First published in the Sydney Morning Herald

ABORIGINAL Australians are being used "in a desperate game of wedge politics where the prize is electoral success", Sydney's most prominent indigenous health leader has said in an open letter to the Federal Government.

"But I doubt whether dishonourable success is electoral success at all," says Naomi Mayers, of Redfern's Aboriginal Medical Service, in her five-page letter sent yesterday to the federal Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd.

Dr Mayers says a royal commission is needed to examine the scandal of successive governments systematically diverting funds earmarked for Aboriginal programs to general community projects and infrastructure.

This was exposed by a federal government-commissioned review into Northern Territory spending in 1980 and has continued nationwide, she says.

The dismantled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission had its funding to tackle child abuse cut after it campaigned for a decade for more money - as the indigenous activist Mick Dodson pointed out four years ago, her letter says.

In a passionate plea for self-determination and respect for human rights, Dr Mayers calls on the politicians to look again at the solutions to the indigenous plight outlined in numerous reports, including the 1989 National Aboriginal Health Strategy, which was never implemented.

"It was the first occasion in Australian history since 1788 that Aboriginal peoples and Australian governments had worked together under the Aboriginal decision-making process of consensus," she says.

In her 40 years in Aboriginal affairs she has read most reports and all those about her people's health. "My summary is this: the fundamental recommendations are remarkably similar, but Australian governments have avoided their implementation."

She adds: "We are regularly spoken to with contempt, hectored, lectured at and treated as inferiors of lesser intelligence whose ideas are to be dismissed."

Debra Jopson writes for the Sydney Morning Herald