Pearson pleads for reconciliation as Mundine claims Uluru statement a ‘declaration of war’

Noel Pearson will invoke former prime minister John Howard and urge Australians to seize our “last best hope” for reconciling the nation in the upcoming referendum, just a day after the No camp’s Nyunggai Warren Mundine declared the Uluru Statement from the Heart was a declaration of war against modern Australia.

Uluru Dialogue co-chair Megan Davis lashed Mundine’s characterisation of the 2017 statement, which proposed a Voice, and labelled Mundine “Trumpian”, insisting that the landmark document was “an expression of peace and love to the Australian people”.

Noel Pearson says the “referendum will seize our first best chance and last best hope for a lasting settlement”.Credit: Rhett Wyman

In a National Press Club Speech on Wednesday, Voice architect Pearson will strike an optimistic tone by saying the referendum wording completed what Howard – the most influential Coalition prime minister in recent history – called “the profound, unfolding and compelling story of Australia”.

“This referendum is testing the idea that a nation conceived in the fiction of Terra Nullius – a continent empty of owners – can come to a new understanding of who we are,” Pearson will say, according to draft speech notes.

”A nation blessed with an Indigenous heritage spanning 60 millennia, a British democracy captured in its Constitution, and a multicultural unity that is a beacon to the world.

“If affirmed, this referendum will seize our first best chance and last best hope for a lasting settlement.

“Australia will start a new chapter, and the nations of the earth will learn that with justice, what remains wrong can be put right, and when people face the truth, they can open their hearts and it is never too late for reconciliation.”

In his firebrand speech to the press club on Tuesday, Mundine – one of the most prominent members of the No campaign – claimed that the Yes campaign is built on a “litany of lies”, as he disputed that 80 per cent of Australia’s First Nations population back the Voice proposal.

He described the Voice as “a political ploy to grab power, not just from the Australian nation but also from traditional owners themselves”, and argued it is “another lie” that the body would change Indigenous lives for the better.

“If this was true, the gap would already be closed because Indigenous voices have been giving advice to governments for decades. The fact is that Indigenous bodies can give bad advice, like the Coalition of the Peaks who advocated against cashless welfare cards,” he said.

He argued that “as Aboriginal people, we have a choice: to continue to feel angry and aggrieved – to be trapped in the past – or to draw a line in history and move on from a clean slate”.

“The Uluru Statement comes from this place of continuing anger. It couldn’t be further from the idea of reconciliation ... it sees Indigenous Australians as trapped in victimhood and oppression, not free or able to make their own decisions.”

Despite the fact Australia is on track to meet just four of the 19 Closing the Gap targets, and Indigenous Australians die eight years younger, on average, than other Australians, Mundine argued that “most Indigenous Australians are doing fine”.

“They go to school, go to work, run businesses, take care of their families and they are not in prison. They don’t need a special Indigenous Voice,” he said.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine during his address to the National Press Club of Australia on Tuesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

He argued that the biggest lie of all from the Yes campaign was that he and colleagues in the No camp, including Coalition senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Kerrynne Liddle, don’t want things to improve for Indigenous people.

He argued there are four critical areas that need to be addressed: accountability for the billions already spent on Indigenous communities; ensuring that Indigenous children go to school; increasing economic participation; and social change to end violence and abuse in communities.

Mundine surprised many in the last week when he backed treaties with Indigenous Australians and a change to the date of Australia Day. He later dropped out of the race to fill a casual vacancy for the Liberal Party in the Senate.

He denied arguments that Australia’s international standing would be harmed by a No result, saying he sat on the board of international mining companies and that Americans and Europeans “couldn’t give a crap” about the referendum outcome.

“They don’t really care about Australia,” he said. “Look at some of the countries we do business with and how they treat their own citizens. We’re still doing business with them.”

He also declined to condemn a comedian at a conservative conference hosted by Mundine who joked about “violent black men”, and refused to censure Kerry White, a committee member of his Recognise a Better Way campaign, who recently said the stolen generations were a myth.

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