The Hon Roslyn Atkinson AO
Australians value fairness, and are suspicious of any plan or policy that appears to give someone or some group an unfair advantage. The 'No" campaign against The Voice has built on this, suggesting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be getting something the rest of us can't have.
Unfortunately, almost exactly the reverse is true for most First Nation people. During the last 235 years, they were murdered, dispossessed of their country and homes, taken in chains to remote settlements, cheated of the meagre wages they earned, reduced to starvation welfare, discriminated against, and treated with suspicion wherever they went.
I was a lawyer, an Anti-Discrimination Tribunal President, and Qld Supreme Court Judge, for 35 years. Across those years I saw that simply saying "that was the past, now we are all equal" wouldn't work. We go on blowing up and bulldozing their sacred places, marginalising their voices when they raise them against injustice to their people and culture, their families, their ancestral country. The Voice gives them no unilateral power to change any of this. What it does ensure is that those in the Executive and the Parliament of Australia can't say, "We didn't know". The Voice will have told them.
We are fortunate as Australians to live in a country whose human history dates back tens of thousands of years and where we retain the oldest continuing living culture in the world. Our country has been known and cared for and also celebrated through song, story and dance throughout its long history by its First Nations people. Every place has a story and a meaning. This is what makes us as a nation unique in the world.
And yet we have been slow to recognise the rights of the people who are the bedrock of our identity as a nation and to hear their voice. Australia’s Constitution, our founding political and legal document, fails to recognise the existence and the significance of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples of this land.
It is time to right that wrong. The Uluru Statement from the Heart spoke to the rest of Australia from the beating heart of this country, Uluru, and now is our chance to change our Constitution, recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution and to listen with a generous heart to the Voice of the original inhabitants of this country. Only by granting that recognition and listening to their voice will we start to rebalance our nation and right the wrongs of the past and look forward to a society which is prosperous and fair for all.
Only then we will all be able to embrace the rich history of this ancient land and create a rich and more complete future together.