Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023. Our nation is facing many challenges, economic headwinds, environmental hardship and devastation, as well as health challenges. But we have a moment, while we are dealing with these challenges, to raise our gaze to matters that are greater than all of us. From the heart of our nation, Uluru is calling. It is beckoning us. This journey towards constitutional recognition of our First Nations people, some say, began 24 years ago. It was a Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard, who first floated the notion of constitutional recognition in the 1999 referendum. That may not have succeeded, but it set in train a process that has spanned 24 years—a steady tempo of reform and changes and engagement unprecedented for any referendum that has come to the Australian people.

The pinnacle was actually the delivery and creation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. This brought together over 1,200 First Nations people from all across this country, these disparate nations. They reached consensus. It was hard going, but sleeves were rolled up and the work was done. Hard discussions were had, truth-telling was made, and the Uluru statement was finally delivered and signed by 250 delegates. I'm honoured to have one of those delegates, the member for Lingiari, sitting next to me. The Uluru statement is a gracious offer. It is a hand that has been extended out to Australians, and we have a moment now to grasp that hand and run with it.

The Voice referendum is about two things: consultation and recognition. The recognition is to say that we see and acknowledge on the birth certificate of our nation 65,000 years of continuous history and culture. This is long overdue. It absolutely removes this fiction of terra nullius. With respect to consultation, it's all about listening. It's about accepting that what we have done for the last 200-plus years has simply not worked. In the last 30 years alone we have had at least seven national bodies devoted to improving and advancing Indigenous health, wellbeing and welfare. They have been formed, dissolved, reformed and dissolved again. And what has it resulted in? It has resulted in statistics that are a national disgrace. Closing the Gap—it doesn't seem to be closing. In fact, on the most recent report released last year, there were several indicators which have gone backwards. We can keep doing the same thing over and over again, but don't expect a different result. It's best that we stop this top-down, paternalistic view of governance and actually listen to our First Nations people.

The Uluru statement is a blueprint for a better way. It tells us what they want. And what they're asking for is simply a seat at the table so that we, as legislators in this parliament and in future parliaments, make better, informed decisions with their needs and their lived experience in mind. And that lived experience is incredibly important. Our First Nations people, at 3.8 per cent of our population, are an extreme minority. You can go your whole life and not even meet anyone with First Nations heritage. What does that mean? It means we have no contact with them in our workplaces, our sporting teams or our schools. So how are we to actually understand their lived experience and what intergenerational trauma means?

I've heard a lot of rhetoric about, 'We shouldn't give a group special privilege in the Constitution,' and that other minorities will somehow be clamouring to have the same privileges. I'm a minority. I'm a migrant. I came to Australia as a child. But what I didn't experience in Australia was being removed from my mother. What I didn't experience in Australia was the butchering of my people. And I certainly didn't have my property and my land removed from me; in fact, quite the opposite. This country opened its arms and carried me and my family forward. But those same privileges—in fact, rights—have been denied our First Nations people for too long. Why? Because they carry such trauma that is passed like a bad gene from one generation to another to another, and it cascades and balloons, and it crushes and crumbles people to the ground. So while they are struggling to just make ends meet and survive day to day it is now up to us to turn around and reach back and help them come up. And we do that by listening to what they want.

The actual constitutional question is very modest:

A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

You'll be asked to approve this, and you have to write yes or no. You may have doubts when you are at the ballot box. My advice to you is to cast the doubts aside and vote yes, because this is simply the right thing to do. We can't keep doing what we're doing and expect a different result.

What will the change to our Constitution mean? It will mean waking up to a completely different country—a country that can look back at its past, acknowledge it and be unshackled by it. It means that we can come together in a different sense of maturity and go forward. Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal thought leader, describes this change to our Constitution as something that will adorn it. To me, that speaks of a shining jewel in our Constitution. This has been confirmed by the Solicitor-General, who believes this change to our Constitution will in fact enhance it. Those were his words—that it will enhance it.

It's perhaps best to listen to Aunty Pat Anderson:

The Voice is about getting grassroots Voices amplified and feeding into Canberra, representing the views and Voices of their communities.

The really important message from the dialogues was that there is no Voice that exists now that represents who we are and what we want.

What a state of affairs in 2023 that our First Nations people, with such stature and knowledge and wisdom and culture and history, do not feel they can actually feed any of those gifts into this House, this parliament. It speaks to a language of deficit that we've all become accustomed to with respect to our First Peoples. That's all we ever hear. And you know why we hear that? Because that's what the media wants us to hear. Bad news sells. I'm tired of it, and frankly I don't want to hear any more about First Peoples through the filter of the media; I want to hear directly from them. Having a voice to parliament means the whole of this country, the Australian people, will hear directly from them, and we will turn around this language of deficit to one of positivity, abundance and surplus. That's the future I want—a future of surplus for our First Nations people, where there is just so much love and culture and gift giving that it will bring up the rest of this country.

Higgins holds a special place in the journey to this referendum because it was a former Higgins resident, Sir Robert Menzies, who actually agreed to the 1967 referendum. That was finally delivered by my predecessor, a Liberal Prime Minister and former member for Higgins, Harold Holt, in 1967, with the highest vote in the history of all our referendums, of 90.7 per cent. It was an absolute landslide. Why? Because back then the Australian people were appalled at the living conditions of our First Nations people. They were appalled that they were not counted, that they were not seen, that they were invisible.

We have an opportunity now to turn all of this around and take forward those ideals that have actually had bipartisan support until now. This is an opportunity for Australia to come together, to reconcile its past with its present in order to go forward together, stronger into the future. It was Martin Luther King who said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. The Uluru statement is an appeal to our better angels. Those angels responded in 1967. They will respond again in 2023.

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