CONSTITUTIONAL VOICE
FROM about 3000 BC onwards – our Australian Aborigines “built houses, dams, irrigated and tilled the land, altered the courses of rivers, sewed their cloths, constructed a system of pancontinental government that generated peace and prosperity, While individual acts of violence are depicted in Aboriginal art, there is no trace of imperial warfare.” (Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe). In other words, the indigenous people of Australia were not savage hunter-gatherers from about 5000 years ago.
I agree with Peter Story (TC. 21/09) asking “Why do we have to put up with fools who debate over the rights and wrongs of Australia Day?”
My parents migrated from Germany during Bismarck’s time developing the grape wine industry in the Barossa and Hunter Valleys with others migrating from the UK between the two world wars. Should they and thousands of others be blamed for what happened in 1788, 231 years ago, or even the so called “stolen generation”?
Didn’t Prime Minister Kevin Rudd say sorry on behalf of us all for the past treatment of the original inhabitants of the great southern land on February 13, 2008? Isn’t that enough? Can’t the past generations be forgiven? Do we have to ever be guilty of what happened before our time?
The Mabo decision of the Australian High Court in June, 1992 recognised the rights of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and acknowledged their unique connection with the land. It also led to the Australian Parliament passing the Native Title Act in June 1993.
An expert panel on Constitutional Recognition of the rights of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, mooted by Prime Minister John Howard in 2007, appointed by PM Julia Gillard, provided their report to government in January 2012.
A parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was set up and the expert panel gave its final report in June 2015. In July 2015, the then Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition with 40 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders from around the country met at Kirribilli.
Regional dialogues followed in 2017 resulting in a Referendum Council being set up. It gave its full report on June 30, 2017, recommending a referendum be held to provide in the constitution for a represented body that gives Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples a voice into parliament. On October 26, 2017, P.M. Turnbull released a statement rejecting the call for a constitutional voice.
Turnbull seems to have put it in the “too-hard-basket”. Isn’t it is now time to reverse that rejection and get on with what is needed to reconcile all the people of our wonderful country of Australia?
MATTHEW WEATHERLEY, Highfields