Warren Mundine has attacked Pat Dodson for advocating a "love-fest" mentality on Aboriginal reform and failing people on the ground.
Mr Dodson’s Australian Dialogue – launched yesterday with an aim to start a "national conversation" on the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians – was dismissed by Mr Mundine as soft.
In an interview with ABC NewsRadio, Mr Mundine said calls for Australians to show "more love" for Indigenous Australians were "bizarre".
"We need jobs, we need to break the poverty cycle, we need to deal with th social dysfunctionality in regards to criminal activity which is sexual abuse of children and women and the physical and mental abuse," he said.
"These things are now here and we need to deal with them now and here. We don’t need to put them off in five years or 10 years of dialogues and conversations and love-fests. We need hard-nosed stuff."
Mr Dodson, sometimes referred to as the "father of reconciliation", yesterday criticised Mr Mundine for advocating assimilationist policies, but Mr Mundine said that was just a "throw-away line".
"That doesn’t deal with the reality of Aboriginal people on the ground," he said.
"I’m out there every day fighting for the improvement of the lives of Indigenous people. Getting them out of poverty, getting them into real jobs, getting them into education and giving them the the education opportunities they need," he said.
"That’s my scorecard and that’s what I stand for."
The Government has announced it will spend $20 million on scholarships for Indigenous children to attend private secondary schools, and Mr Mundine praised the initiative as an example of the hard-nosed reforms he wanted.
He estimated the scheme would provide 2,000 places for Indigenous children.
"Don’t underestimate – 2,000 kids is a lot of kids and that will open up to the universities, it’ll open up to the networks that they need to have in their career development and their own communities with those networks," he said.
"Those will be massive and these will be the leaders of the future."
The six-year scholarships will cover tuition and accommodation costs.