“How do we help?” is the most frequently asked question I have heard throughout six years of working toward a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Between August and October 2017, when I first started traversing the nation with the Uluru Statement from the Heart canvas, other Indigenous advocates and I answered by asking people to share the words of the statement.
The words, the artwork and the names on that canvas are powerful. We understood there is no better summary of why a Voice, guaranteed in Australia’s founding document, is both well deserved and important to improving Indigenous peoples’ lives.
The Uluru statement is an expression of our generosity and spirit — a poetic invitation to all Australians to share more than 60,000 years of continuous heritage and our beautiful culture. It is the only truly national Indigenous consensus position on constitutional recognition. As the Yes and No cases vie for your ear, this fact should not be lost.
The consensus was developed from late 2016 up to the morning of May 26 2017. It followed many days of passionate discussion and debate among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from remote, rural and urban communities. It is a statement that was endorsed by standing acclamation and with tears of joy and hope.
Indigenous peoples collectively chose a path to constitutional recognition through a representative body, and we knew it would be an uphill battle.
In October 2017, the Coalition government officially dismissed Indigenous peoples’ modest proposition — though this was predicted throughout the dialogues and at Uluru. Every other aspirational Indigenous statement and petition had suffered the same fate throughout a century of struggle. Each of them also called for a Voice, in various iterations.
When our prediction of rejection came to pass, we responded to that insistent question from Australians by asking them to speak to their elected members of Parliament.
Australians were asked to lend their voice to ensuring the Uluru statement was respected and heard by the decision-makers in Parliament. At our request, people from all walks of life made thousands of submissions to the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition in 2018, and the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process in 2021. The final report of each process was consistent with the Uluru statement — constitutional recognition through a Voice is a strongly desired reform for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
In the years leading to the 2022 federal election, Indigenous advocates have asked members of political organisations to help by participating in their party’s democratic processes. I have met compassionate, dedicated supporters of a constitutionally enshrined Voice, whether Liberal, Labor or Greens. They helped us by moving resolutions in their party branches, creating support for a Voice in party policy.
The fact we have two out of the aforementioned three parties on board, and the support of teals and some crossbenchers, is because of our hard work.
Sadly, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and his party have joined extremists like One Nation’s Pauline Hanson in campaigning against the referendum, but regardless, some Liberals have decided to walk with us. Despite Dutton, as well as Nationals Leader David Littleproud and his party’s rejection of the Voice, we have support from across the political spectrum.
Depsite the Voice campaign not being well funded, polling has lifted from around 50% support for a referendum in 2017 to around 60% in 2022. Dutton’s dishonest misrepresentations of what the referendum is about and what a Voice will be have had little impact on the sentiment of Australians so far. This is a good sign. It is Australians who will decide to accept our invitation, not politicians.
This says a lot about people pulling together against the odds. It is true that Australians believe in fairness. But the final stretch of this uphill battle will be steeper than ever, and those devils on the shoulder whisper confusion as we toil.
How can we quit now after decades of advocacy before Uluru? How can we waste the hundreds of pages, written by eminent constitutional experts and brilliant academics, aimed at moulding this constitutional proposition into one both safe and powerful, symbolic and practical — true to its intent to just give Indigenous peoples the decency of a say.
When we reach the peak of the mountain, we will see the full vista of who we can be. It will no longer be an obscured view of our country, the type WEH Stanner described in his 1968 Boyer Lectures:
It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape. What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.
I want Australians to see our country in all its glory — unified with many millennia of connection to our lands. A nation without the gaps in life expectancy and incarceration rates that are the burden of our colonial past. But we are going to need a whole lot more help to realise it.
Now is the time to ask again: how can I help?
Do more than vote yes. Work hard, like Indigenous peoples did to give you the opportunity to answer our invitation. Register for the Kitchen Table Conversations campaign, “Together Yes“, which is a structured and supported way for you to influence your family and friends.
Please take the hands of all who you can influence, and ask them to take the hands of other Australians too. Bring them around to vote yes. Walk with us and share our vision.
