Indigenous voice to parliament: Leaders find their feet on national stage
Among the 62 Indigenous Australians who have helped steer the nation towards a historic referendum are a former minister of the crown, constitutional experts and public intellectuals.
Among the 62 Indigenous Australians who have co-operated and debated as they steered the nation towards a historic referendum are a former minister of the crown, constitutional experts and public intellectuals.
But the voice story so far is underpinned by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who rarely get to speak on the national stage. That is the point.
In Canberra on Thursday, 66-year-old Jack Beetson from Nyngan, west of Dubbo, was with Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney as the bill that could change Aboriginal policy-making forever was introduced.
Beetson has been meeting since last September with Burney, her predecessor Ken Wyatt and some of the nation’s most accomplished Indigenous leaders, including Megan Davis, Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson.
He is a member of the referendum engagement group tasked with advising the government on how to build community understanding and support for the referendum.
Beeston’s father was a drover, his mother an orderly at the local hospital, and he picked cotton from the age of eight for 40c an hour. The non-Indigenous wife of his brother taught him to read at her kitchen table. He hated it, he says, but now thanks God for her and has since devoted his life to adult literacy.
“Adult literacy is one of the things I think the voice should advise on – Australians would be shocked, floored, to know how bad it is in Indigenous communities,” he told The Australian as he returned to Sydney, where he runs the Literacy for Life Foundation.
“In this country, 40 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 and above have very low literacy, but I can tell you we have been to communities where it is 75 per cent.
“There are households where adults who cannot read are dispensing medication to their parents, their children, their grandchildren, having committed the doses to memory based on what the doctor told them.
“It is not a trainwreck waiting to happen – it is a trainwreck.”
Hannah McGlade, who was placed in Aboriginal institutions as a child and was homeless before she was 16, has also spent the past six months advising the government on the voice. After three decades as a fierce advocate for Aboriginal women and children, she has earned the right to be heard on solutions to the scourge of family violence in Indigenous communities. She has also earned a PhD. Like Beetson, she is a professor in her field of expertise. Ironically, their extraordinary success has made them vulnerable to tropes about Indigenous elites.
McGlade has repeatedly demanded attention for murdered and missing First Nations women and girls. She advocated successfully for a separate government action plan for Indigenous victims of family violence because she and other advocates knew a blanket policy would not work. She believes the voice can cut through.
“This is very much about the day-to-day lives of Aboriginal people across Australia,” she said.
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