Join for a moment, if you will, in something of a thought experiment.
Imagine we are enjoying our lives just as they are, everything is fine, the centre is intact and then surprisingly, unexpectedly and in a seismic-shock-like way a bunch of colonisers arrive.
They bring with them a way of life, diseases, potions, poisons and weapons absolutely foreign to us in every sense and yet we are forced to conform with ideas and values alien to the essence of our being.
We resist, but our technology is outclassed and so we wilt like an ice-cream in the midday sun.
Initially we are lumped in with the flora and fauna, and decades pass before we are even counted — and even then, many of the colonisers still see us as subhuman.
The life we know best still sustains us, but the laws and values we know, understand and live by jar with those of the colonisers, their diseases decimate us, their potions and poisons equally rip our lives apart making it even more difficult to fit in with the colonisers’ weird ways.
Many wanted us to disappear, but now, finally, some of the far-seeing leaders want to hear our views and opinions — a “Voice to Parliament” they say.
Decades ago we were counted and now the idea is we will have a Voice to Parliament, something that matters to most in Shepparton — well, really, that’s all of us.
However, this is of more direct and critical importance to a distinctly smaller number of people, as about 1.6 per cent of people in Greater Shepparton identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the 2016 Australian Bureau of Statistics Census.
But, anecdotal evidence suggests this is somewhat low, and our city’s First Nations population is probably nearly three times this, with a population of nearly 6000.
It seems that we all need to understand and think about what the Voice to Parliament means to and for our First Nations people and beyond that, we need to imagine what the Voice means for those of us who are, in one way or another, descendants of the ‘First Fleeters’.
And reading Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book, I come across a chapter by Jacqueline Patterson titled ‘Environmental Racism’ that is both relevant and damning.
Patterson writes: “European adventurers valiantly sail across the seas to discover new lands and bring back rich cargoes of silks and spices. But this leaves out the reality of murders, thefts, diseases and displacements. Soon after arriving to stolen lands across the Americas, white explorers deemed the original Indigenous inhabitants to be inferior and disposable. As such, they proceeded to murder and enslave the Indigenous communities they encountered, driving them off the land. Meanwhile, in sub-Saharan Africa, people were being stolen from their homelands, placed as cargo on ships and brought to the western hemisphere to be the enslaved labour that built the infrastructure and worked the land, laying the foundations for the Industrial Revolution and the modern capitalist economy. While enforcing dominion over people, these colonists institutionalised a relationship with the land and its bounty that was rooted in reckless extraction.”
That, of course, is about other parts of the world, but while different in detail than the Australian experience, it can be seen broadly as a story about our country and our First Nations people.
The proposed referendum is a national vote that will most significantly affect First Nations people, but simple mathematics illustrate the outcome will not be determined by the 3.4 per cent of the population who identify as Traditional Owners — non-Indigenous voters should hear Traditional Owners’ voices to understand what a Voice to Parliament means to First Nations people.
The Albanese Government wants the referendum question to be about broad, in-principle agreement. If the proposal is supported by the vote, the government would design the Voice in consultation with the community and legislate in Parliament.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton laments a lack of detail, but a quick search of the internet will reveal endless information about the Voice to Parliament, and he is failing his constituents in that he has not acknowledged, or understood, that the Voice would be designed by him and his many political counterparts via legislation in the parliament.
Dr Tim Dunlop, who has a PhD in political philosophy, and teaches at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne, referred to Mr Dutton in a tweet, making an observation about the PM, Anthony Albanese, answering his questions:
“Of course he (Albanese) did, because he (Dutton) doesn’t want answers. He doesn't want details. No amount of detail will satisfy him. He just wants to destroy the referendum. Can we stop pretending otherwise?”
So our thought experiment takes us to its natural and unavoidable conclusion — our First Nations people need embracing, they need to be heard and so, it’s a Voice to Parliament.