Indigenous leader Noel Pearson says Indigenous Australians are a “much unloved people” and warned the forthcoming referendum on constitutional recognition could be lost and “our cause may perish in the mud”.
In a Boyer lecture for the ABC titled Recognition, Pearson lays out the anxieties, hopes and fears of the campaign for recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, while also arguing that achieving recognition would be more difficult than legalising same-sex marriage.
Indigenous leader Noel Pearson.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer
But the lawyer and academic predicted that if a “yes” vote won, “racism will diminish in this country when we succeed with recognition. It will not have the same purchase on us”.
“Australia doesn’t make sense without recognition. Until the First Peoples are afforded our rightful place, we are a nation missing its most vital heart,” he said.
Pearson argues Indigenous Australians are “not popular and we are not personally known to many Australians … if success in the forthcoming referendum is predicated on our popularity as a people, then it is doubtful we will succeed”.
“Unlike same-sex marriage, there is not the requisite empathy of love to break through the prejudice, contempt and yes, violence, of the past. Australians simply do not have Aboriginal people within their circles of family and friendship with whom they can share fellow feeling.”
Pearson, who has long campaigned for recognition and was involved in the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017, warns apathy towards Aboriginal people is being used by opponents of recognition to weaken the case for constitutional recognition and the proposed Voice to parliament.
He argues the Voice has now become “another agenda of the culture war” between liberals and conservatives, and has pushed back against critics of the Voice to parliament who argued there was insufficient detail about how it would operate and that therefore people should vote no, when the referendum is held in the 2023-24 financial year.
“It is the Australian people who are responsible for recognition through their vote in a referendum. It is their elected parliamentary representatives who design and enact the details in law. Constitutional recognition will endure but the legislative details can be changed by the parliament if and when it chooses to do so,” he said.
“A ‘yes’ vote in the voice referendum will guarantee that Indigenous peoples will always have a say in laws and policies made about us. It will afford our people our rightful place in the constitutional compact.” This constitutional partnership will empower us to work together towards better policies and practical outcomes for Indigenous communities,” he said.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
Most Viewed in Politics
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article