Recognise this: reform will bind us as a nation

AFL legend James Hird is surrounded by Aboriginal kids, from the Tiwi Islands, the NT and South Australia.

James Hird

JAMES Hird is surrounded by Aboriginal kids, from the Tiwi Islands, the Northern Territory and South Australia. A legend as an AFL player, enduring testing times as a coach, he is relaxed, smiling, happy to be talking to kids about where they've come from and about football.

He has also clipped a small badge on to his Bombers' jacket, with the letter R on it -- R for Recognise -- joining the cause to have Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders recognised in the Constitution.

"I think it's essential that Aboriginal people are recognised in a positive way in the Constitution," Hird tells The Weekend Australian. "They are a huge part of our history and I am surprised that they are not recognised in our Constitution. It's disappointing and they should be. It's the right thing to do."

As he is talking, a boy from the Aboriginal community of Santa Teresa in the Northern Territory walks past and slips his hand into Hird's to shake it. It is the kind of easy gesture that Australia took a long time to get to, but that is now unremarkable.

In Melbourne tomorrow, another Essendon legend, Michael Long, will take the first symbolic steps on the Journey to Recognition, linking the commemoration of his quixotic walk to Canberra nine years ago with this new cause of constitutional reform.

It has been a week that also saw the 20th anniversary of the day St Kilda footballer Nicky Winmar raised his guernsey to a baying, racist Collingwood crowd, pointed to the colour of his skin and declared his pride in being black.

Writing in The Weekend Australian today, Long says that in his playing days his coach, Kevin Sheedy, would say they had to keep chipping away until they got it right. He says the lack of recognition for the first Australians in the Constitution is "part of that journey in Australian history that we haven't got right yet".

"It goes to the heart of this nation," Long said yesterday. "We have one of the oldest cultures in the world and we should celebrate that and be proud of that. It should be something that binds the nation, but it is not recognised in our most important document, the Australian Constitution."

The Journey to Recognition will begin in Melbourne and wind through every state and territory until it finishes at the Garma Festival in northeast Arnhem Land.

It will take the cause of recognition to the people. There will be conversations in schools and halls and by the side of the road.

Two previous referendums are in the minds of organisers: the 1967 referendum that overwhelmingly voted to allow Aborigines to be counted in the census, and thus recognised as citizens, and the failure of the 1999 referendum for Australia to become a republic.

Meeting Hird at the Essendon home they call Windy Hill yesterday, former Democrats senator Aden Ridgeway said recognition was not only about supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but about "completing the picture" of a nation that has always believed in the idea of a fair go for all.

He said it was his hope that recognition would not only add the "missing first chapter" to the Constitution, but that it would open the way for all Australians to embrace the long story of Australia, reaching back tens of thousands of years, as their own.

"It really is about the national story, the national identity, bringing Australians together and putting that first chapter into our nation's founding document," he said. "It is a moment in history and they are rare and you have to grab it with both hands."

A parliamentary select committee is grappling to find a form of words that Australians will agree to. Mr Ridgeway expected there would be naysayers who would oppose change and say that recognition in the Constitution would do nothing to improve the lives of Aboriginal people.

He recalled that the same argument was made about flying Aboriginal flags at schools and hospitals and town halls. It didn't change the world, he said, but it did encourage people to go inside.