Victorian Liberal MP criticised for suggesting Indigenous people should be grateful for ‘wonderful things’ brought by colonisation

Victorian Liberal party MP Bev McArthur says: ‘The arrival of communists instead of the first fleet would no doubt have created a different outcome’. Photograph: James Ross/AAP

Marcus Stewart, a co-chair of Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly has criticised state Liberal MP Bev McArthur, after she appeared to suggest Indigenous people should be grateful for the “wonderful things that have been enabled via colonisation” such as hospitals, running water and electricity.

McArthur, an upper house MP representing the western Victoria region who opposes a federal Indigenous voice to parliament, issued the statement last Wednesday, a day after the Geelong city council voted to stop recognising 26 January as Australia Day.