Leaders loud and clear about Indigenous voice to parliament issues

Aboriginal men and women from across Western Australia’s north meet to nominate their priorities and to support the Indigenous voice to parliament.

Traditional owners from four remote West Australian regions attend the annual Yule River bush meeting on Wednesday. Picture: Jose Kalpers

Traditional owners from four remote West Australian regions have nominated health, youth ­issues and housing as their most pressing concerns, at a bush meeting south of the iron ore hub of Port Hedland.

About 250 Aboriginal people from the Pilbara, Gascoyne, Murchison and midwest regions north of Perth indicated their support for the Indigenous voice with a show of hands at the annual Yule River bush meeting on Wednesday night. The meeting draws cultural leaders to a dry river bed about 55km by road from Port Hedland to discuss matters important to their communities.

Danny Brown, a Nyamal man and director of his local Aboriginal corporation in Port Hedland, said it had become possible in recent years to be heard by the state government in part because the McGowan government established the Aboriginal Advisory Council. Mr Brown is one of two Pilbara Indigenous people appointed to it.

However, he said speaking to the commonwealth was not easy and his people believed the voice would establish a structure that would funnel what they had to say to both the state and commonwealth governments.

“It hasn’t always been easy to tell them what we know about what is going on,” Mr Brown said.

“Relationships are improving but if we have the voice we will a­ctually have a structure for our words to go up to Canberra.

“At the moment we are relying on goodwill, and that is not any kind of guarantee. Having a government structure in place will definitely let us talk to the government about the things that are happening as they happen.

“Our priorities now are health, youth and housing. With the youth, it is crime on top, then education because truanting is the problem we need help with.”

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles and Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney arrived at the bush meeting on Thursday morning as part of the Albanese government’s push to demonstrate to all voting Australians that the voice has strong support in Indigenous communities.

“It is a really important statement that this meeting has made to Australia that Indigenous Australians here at one of the really important meetings that happen around the country want to see this referendum pass,” Mr Marles said. “I think it’s really important that Australians across this state and Australians across this country are hearing that call.

“We understand that Indigenous Australians are a diverse and rich group of people but the overwhelming opinion that is coming from Indigenous Australians is to support this referendum.”

Mr Marles flew to the Pilbara as Cape York leader Noel Pearson signalled that personal attacks ­deployed in the voice campaign should be put “behind us now”.

“Oh, politics is politics,” he told ABC’s RN when asked whether he regretted “personal attacks that have taken place during this campaign”.

“We put that behind us now. We’ve got the referendum bill through the parliament. It’s been taken out of the hands of the ­politicians now and it’s up to the Australian people.”

Mr Pearson has previously excoriated prominent figures on both sides of the voice debate but his rhetoric in recent weeks has been more moderate. On Monday, former chief justice Robert French publicly advised the Yes campaign: “The moment you engage in sledging … the message that is coming across is simply conflict. You don’t want to send a message of conflict, you want to send a message of how this is going to work, and focus on that.”

At Yule River, a reporter asked Mr Marles if it was disconcerting that the Aboriginal people at the bush meeting did not invite him to speak. He replied: “There is nothing disconcerting about that. I came here to listen. There is so much that I learned today in listening to the voice of those who spoke about these really specific issues that are impacting them.

Mr Marles said his government was seeking to listen more and indicated that the voice referendum later this year would entrench the practice right across government.