There is a poignant symmetry between the Voice referendum legislation debate beginning in earnest in Parliament and the last hosting of the ABC’s flagship talk show Q+A by Aboriginal broadcaster and author Stan Grant.
Consider this: The Uluru Statement from the Heart was an invited response by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates to former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten’s request for how they wanted constitutional recognition to look.
Stan Grant’s contribution to a discussion on the role of the crown in Australia’s history as part of the national broadcaster’s coverage of the coronation of King Charles was similarly in response to a request, in this instance from ABC producers.
There is a disturbing commonality in much of the reaction to both events.
They have revealed a dark underbelly of prejudice and hatred in the country that has been accommodated in no small way by the decision of Peter Dutton to impose on the federal Liberal Party outright rejection of the proposal to enshrine in the national “rule book” the sort of recognition that gives First Nations people a say in their affairs.
‘Stakes are higher’
Slamming the door as he walked out, Grant said, “this year the stakes are higher” for Indigenous Australians.
He said: “There is a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and I am not alone in feeling judged. This is an Australian judgment on us. Such is politics.”
And then in light of the death threats and the vitriol on social media he reminded us: “Racism is a crime. Racism is violence. And I have had enough.”
Grant’s crime in the eyes of affronted monarchists was that he told the truth – the same truth the delegates at Uluru are urging their fellow Australians, those who arrived after 1788, to hear as a foundation for healing and reconciliation.
The ABC, according to Stan Grant, took more care to assure aggrieved viewers their complaints would be taken seriously rather than defending him and pointing out the ugly intolerance of their outrage.
He was invited on the program precisely because of his views eloquently spelled out in his latest book The Queen is Dead with its subtitle ‘The time has come for reckoning’.
Grant says in the broadcast he “pointed out that the crown represents the invasion and theft of our land. In the name of the crown my people were segregated on missions and reserves. Police wearing the seal of the crown took children from their families. Under the crown our people were massacred.”
Dutton diatribe
But for Peter Dutton any reckoning that recognises the unique place in the history of this continent of a dispossessed people and their descendants is racially divisive.
Mr Dutton told Parliament that the Voice referendum will re-racialise our nation, which according to him was de-racialised in the 1967 referendum.
Except it wasn’t.
That referendum gave the federal Parliament power to make special laws for Aboriginal people.
This referendum proposal recognises their unique status giving that recognition more than mere symbolism.
Mr Dutton paints the Voice as all Anthony Albanese’s initiative.
Nothing is further from the truth.
The Prime Minister is responding to the initiative and invitation of First Nations peoples themselves.
Western Australian Aboriginal leader Nolan Hunter, head of engagement in the Uluru dialogue and a board member of Reconciliation WA, says the Voice comes from a long history of his people campaigning for justice and recognition.
Mr Hunter told The New Daily the Dutton opposition is “disrespecting Indigenous Australians”.
Walk the talk
He praises Mr Albanese for showing leadership and progressing the Voice as a priority of his government, but would like to see the ‘Yes’ campaign ramping up, and has found a positive response in conversations with his own people who were confused about the referendum.
This Aboriginal leader takes heart from surveys that show a majority of First Nations people support it and says it accords with his experience.
The Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, a Wiradjuri woman, was scathing in her response to Mr Dutton’s diatribe against the referendum.
Ms Burney told Parliament: “We have just heard, in one speech, every bit of disinformation and misinformation and scare campaigns that exist in this debate.”
Leveraging people’s fears and prejudices is nothing new in politics, it is such a shame these same emotions are now being played on to divide Australians rather than unite them.
The Voice referendum is a unique chance for the nation to accept the invitation to walk with our Indigenous compatriots “in a movement of the Australian people for a better future”.
Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with more than 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics
