‘Vote for best voice’: Julia Gillard launches UK Yes campaign
Julia Gillard has told a London audience of how the family stories of indigenous people are imbued with ‘trauma and exclusion,’ and accused the country of failing to listen to their voices.
Former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has told a London audience of how the family stories of indigenous people are imbued with “trauma and exclusion,” and accused the country of failing to listen to the voice of “those who can make the biggest difference.”
Launching the Yes campaign for the indigenous voice to parliament referendum in Britain’s capital early this morning (AEST), Ms Gillard urged a yes vote because: “What the voice will ensure is that we always hear, that we always have, the best, best voice telling us what needs to be done by our nation next.”
Ms Gillard who celebrates her 62nd birthday later this week said a female indigenous counterpart born in the same year would have been at real risk of being part of the Stolen Generation, taken from her family for no reason with documents showing it was for no reason other than “being aboriginal”.
She said if the woman wasn’t taken from her family, then she would know of people who were.
“Intergenerational trauma is a real thing, families learn, families grow generation by generation”, she said.
She pointed out that when the woman was born 62 years ago, it would be another six years before the referendum was passed allowing her to be counted in the census and more than 30 years before the landmark Native Title.
Ms Gillard said: “She would have had to lived all the way to 2007 to hear the word “apology” from prime minister Kevin Rudd,’’ noting that “all of these things impacted upon her life in a major way, and we know that just living her everyday life she would face racism and exclusion”.
Ms Gillard added that these individual instances of racism and exclusion added up over time to cause ongoing psychological distress.
Ms Gillard said that there had been some progress with more children accessing early education and less First Nations young people in detention and more Australian land subject to Native Title.
But she warned: “Progress is slower than we aimed for and in some the gap is getting bigger” in relation to the rates of incarceration and the care of children.
She said: “Why do we fail to meet the targets that we collectively as a nation have set ourselves to change? I think that there is one explanation and that is because we haven’t heard the voice of those who can truly make the biggest difference’’.
She said a voice to parliament would mean “together we can sail on a journey that leads to a far more inclusive and reconciled future’’.
Australia House in the Strand is the largest overseas polling booth, with as many as 160,000 eligible voters, mostly expats living in the UK able to cast their ballot here. The campaign launch, included the appearance of a drag queen singing a rousing rendition of John Farnham’s anthem song You’re the Voice.
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