conversation with the Voice’.

“I have made it very clear what I think the priorities are. But of course there are other things like baby birth weight, like life expectancy,” she said.