Online workers to hear Indigenous voice

Workers across Australia could soon be offered a 15-minute interactive course about the Indigenous voice.

Filmmaker Rachel Perkins.

Workers across Australia could soon be offered a 15-minute interactive course about the Indigenous voice as businesses that support the reform seek to help employees who want information about the reasons for the impending referendum.

The online course produced by and featuring Indigenous Australians includes video, a timeline and asks participants questions to test what they have learned during the session. It was launched online on Monday and will be promoted on social media.

In short videos that form part of the interactive session, acclaimed director and Arrernte-Kalkadoon woman Rachel Perkins says she believes the voice referendum – expected to be held in the second half of next year – can be as successful as the one in 1967 when 90.77 per cent of voting-age Australians said yes to amend the Constitution to allow the federal government to make laws for Aboriginal people and include them in the census.

“Now we ask that we are given a voice when those laws are made. That we are able to provide advice. Not a veto. Not a decision-making power. Just advice when those laws are made about us,” Ms Perkins said.

“It’s a fairly reasonable request – ‘I am making a law about you, what do you think about that’. So it’s about being heard.”

The interactive course is the work of the Uluru Dialogues and From the Heart, who say they created it following demand from individuals, small business, local organisations and corporates wanting to share information with their staff about the voice.

Specifically, the requests were for information that would “drive awareness on the significance of constitutional recognition for first peoples, understand what the voice to parliament is and why a referendum is needed to change the ... Constitution”.