Deputy Speaker,
I was privileged to attend the Garma Festival at Gulkula in North-East Arnhem Land with the Prime Minister over the weekend.
It was beautiful to be back out on Yolngu land to hear the Prime Minister lay out a clear pathway to establishing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Also there were the Minister and Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Dodson, the Attorney-General, and the Member for Lingiari.
As the Prime Minister pointed out, the Voice is not a matter of special treatment.
It’s about consulting First Nations people on the decisions that affect them.
As simple as that.
It’s really important for our country to take this step forward together, to be faced with the clear, direct question:
“Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?”
And to answer YES.
There was a real spirit of joy and optimism at Garma.
It was wonderful to sit at the bunggul to watch the Yolngu dancers perform with power and grace, and to see them joined by Ministers Burney and McCarthy, the Member for Lingiari, and the NT Chief Minister Fyles, Minister Lawler, and Minister Uibo.
It was a moving display of leadership, solidarity, and reconciliation.
My constituent Thomas Mayor was there, too, a Torres Strait Islander born on Larrakia land.
He was a delegate at the Uluru Statement of the Heart, and wrote a book called Finding the Heart of Our Nation.
And he said this about our Government’s commitment to the statement, and of the Prime Minister’s leadership, which I agree with:
“The Prime Minister’s speech at Garma on the weekend brought me to tears, thinking about the hard work we have done to convince a Prime Minister to be so strongly committed to leading the charge to a successful Voice referendum.
“Prime Minister Albanese has given the national discussion the shape and direction it needed.”
There’s a lot of work to come as we progress the education campaign and consult widely with the Australian community.
But I am hopeful that the Australian people will see this for what it is: a solid step towards reconciliation.
