Albanese flips the argument that practical improvements in the lives of the most disadvantaged Indigenous people must come before an Indigenous voice.
He says improvements are much more likely to flow once the voice is established. And then he explains why, by pointing to isolated success stories that came from proper listening.
He cites the more than 120 Indigenous ranger programs across Australia that employ Aboriginal people in meaningful work. This includes the annual cool and controlled burns preventing wildfires that are catastrophic for the environment and the pastoral industry. In remote parts of Australia, these are jobs that Aboriginal people asked for and the work is satisfying to them.
Albanese also points to a patchwork of justice reinvestment programs that have time and again been shown to prevent crime in the communities where state or federal governments have been bold enough to give them a try. In many cases, Aboriginal people have instigated these programs, and Aboriginal people have been employed to intervene early in the lives of troubled kids.
Albanese also singles out the new national agreement on Closing the Gap as an example of the principles of the voice at work because, for the first time, Aboriginal organisations helped design the agreement and they are signatories to it. This means they will share responsibility for successes and failures when the deal ends in 2031. The Morrison government saw that deal as the way forward in Indigenous affairs. Now Labor is going further by attempting to enshrine a voice that will be able to make representations on any subjects that substantially impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The Prime Minister’s first formal pronouncement on the voice referendum is also his most cogent explanation yet of how it could deliver on a broad scale.
“Respect works,” he says. “When a government listens to people with experience, with earned knowledge … then the policies and programs are always more effective.”
Any Australian community that has had the misfortune of dealing with a tin-eared bureaucrat or politician knows it.
Religious leaders and corporate Australia support the voice. And Albanese is optimistic most Australians want this change.
When the North Ryde Rotary Club in Sydney’s northwest decides to back the Uluru Statement from the Heart, there can be little doubt it has gone mainstream.
But this is a Prime Minister being persuasive while also being careful. He continues to speak about the voice as a generous invitation with emphasis on its limits. His proposed constitutional amendment, and his commentary, give an assurance that parliament will always have the ability to alter the voice’s functions and powers.
Mabo doing her bit to close the health gap
Rebecca Mabo, granddaughter of land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo, is helping close the gap in healthcare.
Ideology 101: students forced into ‘privilege walk’
Macquarie University law students who face the threat of failing a key exam over a lacklustre acknowledgment of country have been made to adopt different personas and perform a ‘privilege walk’.
Anthony Albanese has responded to voice sceptics with diplomacy and detail. In the furthest corner of Arnhem Land on Saturday, he pitches to the best in all of us. He is talking to the Australians he knows want something better for the most disadvantaged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And, to be blunt, something better for taxpayers who have bankrolled hit and miss commonwealth policy since 1967.