VOTE YES23 IF YOU BELIEVE IN INFORMED CONSENT AS A PREREQUISITE FOR INCLUSION AND POLICY MAKING IN INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS

Voting Yes is not simply the right thing to do, but an offer as Anthony Albanese put it, from Indigenous people to help us collectively to find our soul and shared purpose. One of the principles at stake here is the idea that First Nations people give their informed consent to policies that impact their lives. Would not every Australian want that? When I talk to people from different walks of life, many of whom do not have close or familiar relationships with First Nations people, I sometimes hear talk about cultural differences and negative stereotypes that reflect their own lack of engagement. Unfortunately, the more distant people are from caring and relating to people (and the less cultural awareness they have) the more likely they are to distance themselves from the idea of supporting informed consent and co-design as principles of Commonwealth policy making. Being respectful requires informed consent and asking the people who are most impacted by policies to have input into the design of those policies. Voting Yes should be a bipartisan taken-for-granted, not a basis for fomenting ignorance and division. If you don’t know Vote No campaigns simply reinforce willful ignorance and disregard for the positive aspects of voting Yes, outlined in Kerry O’Brien and Thomas Mayo’s book called “The Voice to Parliament Handbook”. I would say though that people should not feel intimidated by the Yes campaign as we are all committed to the principle that, while we may disagree, we are always prepared to listen and learn. The trouble is, after a lifetime of engagement in Indigenous Affairs, I have not heard a single cogent argument that strengthens the No case.

More importantly, we are strengthened by the offer of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, not simply because it meets the criteria of a consent-based policy making and the right to speak and to be heard, but because First Nations people are the owners of the Land on which Australia as a Nation State was founded.

Indigenous communities and leaders across the world have had this right to be heard denied or given based on the whims of non-Indigenous politicians since colonization, to the point where the right to speak and be represented has been denied, if not by outright exclusion, by the weight of numbers in an electoral system where Indigenous peoples are a minority in their own country. As a matter of decency, it is incumbent on us all to recognize the need for special provisions enshrined in our Constitution that acknowledge the historical Truth and embrace a future informed by the genius of Indigenous politics and culture. The conflation of Indigenous identity, race relations and ethnicity simply muddy the water, by asserting moral equivalence between interethnic relations and the relationships between First Nations people and Australia as a nation-state. The opportunity we have now is to both protect the special status and rights of First Australians in the Constitution while we as Australians engage in a conversation about what it means to live in a modern nation state that has at its core the rule of law and the diversity that make us what we are today – a rich and prosperous country that values inclusion and diversity over exclusion and denial of our colonial past.

Dr Graham M. Townley

3 September 2023