A man of influence - wants to rescue Aboriginal affairs from white romantics***..........................Mundine believes the land-rights and welfare policies of the past 30 years have failed to provide most Aborigines with better lives. In his view, some of the Aboriginal leaders still defending those policies "are living in the past, living off the old victories, trapped in the 1970s land-rights rhetoric". The solution? "I want to make Aboriginal communities safe and economically viable. They're the two issues I want to drive forward. We've spent 30 years trying to get economic development into Aboriginal communities through government agencies and community organisations and it just doesn't work. We need to get the private sector in there and encourage Aboriginal people to build their own businesses."
He has great faith in private industry and private ownership. "The discipline of paying off a mortgage affects your whole life. You have to be healthy so you can get an education; you have to be educated so you can get a job; and you have to keep that job. It changes everything." As for government: "It has been an enslaver of Aboriginal people for 200 years. It's time we got them out of the way so we can move on independently." .........***