On the voice referendum, we’ve nothing to lose, and everything to gain

Yes23 co-chair Rachel Perkins has made her final pitch for the voice.

For the first time in more than half a century, Australians can vote to heal our country. On your ballot paper is a 92-word vision for recognition, a modest request to be heard.

On Saturday, Australians must collectively pause, for a moment, to think about our country, its deep past and its future.

This is a nation-building moment, a chance to make a change of profound symbolism, a change that also delivers a practical benefit. And it can be achieved with just a few words.

With these words we are poised to accept the great richness of our history and the truth of our nation’s foundation from which we’ve been hiding for more than 200 years.

These words are a question to every Australian.

At its heart, you must decide this: do you believe that in being Australian you are part of human history on this continent, a history that traces our combined experience, 2500 generations, 65,000 years.

When you support the Yes vote, you support the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at the grassroots.

I will not see another opportunity like this in my lifetime. Its significance for the First Peoples is momentous, even if for most Australians it will not make any material difference in their lives.

For them, nothing will change in accepting this hand of friendship offered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders apart from being a moment of unity, recognition and inclusion.

For our people, it comes with a guarantee of hope, for change in our lives to realise what we call the voice.

Today, Aboriginal children are born into hardship and disadvantage of a kind unknown to any other group of Australians. One in three of my people live at or below the poverty line. In remote communities, we have 20 times the rate of kidney failure of non-Indigenous people.

The purpose of the voice is to find remedies for now, reasons for hope, now.

The best thing we can do as a people, as a nation, is give people opportunity and hope.

And here’s the other reason for the voice – every time we take even the smallest step towards lifting our Indigenous people out of the mire, Australia takes a step forward too.

The voice won’t fix every failure, and none will it fix overnight, but it might move the foundations a little, change the perspective, get us working with new purpose and direction.

Hopelessness is a fair description of life for a great many Indigenous people. Helping us to take responsibility for our communities is precisely what the voice will do. It will speak to parliament, but it will also bring an eye and ear to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

The voice will face the truth. It can’t succeed without facing it.

We’ve nothing to lose in giving it a chance, and everything to gain.

Rachel Perkins is co-chair of Yes23 and a proud Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman