Aboriginal women are being kept pregnant as “cash cows” for welfare money, former Labor MP Gary Johns said.
Johns made the controversial statements during Channel Ten’s Bolt Report program, where he was discussing constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians with host Andrew Bolt.
“A lot of poor women in this country, a large proportion of whom are Aboriginal, are used as cash cows,” he said. “They are kept pregnant and producing children for the cash. Now, that has to stop.”
Johns said changing the constitution will not affect the quality of life for many Indigenous people, and he called on those leading the push for recognition to change their focus.
“I’d like [Cape York community leader] Noel [Pearson] and his team to start thinking about fundamental issues that affect his people and our people at the really lower end of this society. And the fact is that they should be trying to smash the welfare state, not a liberal democracy and its constitution,” Johns told Bolt.
It is not the first time Johns, who lost his federal seat of Petrie in Queensland in 1996, has made contentious statements in regards to welfare.
Late last year he wrote an opinion piece saying welfare recipients should only receive the state’s help if they are on contraception, arguing that taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for people’s choice to reproduce.
Johns has distanced himself from the Labor party since he left parliament.
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