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

There are interesting moments, inflection points, in history that call us to pay attention to when courage lifted nations and fear collapsed nations. Sadly, I think we're at a point—and this is reflected in the nature of the questions that have come across the floor today to the Labor government from those opposite—that absolutely reveals a culture of fear and a poverty of vision that are determined to return Australia to the fearful, chaotic, disparaging and negative conversation that so characterised the last nine years of government in Australia under the Liberal and National parties. That's what happens when miserly, greedy and divisive language and perspectives are allowed to reign.

We've already been on quite a journey to get to the point this week where we were finally able to—quite significantly, with the numbers on this side—advance to a referendum, but we have seen carnage amongst parties in this place when people have had to step aside because of the deafness and the miserliness of colleagues with whom they share a party room. Parties were so frightened to allow people to have their own voice in their own debate that shadow ministers stepped aside so that they could have their voice. The opposition are so frightened of the voices from within their own parties that they are truly lacking in the leadership that this country needs right now to do the right thing—to do the hopeful thing, to do the brave thing and to go on the journey of the heart. They should lift their sights beyond the miserly, beyond the negative and beyond the contested and look to a better vision for this country that isn't replete with the statistics that we hear, year in year out, about what's happening to First Nations people in this country.

When I first got to this chamber 'closing the gap' was heard over in the other place. We didn't even stop here in the Senate to pay attention. There's a good indication of why, long ago, we maybe needed a voice where First Nations people were heard. Those statistics may be a good indication of why, if Australia had this vision in 1940 or 1950—or, dare I say, in 1788—it would have been good to actually hear the wisdom and the voices of the people of Australia who were here when the boats arrived. If that had happened, we wouldn't find ourselves in this situation where we're attempting to retrofit some sort of corrective to say, 'Hello. Sorry we missed you in the Constitution. Maybe we should just recognise that you actually were here.' What the Voice is about at its core is constitutional recognition that 65,000 years of history happened before the modern era, if I can call it that, of Australia that is often referred to as the colonialist era.

What we've got is these personal, negative, limiting, pejorative statements made about one person after the other. I've never met Mr Thomas Mayo, but I want to read into the record a short quotation that I found in the time I was waiting to speak. He wrote a book called When the Heart Speaks: Learning the Language of Listening in Australia. He said:

When I told my six-year-old son I was writing a book that would be titled Finding the Heart of the Nation, he asked me, 'Where is the heart of the nation?' I pulled him close, put my hand on his heart and told him, 'The heart of the nation is here.' From the way his smile met his cheeks and his cheeks touched his eyes, I could see he was proud to hear my answer. He understood that the book was for him.

Not for him individually, a Torres Strait Islander boy born on Larrakia country in Darwin. No. It was written for all the children …

This is a voice for Australia, it is for all the children, it is for hope, it is for better and it should be supported.