Why would an old white guy support an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to parliament? On the surface, this is a simple question, but on reflection it became complex and multi-layered. I don’t have the answers to the many problems Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people still face in Australia. They have experienced too many “old white guys” presuming to have the answers over too many decades. I’ve learned from experience relatively late in life that if we listen to them, the answers will come.
I grew up on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland with an idyllic, “traditional” Aussie lifestyle. I didn’t know any First Nations people. I wasn’t even aware of any living locally. I know now that this wasn’t strictly the case, but most had been re-located to places like the Cherbourg mission near Murgon. When we occasionally visited relatives who lived in Murgon, the Aboriginal people were seen as separate, and to me, a little mysterious. The language used about them was, at best, condescending. Like the vast majority of Australians I had never personally met an Aboriginal person.
