Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Many constituents throughout Australia are asking the same questions that we have put this week to the minister. These are questions that need to be answered. This referendum is very important. This is very important for Indigenous Australians and it's very important for non-Indigenous Australians. I don't know that there is anyone in this country who is not appalled at this absolutely appalling gap between the health, welfare and education standards of Indigenous Australians and those of non-Indigenous Australians.

My husband's family comes from a remote community right out in western New South Wales called Lake Cargelligo. I have seen firsthand the way that a lot of Indigenous Australians live. I may represent a city electorate that does not have a very high Indigenous population—however, with family that are Indigenous, I feel very strongly about Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and about doing something real to address the appalling standards of many Indigenous Australians in this country. Therefore, when I first spoke on this legislation I spoke about us needing to wake up as a nation the day after the referendum and being able to look at ourselves in the mirror and at our fellow Australians—for non-Indigenous Australians to be able to look at Indigenous Australians, and for Indigenous Australians to be able to look at non-Indigenous Australians—and be united. The way that this process has been handled to date by the Prime Minister is not leading us down that path. It is dividing Australia. I believe that if it continues this way, it is setting our country up for a dreadful problem with race relations going far into the future. That is not something that I want. That is not something that anyone in this place wants.

Changing our Constitution has been made very difficult by our forefathers. The drafters of this document deliberately made it difficult. There is a reason thousands and thousands of people each year travel across the world and choose Australia as their home. That is because we have one of the oldest democracies, and it is based on a founding document that is simple in its language and that is very difficult to change—and that was done deliberately. We have only had eight occasions since Federation where this document has been changed. Therefore, if the government is going to the Australian people and saying, 'We are now asking you to change this document, to make a fundamental change to our Constitution,' I again say that this is not the way to go about it. This should have been two questions. It should have been done so, so differently. We could have had 80, 90 or maybe 95 per cent of Australians commit to Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. That would have been a day for celebration. That is how that day would look the day after the referendum. If we continue down this path, with questions failing to be answered, we will wake up the morning after this referendum a divided nation and a very sad nation.

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