The Voice to Parliament 2023

Far be it from me to ever claim that I am anything but mostly ignorant of the lived experience of the First Nations people of this land; of those who continue to experience one of the worst ongoing atrocities ever to be committed on Indigenous peoples anywhere in the world through time and space in the history of our civilization. But I do want to weigh in on the sad debate that is currently doing the rounds as it relates to the contentious realm of the colonial project that continues to be modern-day Australia.

I hope that while doing so I do not seem unknowing of my place and status as an immigrant living as a guest on Wurundjeri country of the Woi-Wurrung language group of Indigenous people - members of the Kulin nation.

There are very few occasions in history when one is invited to be a part of the turning back of time as it relates to our barbaristic, predatory and unconscionable actions through our collective history as colonists who have come to inhabit a geographical region in the world today having displaced in our wake a culture that thrived and cared for this land over so many millennia that the comprehension of its passage, itself, challenges our sense of time. 

The imminent Voice to Parliament referendum is a singular event in history in which I am honoured to be allowed to play a part, but to see the vile misinformation and innuendo being spread about its value to modern Australia, blak and otherwise, is disheartening and cruel; both to the memory of the atrocities committed on the original inhabitants of this land, and the clear opportunity that it now presents - to retell a history of dispossession and disgrace by writing a new story that could point towards a future of hope and regeneration.

I acknowledge the groundswell of scepticism and suspicion that has now emerged about the referendum's enactment from what, effectively, are two factions; one - that is made up of academia and activist groups that bemoan the small step that The Voice represents when viewed against the entirety of what needs to be done towards actively decolonising this country, and two - a group that merges disingenuous multi-national corporate interests centred on the mining and resource extraction industrial-complex with the recalcitrant 'quiet Australian' contingent of white-supremacists who will never change their inherent racist prejudices and will forever fight against any acknowledgement of the continuing devastation their enduring actions have spawned over the last six hundred plus years all over the world.

To the first group, I say - Leave your ivory towers, your vast libraries and secure tenureships aside for a minute; desist from your weekend activism and put down your fashionable banners for just a second, and see the referendum for what it is... a small step down a long, rickety staircase of emancipation and reconciliation for the multitudes of people who now collectively make up this continent and whose own cultural histories, wherever they come from in the world, may include revolts, genocides, and erasure from the 'white' history text books. Acknowledge that all this moment in history represents is but incremental progress towards the future that we all want and strive for - one that embodies a true and authentic decolonisation, once and for all, and a collective moving on from a violent and unforgivable past.

As for the second group, there is really nothing anyone can say to convince you to change. But know this; you cannot stem the tide of history. There can be no future without reckoning, there can be no sustainability without acknowledgement, there can be no progress without reparation, there can be no You without I.

Vote Yes to The Voice.