If we truly want peace, not unequal status quo, how can we say no to the Indigenous voice?

People take part in a reconciliation walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2000. ‘At the turn of the millennium ‘reconciliation’ was the buzzword du jour. You don’t hear it much now but it had a compelling urgency.’ Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

Among the friends of my youth, how few remain my friends today. One of those few traces the bonds between us to an episode that sticks more clearly in his memory than mine: according to him, I stood up for him in the schoolyard when a gang of kids heavied him because he was Jewish.

Sometimes I think it must be a fortunate case of mistaken identity. As a teenager I was many things: gauche, mercurial, talented, modest, the list goes on … but my outstanding characteristic was cowardice. I would die to avoid physical pain – assuredly the ideal way of doing it.