Here are the two very simple reasons why you should support Recognise
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Version 0 of 1. If you want to persuade Australians about something really big and important, you had better be ready to put in some miles. We’re a big country and talking to “opinion leaders” in Sydney and Melbourne just won’t cut it when you need everyone to get on board. You have to get up, go out and look people in the eye, talk to them face to face, where they live and work – right across this country. Related: Indigenous recognition will help redress discrimination, says Nova Peris Right now in Australia there is just such a campaign going on. The Recognise movement, which I am privileged to jointly lead, is out there engaging with Australians in the cities and towns. We are talking to them about the need to vote in a referendum to amend Australia’s constitution. Our Journey to Recognition has been on the road more than 260 days now. Campaigners have travelled more than 32,000km through 211 communities. We’ve held more than 270 community events and directly engaged with 20,256 Australians about constitutional reform. So far. We’re not done yet. Why? Two very simple reasons. As it was written in the dying days of the 19th century, our constitution contains two provisions that allow for racial discrimination. Many people are shocked to learn that, which is understandable; I’m still a little shocked every time I write it down. It’s been a long time since the constitution was on the bestseller list and times have certainly changed since it was written. These provisions include section 25, which still envisages that a state could ban a whole race of people from voting, and section 51 (xxvi), which allows for special laws to be passed for the people of any race and carries with it the legal thinking and history of the white Australia era. As Professor Mick Dodson and others have noted, this can be used to pass race-based laws that are detrimental. Most people of goodwill still share the same reaction to these things: “How is that still there?” The second reason is that you can look at Australian history in three distinct phases, overlapping and merging with each other. The first is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history – maybe the first 50,000 or 60,000 years of human occupation of our continent. The second is the British colonial phase from 1788 through to the first part of the 20th century when the small colonies united. That phase spawned the constitution and the federated Australian nation of today. Lastly, there has been the transformative, largely post-war waves of migration from every part of the earth that have shaped the thriving multicultural nation we are today. The authors of the constitution had no way of knowing about this last phase – Britain was their whole world. But they did Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a grievous, hurtful, harmful wrong on many levels and this includes failing to include a single positive word about us anywhere in the constitution of modern Australia. When it was drafted, there were two references to us that were discriminatory. These were taken out in 1967 by Australia’s most successful referendum, with more than 90% voting to get rid of this discrimination. Yet our 500-century first phase of our history counted for exactly zero against the one century since European arrival. With that exclusion, they did all of us a disservice, because that history is Australia’s history, it is important for all Australians to know where we’ve come from, and by pretending it didn’t exist, they robbed us all of something unique. Now it’s time to reclaim that proud history. Recognise is the movement to achieve that recognition and ensure there’s no place for discrimination in the nation’s highest document. Our campaign has been going for some time and each step in our progress has been hard won, by campaigners paid and volunteer alike. Achieving constitutional reform is hard, as it should be. It requires not just political consensus across party lines but focus and energy and leadership from people who have a lot of other demands on their time and attention. It has been a while coming but on Monday, Australia will witness an event that I believe has no precedent. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders will sit down together at the invitation of the prime minister and opposition leader in a spirit of consensus to talk about how we advance the march to achieving this historic goal. It’s not controversial to observe that Bill Shorten and Tony Abbott don’t agree on many things, but they do agree on the need to achieve this, as do other political leaders. A range of views have been advanced about exactly how this change should be constructed – the “model” of reform that should be put to a vote. Some argue that recognising Indigenous Australians in the constitution itself poses legal difficulties, others believe it’s straightforward. Different “models” have been posited. Related: Bipartisan report calls for recognition of Indigenous Australians in constitution On this I want to be crystal clear – it is not the role of the Recognise movement to take a position about which model is best. Our purpose is simple – to wear out shoe leather and tyre rubber the length and breadth of this country talking to people about the critical need for this reform, and to campaign for it once the precise phrasing is agreed. We are intent on building a groundswell of popular support in favour of this referendum. We have already signed up more than a quarter of a million supporters (join in at recognise.org.au) and recent polling shows massive public backing for this long overdue modernisation of our national constitution. Settling the model is where leadership, honest dialogue, good faith and unity of purpose are the critical ingredients. Monday’s historic meeting is the chance for those qualities of Australia at its best to shine. No one should expect it to pull a rabbit or perfect “model” out of its collective hat, but it can set the stage and the course for achieving that ultimate goal. Once that work is done and leaders shake hands on the right formula, I’m very confident the broad mass of Australians will swing in behind a successful “yes” vote. After all, we’ve already talked it over with 20,000 of them. |