Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to commend the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 to the house. I want to begin this speech not with my own voice but by once again reading, into the Hansard, the collective voice of those Indigenous people from around the country who gathered at Uluru to chart our nation's path forward towards reconciliation or rebirth. Their words, from the Uluru Statement from the Heart, read:

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from 'time immemorial', and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.

This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or 'mother nature', and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.

How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia's nationhood.

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is thetorment of our powerlessness.

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.

We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.

In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future. The question at the heart of this bill is not a complicated one; it is simple. We should recognise the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been custodians of our land for over 60,000 years. Australia's First Nations people are the longest surviving civilisation that our planet knows. In this bill and the referendum that will occur later this year, our nation has an opportunity to cement their place where it ought to always have been: at the heart of our nation's history, culture and, indeed, our political life.

Australians have previously faced the question of whether to embrace the ongoing journey of reconciliation with First Nations people. In 1967, Australia voted resoundingly to change the Constitution in favour of counting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our census. Fifty-six years ago, in a decision well overdue, over 90 per cent of Australians voted yes in a referendum, yes to the recognition of peoples who for too long had been subjugated by the laws of the very land of which they had been guardian since time immemorial.

I believe in 2023 that we are an even better nation than we were in 1967, and I call on Australia to vote yes in this next step towards the truth-telling that is fundamental to the common good, fundamental to our common humanity, fundamental to our future as a nation. In 1967 Australians made the decision to move forward as a nation, to right a wrong which had stood for far too long. We again have this opportunity to stand together as a nation, to show what ought to be our resounding support for Australia's First Nations people.

Seeded deeply in both my faith and my politics is the belief that all humans must be treated with innate dignity. In 1967, the churches were early advocates for the referendum and dramatically improved the uptake of the 'yes' votes. Now I am proud to see again that Australians of many faiths are standing in support of the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and their Voice to Parliament. When Australia's Catholic bishops endorsed the Uluru Statement from the Heart, they invoked the words of Pope Saint John Paul II, who said to Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Alice Springs in 1986:

Your culture, which shows the lasting … dignity of your race, must not be allowed to disappear … Your songs, your stories, your paintings, your dances, your languages, must never be lost.

My belief in this bill and the rightness of the notion of a First Nations Voice to Parliament is a reflection of what to me has always been a central calling of my faith: to recognise in fullness and without hesitation the humanity of all those who walk this world with us. For centuries now, grave wrongs have been perpetrated against Australia's Indigenous people. Now, once again, our nation has an opportunity to recognise that innate humanity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to hear their essential voice in the political and social arena of our nation.

It has been heartening to see faith leaders across our country recognise the deeply spiritual core of this undertaking and support it in the way they have. But I am yet to see images in 2023 that show the engagement on the ground of people of all faiths walking this pilgrimage with our brothers and sisters across this great southern land. I call on people of all faiths to stand in solidarity with the First Nations people of this country, and fight alongside them and with them for this Voice.

Broad alliances of Australia's Jewish community and advocacy organisations have repeatedly affirmed their support for the Voice. One such statement shared by 16 prominent community groups remarked:

Jews have also experienced the deep silence that follows atrocity and genocide, the experience of being abandoned by humanity, the struggle for recognition of confronting truths, and the tormenting powerlessness of not being heard.

I call on Jewish Australians to walk with our First Nations brothers and sisters in this time of truth.

Many Islamic faith leaders, the advocates of a religion which at its very core centres justice and the calling to stand up against oppression, have also expressed their clear support for the Uluru statement. The Australian National Imams Council's support for the Uluru statement was reflected in this comment:

Before 1770, Muslims engaged with the Aboriginal people of this land. They shared resources, engaged in trade and had a respectful relationship. It is a rich history and proud moment for both the Aboriginal and Muslim community. We continue with this respectful engagement and relationship.

Australia's Hindu communities have expressed the same support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, reflecting on the history between Australia's First Nations people and our world's Hindu cultures—a history which spans over 4,000 years. The Upanishads declared: 'Every human must live selflessly and learn to see God in everything everywhere. He who sees God in all and all in God develops the right attitude towards the creation manifest in everyone and everything around you.'

Likewise, the Australian Buddhist community has endorsed the success of the Uluru statement and a voice to parliament, and has played an active role in informing the religion's diverse members on the referendum and why it matters. Both Buddhists and First Nations Australians have a core belief in rebirth. I believe this is an opportunity for us to seek the rebirth of our nation.

Our nation was born of the Dreaming. It is a gift to all of us, including those of us who followed the arrival of colonists. Our nation has a 60,000-year history. It is only right that this is formally acknowledged in our nation's Constitution. I often wonder how different our country might look if our first settlers had stepped off the boat at Botany Bay to meet First Nations people with compassion, interest and a desire to understand, know and live alongside them. The legacy of the British Empire and the harm inflicted on colonised people has left wounds the world over which may never heal. But we must do what we can to salve them. What I'm certain of is that Australia's history would be richer, and our culture the better for it, if those first moments of meeting between worlds had been guided not by the fear of difference or the need to dominate but instead by the deeply human drive to connect with, to see and to, in fullness and without fear, walk alongside our fellow man.

The next phase of our nation's growth will either be stunted by a 'no' vote or be enriched by a generous response to the Uluru statement. Time is an inadequate measure to describe the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is much we can learn from Indigenous Australians, and a voice to parliament would not only provide them with the opportunity to have a say about how they are governed and how they fit into the complex web of modern Australian culture; a voice would also provide a much richer opportunity for us to learn from the millennia of knowledges which has been passed down through generations. We will soon show our desire or derision for long-quietened voices to be heard. This year, my fellow Australians, we have the opportunity, as did our parents and our grandparents in 1967, to accept the invitation to learn, to listen, to grow and to thrive—one and all. The first settlers failed to do that when they landed in Botany Bay in 1788. We should not let hubris, arrogance and deafness rob us of this opportunity to reconcile.

Colleagues, we find ourselves at the centre of a rare moment in history. We are faced with the opportunity to choose what kind of nation we wish to be and whether we want to move forward to develop a new shared language of respect and recognition in our nation. It is rare that we have such a magnificent opportunity to truly chart a new path in our history.

We will make a choice this year about limiting or expanding that capacity. We take responsibility for ourselves in our own era, but, in our choice, the die is cast for all those who will come after us. Australians in 2067 will look back on the decisions made in 1967. They will look at the Mabo case in 1992. And they will see what we did in 2023. We will show that we were either led by fear and miserliness or enabled by hope, faith and love to envision a more whole, a more vocal and a more truly unlimited and glorious Australia in our profound and remarkable diversity. One day, probably far sooner than any of us are able to realise, what happened in this chamber and what happens when the results of the referendum are laid bare will be considered as part of our nation's history. Our choices and the words both said and left unsaid will be analysed and invoked by new generations of Australians.

My mind turns to what other reality we might be experiencing and what alternative reality Australia's First Nations peoples might be experiencing if the first instinct of those British colonisers had been not to subjugate but to see and to hear the voices of all those whom they encountered and to recognise the immeasurable and immutable humanity in all those who lived and walked these lands for 60,000 years. It is time for us to lift our sights beyond the warnings of eminent lawyers and their voluminous works and words. It is time to hear the voice, to heed the call and to join the chorus of the song masters who sang the Uluru Statement from the Heart into being. The Bible, in Psalm 95, urges us: 'If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.' Let us not be the generation who go astray in our hearts.

Colleagues, this bill has been greatly overcomplicated, so let me repeat what our First Australians are actually seeking:

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

…   …   …

… walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.

I will be walking alongside First Nations people. I will vote yes, and I urge you to vote yes too.