Editor’s View: The Voice divided but the Games can unite

The Voice proposal failed because it sought to divide. The Olympic and Paralympic Games succeed because they unite, writes The Editor.

The Voice divided but the Games can unite, writes the Editor.

Sydney 2000 was, in many respects, the moment Australia grew up – when our nation threw off its awkward teenage insecurities to become the confident nation it is today. Almost overnight we went from desperately wanting to know what visiting celebrities “think about Australia” to just confidently assuming they would be loving their time Down Under.

More significantly, our attitudes towards our First Nations people also matured – with the lead-up to the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games notable for the way our journey towards reconciliation was accelerated.

We were already on that journey before Sydney was granted the Games in 1993. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation was created in 1991, and the Mabo High Court decision that rejected the doctrine of terra nullius was handed down in 1992 (leading in turn to the Native Title Act in 1993, and then the Wik decision in 1996, which confirmed pastoral leases do not extinguish native title).

Along the way came the famous Redfern address when Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1992 conceded the now-obvious truth that white settlement had negative impacts on our First Nations people – and the 1997 Bringing Them Home report that acknowledged the Stolen Generations.

And then came the Walk for Reconciliation in May 2000 – when, on the day after Prime Minister John Howard had controversially refused to apologise for past wrongs, 250,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in our nation’s largest ever political demonstration.

There was a real sense at the time of the stain that our unfinished business of reconciliation was on the sun-drenched and friendly face we so desperately wanted to show the world. There was a genuine fear that stain would be exposed when the global media circus rolled into town for the Games in the September of that year.

We need not have worried. Because while there was some coverage of Indigenous disadvantage in the lead-up the Games, that narrative changed when the curtain came up on a breathtaking Opening Ceremony that began with the momentous Awakenings segment where we wowed the world with the first ever large-scale First Nations presentation to be entirely free of corroboree kitsch, and ended with Indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman lighting the Olympic cauldron.

Fast-forward 10 days and we came together as a nation again to watch Queenslander Freeman secure her 400m gold medal in front of what remains Australia’s biggest-ever television audience.

Freeman almost floated down the home straight – as if the breath of her ancestors formed a gust of wind at her back – and “Our Cathy” delivered the most memorable book-end to an astonishing decade that had totally redefined Australia’s relationship with our Indigenous people.

Cathy Freeman of Australia speeds over the track in the women's 400m final 25 September, 2000 at the Sydney Olympic Games. Picture: Eric Feferberg

It is far too simplistic to say the Games was the only catalyst. It was not. But Sydney 2000 definitely accelerated the journey. This remains that event’s greatest legacy.

The Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games offers a similar opportunity.

Queensland is the only state that is home to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. We must be deliberate in making that unique truth central to our Games and legacy planning.

Just as Sydney 2000 pushed reconciliation forward, the next eight years leading into
Brisbane 2032 offers a platform to re-embrace our First Nations brothers and sisters in an authentic way, in the wake of the rejection of the ill-considered, politically motivated, and divisive referendum to enshrine in the Constitution an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Quandamooka man Cameron Costello – the deputy chair of the 2032 Legacy Committee – proposes today a significant starting point: to make Brisbane the first ever Games co-designed with First Nations people, from the design and construction of venues to legacy tourism offerings.

He proposes making the hosting of the biggest event in the world a chance to transform South East Queensland into a “First Nations storytelling landscape where, like Florence and Paris, you’re overwhelmed by the integration of culture within their architecture”.

This is an exceptional idea, along with Mr Costello’s plea that we also use 2032 as the deadline for finally delivering the long-promised
First Nations Cultural Centre at the South Bank precinct.

This museum/gallery would tell the intertwined stories of the Dreamtime, Indigenous culture, colonisation, and reconciliation – and the building itself could perhaps be the flying fox-style dusk launch pad of drones that would dance in the sky to tell creation stories each evening, as the Brisbane Festival has so memorably done in the past two years.

The Voice proposal failed because it sought to divide. The Olympic and Paralympic Games succeed because they unite.

We have a unique opportunity in the lead-up our Games to join the dots here, and to embrace the fact that we are all people who – by birth or migration – have as our home the home of the oldest living cultures.

How special would it be that the legacy of this most incredible time in our lives is a future where every Queenslander is as connected to – and proud of – our home’s ancient history as Romans, Athenians and Egyptians are of theirs.