Opinion

We must talk about how the Voice will make a difference

There is no body through which Indigenous people can channel ideas at a federal level. The representations should come at the beginning, not the end.

Laura TingleColumnist

Mar 24, 2023 – 5.04pm

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There aren’t many moments in the long history of Indigenous affairs when there is any sense of breakthrough, of arrival: a sense that agreement of some sort, and progress, is possible.

Former West Australian Indigenous Labor treasurer and Aboriginal affairs minister Ben Wyatt summed up one of those moments well when he wrote in The Australian on Friday of the emotion showed by both the prime minister and Indigenous leaders at Thursday’s press conference in Canberra to announce the agreed wording of the referendum question on the Voice and the proposed new chapter in the Constitution.

Laura Tingle is chief political correspondent for the ABC's 7.30 program. She is the staff-elected director of the ABC.