Mourning after the vote before: Flags still at full mast

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags were still flying at full mast on Sunday at Queensland’s Parliament House after First Nations leaders involved in the unsuccessful Yes campaign established a week of mourning.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags were still flying at full mast on Sunday at Queensland’s Parliament House after First Nations leaders involved in the unsuccessful Yes campaign established a week of mourning and asked for them to be lowered.

A statement from Indigenous Australians who supported the Voice referendum called for “a week of silence” across the country as the “true owners of Australia” grieve and reflect on Saturday evening’s defeat, described as “a bitter irony”.

all flags were at full mast outside Parliament House in Brisbane on the morning after the Voice referendum. Picture: Shaye Windsor

“That people who have only been on this continent for 235 years would refuse to recognise those whose home this land has been for 60,000”, the statement said.

“Now is not the time to dissect the reasons for this tragic outcome. This will be done in the weeks, years and decades to come.

“Now is the time for silence, to mourn and deeply consider the consequence of this outcome.”

The leaders asked Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags be flown at half mast acknowledging the period of mourning, while calling on the First Nations community to maintain their “strength and resolve” and ”convene in due course to carefully consider our path forward”.

“To our people we say: do not shed tears … the truth is we offered this recognition and it has been refused. We now know where we stand in this, our own country.

“We will not rest long. Pack up the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Fly our flags low,” the statement said.

“Talk not of recognition and reconciliation. Only of justice and the rights of our people in our own country. Things that no one else can gift us, but to which we are entitled by fact that this is the country of our birth and inheritance.”

“When we determine a new direction for justice and our rights, let us once again unite.”

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags at King George Square were also flying at full mast on Sunday.

The Clerk of the Parliament has been approached for comment.