We’ve been tuning this Voice for 50 years. Don’t silence it now

“For me, Indigenous recognition won’t be changing our Constitution so much as completing it.” – Tony Abbott, 2015.

When on February 7, 1788, the British claimed the eastern half of Australia, they left us with two abiding problems. They assumed that the First Nations were not in actual possession of their own homelands and that they had neither laws nor customs which could be given formal recognition.

Unfinished business: the late Eddie Mabo, whose successful challenge to terra nullius did not remove all major impediments to Indigenous advancement.Credit: Jim McEwan

As a result, they departed from what had been customary practice in North America of respecting what was called Indian title to traditional property and determining that the Indigenous tribes held a form of internal sovereignty, and with whom many treaties were negotiated.

The anomalous situation in NSW was noted by Jeremy Bentham, the leading political philosopher of the time. In 1792, he wrote that there had been no negotiations and that no treaties had been drafted or signed. “The flaw,” Bentham wrote, “is an incurable one.”

It took Australia more than 200 years to begin to remedy this situation. In 1992, the High Court’s Mabo decision recognised native title and overturned one aspect of terra nullius. But the twin problem of the political and legal status of the First Nations remains where it was in 1788.

To seek the source of the twin pillars of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart – a Voice to parliament and a makarrata, or treaty – we need to go back to the referendum of 1967 and the assumption of federal powers over Indigenous policy. The Holt government, deciding it needed a permanent body to advise it in an area where it had little experience, established the Council for Aboriginal Affairs, which operated from 1967 to 1976.

The Voice to parliament, which now meets ignorance and misunderstanding, has been with us for more than 50 years, although the bodies varied in name, structure and longevity, from the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and, after 14 Indigenous organisations met prime minister Scott Morrison in 2018, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, which gave First Australians unprecedented influence to and “shared decision-making”. The call of the delegates at Uluru for a Voice to parliament was, then, modest, unsurprising and with long-established precedents. The only difference was the desire for entrenchment in the Constitution.

And while that would guarantee continuity, it would not necessarily amplify the Voice. It would simply add to the large corpus of professional lobbyists who throng the corridors of parliament. The Official Lobbyists Register last year recorded 884 lobbyists from 279 firms who lobbied on behalf of 3691 clients. Many were ex-politicians and staffers or members of old boys’ networks and would likely be far better funded than First Nations representatives.

The authors of the Uluru statement declared a makarrata was the “culmination of our agenda”, a proposal likely to be far more controversial than the Voice. But it, too, is an idea that has been seriously considered for more than 40 years. The Aboriginal Treaty Committee was founded in April 1979 and led by a group of prominent figures including Dr H C Coombs, Judith Wright and Charles Rowley. Launching it in an address on ABC radio, Coombs called for compensation for the loss of traditional land and disruption of traditional ways of life and the right of Indigenous people to “control their own affairs”.

The then Liberal minister for Aboriginal affairs, Fred Chaney, engaged in negotiations with the NAC and in 1981 the Senate Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs began an examination of the feasibility of securing a compact or makarrata. After two years of thorough investigations, its final report was published in a booklet entitled Two Hundred Years Later. Now 40 years old, it is highly relevant to the current contentious debate leading to the Voice referendum. Its key recommendation was that the government consider how it should be inserted in the Constitution.

The first advantage of proceeding with a referendum, it said, was the symbolic value of the process whereby the non-Aboriginal community would be given “the opportunity to recognise the failings of the past 200 years and to acknowledge their commitment to a new beginning in relations between themselves and the descendants on the nation’s original inhabitants”.

In 1987, Labor prime minister Bob Hawke indicated he wished to take action on a treaty during the bicentenary year, 1988. His chance came when he attended the Barunga Festival in Arnhem Land where he was presented with two paintings and text which called for a treaty “recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty and affirming our human rights and freedom”. It was a more radical declaration than the Uluru statement of almost 30 years later.

In response, Hawke declared he would have a treaty created by 1990. It never eventuated. In its place, the government established the Reconciliation Council which was charged with establishing a decade-long process of community engagement and education to conclude with the drafting of a treaty. But by 2001, the Howard government was entrenched and the whole purpose of reconciliation had been subverted. Legal and political rights under active consideration for more than 20 years were replaced by what Howard called “practical reconciliation”.

Which brings us to the provenance of the Uluru statement. The process was initiated in July 2015 by Tony Abbott, then prime minister and Aboriginal affairs minister. He invited 40 First Nations leaders to Kirribilli House to discuss ways that their communities could be recognised in the Constitution, telling them: “This is a very important national crusade. It’s very important to me, it’s very important to the Indigenous people of our country and it should be very important to all of us who want to see our country whole. And for me, Indigenous recognition won’t be changing our Constitution so much as completing it.”

In December 2015, new prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and then Labor leader Bill Shorten jointly appointed a Referendum Council. The 250 delegates accepted a bipartisan commission to travel to “all points of the southern sky” and sound out the political aspirations of the First Nations, which would culminate in a final meeting at Uluru in May 2017. They synthesised all that information in a few short paragraphs. Their ambitions were modest and embodied nothing that hadn’t been talked about for the preceding 40 years. The final paragraph of the Uluru Statement from the Heart was as eloquent as the rest of the document: “In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”

The Uluru delegates had thought they could depend on the integrity of our political leaders and the goodwill of the Australian people. If, as seems likely, the referendum is defeated, it will be a shattering blow to a whole generation of leaders. They have been treated with profound disrespect. Like children, they have been told they don’t know what is good for them. As Noel Pearson said, they offered their hand to the Australian people, and if it is refused, it will be a collective insult both devastating and unforgettable.

Henry Reynolds is an Australian historian whose primary work has focused on the frontier conflict between European settlers and Indigenous Australians. This is an edited version of an article first published by Pearls and Irritations.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.