Election 2022: ‘From my heart, hear our voice’, says Pat Anderson

Aboriginal elder Pat Anderson is preparing for what many see as the most important federal election for her people in decades.

Pat Anderson, in Canberra on Tuesday, says the First Nations leaders meeting will set the tone for this election campaign. Picture: Rohan Thomson

Pat Anderson, the Aboriginal elder who shepherded the nation’s Indigenous leadership to a historic consensus on a voice to parliament, is preparing for what many see as the most important federal election for her people in decades.

Ms Anderson is widely ­acknowledged as the architect of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the poetic and political document signed by 250 Indigenous delegates from around Australia in May 2017. The Uluru statement’s call for an Indigenous voice enshrined in the Constitution has dominated the discourse in Aboriginal affairs ever since.

“Absolutely I expect the Uluru statement to feature prominently in the upcoming federal election,” Ms Anderson told The Australian from Canberra on Tuesday.

She will help ensure the election campaign does not forget Uluru – and in particular the fate of the voice – when she joins senior lawmen and other traditional owners on Saturday for the biggest gathering of First Nations leaders since the Uluru statement was ­released on May 26, 2017.

The nation’s biggest land councils, Indigenous human rights ­advocate Hannah McGlade, Indigenous constitutional expert Megan Davis, Cape York Institute founder Noel Pearson and community representatives from around Australia will meet in Cairns, which was chosen for its proximity to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League that worked on the successful 1967 referendum campaign enabling laws for Indigenous people and their inclusion in the census.

While Labor senator Pat Dodson has a place in history as the ­father of reconciliation, Ms ­Anderson is seen as the mother of recognition, a leader central to the work towards constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians since John Howard raised the prospect on the eve of the 2007 federal election.

Uluru is often described as the culmination of talks involving about 1100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in all states and territories about what constitutional recognition looked like to them. However, it was also the ­culmination of work that began when Julia Gillard appointed an expert panel on constitutional recognition in December 2011.

Ms Anderson and lawyer Mark Leibler were co-chairs of the Referendum Council that in 2015 began the process that led to the Uluru statement.

Their final report, in June 2017, describes the series of talks about constitutional recognition with Indigenous people as the first in Australia’s history.

Ms Anderson and Mr Leibler wrote that those talks, and the Uluru statement they produced, were a significant response to the historical exclusion of First Peoples from the original process that led to the adoption of the Australian Constitution.

“It has been 11 years since this process started. Ten reports and seven processes in 10 years,” Ms Anderson told The Australian.

“Enough is enough. The gap is widening and our people are getting sicker. How long do we have to wait? All Australians can see what we are doing is not working.”

Ms Anderson said the ALP’s previous commitment to a first-term referendum on a voice to parliament was welcome leadership.

“It is important that politicians understand that we have not tried constitutional empowerment of First Nations peoples,” she said.

“All we are asking for is a say in the laws and policies made about our lives. “This is why the Uluru Statement was issued as an ‘invitation’ because it is they who can help us change the nation – as we did in 1967, which is why this meeting will be held to honour some of the 1967ers who led the nation 55 years ago.”

While the intentions of the major parties is the focus for Uluru supporters at the coming federal election, the Greens’ decision to support truth telling ahead of a voice has caused concern. For Ms Anderson and others, a constitutionally enshrined voice must come first.

“The Uluru Statement has a very deliberate sequence,” Ms ­Anderson said. “A constitutional voice is to anchor the relationship between First Nations people.

“Truth telling is relational and it is an ongoing process and it will never end.

“We have seen other countries have truth commission after truth commission with no end in sight.

“We must not delay our recognition for a process that will and should never end.”