Warren Mundine: Uluru Statement from the Heart a ‘ploy to grab power’
Prominent Aboriginal activist and No campaigner Warren Mundine has warned that the agenda behind the Uluru Statement is a ‘metaphorical’ declaration of war on modern Australia.
Opinion
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Outrage has become a common feature in modern politics. If someone screams when you press their skin, it’s a sign of injury lurking underneath. Likewise, if a person reacts with outrage in political debate, it often masks great vulnerability in their position.
A few months ago, the National Indigenous Australians Agency released records of the 14 regional Dialogues on constitutional recognition that preceded the Uluru Statement of the Heart.
The document is 112 pages long.
Confusingly, it begins at the end with “Document 14”, labelled this way because it’s a record of the 14th and final Dialogue held at a resort in Yulara, near Uluru, during which the document known as the “Uluru Statement from the Heart” was released.
Documents one to 13 follow, being records of the 13 Dialogues that preceded it.
These records provide considerable material for commentary and critique of the proposed Voice, only one of the “requests” in the Statement from the Heart.
Advocates for the Voice reacted to this scrutiny with so much outrage it was like someone had poured disinfectant into a gaping wound. No wonder. Document 14 is a dossier declaring a metaphorical war on modern Australia.
This outrage has focused on how long the Uluru Statement is. Whether it’s just the 439 words reproduced on canvas surrounded by attendee signatures and artwork for display in museums. Or the longer and now infamous “Document 14”.
This has distracted us from the most important point. The howls of outrage are a warning. We need to examine Document 14 in detail and we need to talk about it.
Document 14 is a 26-page document headed “Uluru Statement from the Heart”. Page one contains the 439 words Prime Minister Albanese describes as an “eloquent request”. The remaining pages are grouped under four sub-headings:
• “Our Story”, an Indigenous history of Australia;
• “Guiding Principles”, governing the 14th Dialogue’s assessment of reform proposals;
• “Reform Priorities” assessing proposals considered in the previous 13 Dialogues and detailing the three favoured by the 14th Dialogue being a Voice to Parliament, Treaty and Truth-telling and their rationale; and
• “Roadmap” outlining the plan for implementing the Voice, Treaty, Truth reforms.
It’s now heresy to suggest the Uluru Statement is anything other than the 439 words reproduced on the canvas.
This edict has been issued by the NIAA, ticked off by RMIT Fact Check and endorsed by Yes campaigners everywhere.
Albanese described the suggestion the Uluru Statement includes these sections as “absolute nonsense”, “a conspiracy theory” and like believing the moon landing was fake.
But, until recently, the whole document was pushed by the chief architect of the Voice, Professor Megan Davis, who’s said repeatedly in speeches, interviews and print, that many people don’t know the Uluru Statement isn’t just one page but indeed a longer document of circa 18 pages.
In her 2018 Human Rights Oration, for example, she said the Uluru Statement “includes the very important statement that we issued to the Australian people at Uluru but it also includes a very important story that we called ‘Our Story’ that maps Aboriginal history through Aboriginal eyes starting with the invasion and traversing many phases of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history”.
This, in itself, is an astounding assertion that begs closer examination.
In her 2018 Henry Parkes Oration, she said the Uluru Statement is “not just the one page invitation to the Australian people, it also includes what we call ‘Our Story’ … and also a few pages … on the reform. Why do we want a Voice? What will a Voice do? So, I urge everybody [to] … read that whole document, which we call the Uluru Statement from the Heart.”
And in a recent contribution to a book, “Our Voices from the Heart”, she and co-author Pat Anderson said the Uluru Statement “includes three elements: the one-page pitch to the
Australian people; ‘Our Story’ of the First Nations history of Australia; and the explanation of
the legal reform’’.
Davis believes Document 14 is essential to understanding what the Uluru Statement is about, what it is intended to achieve, and what the 439 words are actually asking for. And until it became politically unwise to say so, she wanted Makarrata everyone to read it.
She’s right. Everybody should read that whole document, whatever you want to call it.
Document 14 is steeped in grievance; with Indigenous Australians trapped in victimhood and oppression, not currently free or able to make their own decisions; where self-determination is an aspiration, not something within reach today.
That’s a lie; as is the inference self-determination can only be granted by government (and bizarrely by a government that the ‘Our Story’ narrative frames as illegitimate).
Nothing could be further from the idea of reconciliation than Document 14.
It contemplates a future of separation, with First Nations sovereignty standing apart from, and opposite to, Australian sovereignty.
But not only that.
Document 14 also stands against traditional owner autonomy over their own lands and seas; rooted in the idea of one homogenous pan-Indigenous people with one capital “L” law.
That’s the very clear objective of the Makarrata Commission, which is the second body requested in the Uluru Statement (and right there in the words on the canvas).
The final paragraphs of Document 14 should be chilling for all Australians, but especially for traditional owners, where it states: “The Bill establishing the Makarrata Commission should confer all necessary powers and functions to facilitate the settlement of a National Makarrata Framework Agreement between Australian Governments and First Peoples, as well as subsequent First People Agreements at the local level. The role of the National Native Title Tribunal should be subsumed by the Makarrata Commission, which should have as one of its functions the role of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to enable all Australians to face the truth of the past and to embrace a common hope for the future.”
The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a political ploy to grab power, not just from the Australian nation but also from traditional owners themselves.
It’s apt that Davis and Anderson’s recent writings describe the 439 words as a “pitch”.
It’s a glossy marketing document for the misappropriation of culture, a misrepresentation of history, and for a radical and divisive vision of Australia.
All done in the name of Aboriginal people but subsuming our interests and very much working against us.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO is Director, Indigenous Forum, Centre for Independent Studies. With assistance from Dr Vicki Grieves Williams, who is Warraimaay and a historian, widely published on Aboriginal Australian history.
This is the first of a series of essays appearing exclusively in The Daily Telegraph over the next four Fridays.
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