GEOFF Clark has slammed the launch of the new national indigenous representative body, declaring it a "non-event."
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The outspoken Aboriginal activist said the new National Congress of Australia's First Peoples was undemocratic and subservient to the federal government.
The executive board of the newly-established congress was announced in Sydney this week and the organisation will be fully functioning next year.
Mr Clark was the last leader of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) before it was disbanded in 2005 and said the new representative congress was a token gesture.
"Aboriginal people in this country have less democratic representation in this country than the citizens in Afghanistan have in theirs," he said.
"This new congress lacks anything in the way of indigenous representation.
''It's just there for show, to make people feel like the government is doing something.
"There are some worthy people on the congress but it won't be taken seriously because the Prime Minister doesn't take it seriously."
Mr Clark said recent poor polling by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party was in part a result of the government's actions on indigenous affairs. "There was the big sorry from Kevin Rudd a couple of years ago and then nothing since," Mr Clark said.
"What policies, if any, has the current federal government put forward to better the lives of Australia's indigenous people?
"This organisation is undemocratic, (it's launch) was a non-event and is only there to give the illusion that the Federal Government is trying to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians."
The Australian Human Rights Council has endorsed the new congress, describing it as groundbreaking.
