Approaching Reconciliation Week, the nation is aware that there is still unfinished business when it comes to the due recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, writes Fr Frank Brennan SJ. Source: Eureka Street.
After Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s historic second election win this month, Noel Pearson issued a scarifying assessment of both sides of politics claiming that “All political capital on behalf of Indigenous Australians was spent – the account was overdrawn – and there was no prospect for anything in the remainder of the first term. Or, in my view, from a second.”
Against this backdrop of despair, I ask whether there are any constructive lessons to be learned from the 2023 referendum result which might then help us chart a forward path, building that bridge to next.
When discussing the way forward in light of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum result with Phillip Adams in June 2024, then Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney put the matter so clearly: “That issue of bipartisanship is so important. I actually think there would have been a very different outcome in terms of the referendum had there been bipartisanship.”
In his Garma speech on July 30, 2022, announcing the proposed referendum, Mr Albanese indicated that he was all for bipartisanship, both in relation to process and to the proposed wording of the constitutional change.
At the outset, Mr Albanese acknowledged the presence of Julian Leeser, the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, and said he looked forward to working with him. But neither the Prime Minister nor his Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, made any attempt at working with Mr Leeser on questions of process and wording.
In hindsight, we all know that it would not have mattered what any of us did. The result would have been the same unless a process was set up for genuinely attempting to bring the LNP to the table back in July 2022 and for professionally and transparently workshopping the proposed wording so that legal differences could be resolved.
With the 2023 referendum, we all failed spectacularly, each in our own way.
The loss to First Nations people and to our nation has been great. If only there was a forum for learning the lessons “bridging now to next”.
Those lessons could be conveniently placed under former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s three headings: bipartisanship, public education about the detail of the proposal, and a process of inclusion.
In the second term of the Albanese Government, we should all commit to building the bridge to help close the gap. The pylons of that bridge are bipartisanship, inclusion, education and trust.
FULL STORY
Bridging now to next: Can reconciliation rise from the ashes of the Voice referendum? (By Fr Frank Brennan SJ, Eureka Street)
