Recognition for Indigenous Australians is not like the republic. We need a model to debate
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Version 0 of 1. It was described as “one of the federal parliament’s rare and uplifting moments of unity between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott”, the passing of an Act of Recognition in parliament in front of Indigenous leaders who had been invited to witness the event. The preamble to the act committed the parliament to a referendum on recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and to building a national consensus on the issue. It was supposed to be a significant step in the process towards achieving constitutional change. It was on that occasion that then-opposition leader Tony Abbott said, “we have never fully made peace with the first Australians ... we need to atone for the omissions and for the hardness of heart of our forbears to enable us all to embrace the future as a united people”. The act had a lifespan of two years and the deadline for the sunset clause draws closer – it was assented to on 27 March 2013. The campaign seems to be stagnating. Momentum for change has stalled because no model has been put on the table. Until it is clear what people will be voting for it’s hard to do more than to be generally in favour of the idea, or generally against it. Beyond broad statements, any sophisticated debate is impossible because the landscape is not clear and the details missing. The sticking point may have appeared between the lines in the speeches given by Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten at a Recognise event held in Sydney on 11 December last year. Abbott indicated that reform should be something that will bring people on the rightwing together with Aboriginal people, hinting that his preferred approach would be a minimalist model – perhaps symbolic only. “We have to temper our ambitions because nothing would set back the cause of our country and the rightful place of Aboriginal people at its heart, than a referendum that failed,” he concluded. He did indicate a possible timeframe: 2017, to coincide with the 50 year anniversary of the 1967 referendum. Confirmation of this timeframe has yet to be given. Shorten, by contrast, indicated a willingness to support something more substantial, referring to the importance of rejection notions of racial discrimination. This model – that offers something more than symbolism, though it is not clear what that would be – is one that won’t appease those on the hard right. So until we know where the proposal will sit – pure symbolism, or something more? – it is hard to have a concrete debate. Where the battlelines be drawn in the hearts and minds exercise needed to win over a majority of Australians in a majority of states? For those like Abbott, who believe this issue is of critical importance, the vacuum created by a lack of specifics is detrimental to the cause. It has given much momentum to the “no” case – both from the right who don’t see the point of recognition and from the left, who think it is a distraction from other, more pressing issues such as service delivery. Their concerns can’t be address or countered if it isn’t clear what is being offered. The experience of the Republican referendum in 1999 might imply that we should be cautious about models that are divisive. 55% of the population supported Australia becoming a republic at that time, so a referendum might have been able to secure support from a majority of people in a majority of states. It didn’t, because of disagreement over the the model that led to a split in the “yes” vote. Some, on reflection, believe that a model should not have been proposed; instead voters should have simply been asked to vote for, or against, the proposal of whether Australia should become a republic. The details should have come later. To follow this logic in the case of constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians, to put a simple proposition to the public with the details to be nutted out later, would be a mistake. People will not vote “yes” for things they are unsure about, and are rightly suspicious of agreeing to things they do not know the details of. In relation to recognition, many people want to know what they are signing up for. The better approach would be to put a model on the table that can be championed by both major political parties, underpinned by a “hearts and minds” campaign to convince enough Australians that it is the best way to go. There was much fanfare from both sides of government about the commitment to a referendum when the Act of Recognition was passed in 2012. Expectations were raised. But perhaps on that day, when political adversaries came together to support the concept of constitutional recognition for Indigenous people, they weren’t as close as we might have thought. High profile Australians supportive of positive change have put their hand up to support the concept. Organisations such as Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (Antar), Reconciliation Australia and the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples have all supported it. The Recognise campaign, which although government funded is not spreading a government line, has done much to garner goodwill, but will find its work hard to sustain if political leadership is not forthcoming. Unless there is a clear articulation of the proposition to be put before the Australian people, and a timeframe in which to achieve it, we run the risk of the worst possible outcome – a campaign that runs out of steam due to disinterest and disillusionment. |