NAIDOC Week 2021: The Wording is Not the Problem
Sean Brennan
06.07.21
One challenge on the path to a successful Voice referendum is to get the wording right for the constitutional amendment. The most important thing is clarity: a well-defined purpose, and clear and simple words that give effect to that purpose. The work here is largely done. The vision for practical reform that emerged from the Regional Dialogues and at Uluru supplies the purpose for this constitutional amendment. The delegates at Uluru called for a representative First Nations institution that would give them a voice – particularly to the nation’s chief law-making body, the …
NAIDOC Week 2021: Why a legislated voice is not a “constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament”?
Elisa Arcioni
05.07.21
Creating an Indigenous Voice in ordinary legislation is creating a fundamentally different thing to establishing it, or “enshrining” or “protecting” it, in the Constitution. And if we consider what the intention of the Voice is, only constitutional enshrinement makes sense.
The First Nations Voice called for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart is intended to be an institutional vehicle through which First Nations peoples can speak to government and …
The Indigenous Law Centre releases expert analysis of the NIAA public consultations
Gabrielle Appleby, Emma Buxton-Namisnyk & Dani Larkin
29.06.21
Today, the Indigenous Law Centre released an Expert Analysis of the NIAA Public Consultations. This provides an expert analysis of the thousands of public submissions, and records of community consultations, that were undertaken as part of the government’s 2020-2021 Co-Design Process for a national and regional/local Indigenous Voice. The genesis of this report is in concerns that the exclusion of the question of constitutional enshrinement from …
Representation and Good Governance: Institutional Transformation via Voice to Parliament
Kate Galloway and Dani Larkin
18.06.21
The Uluru Statement from the Heart recommends a First Nations Voice to Parliament, Treaty with First Nations, and Truth-telling as essential components for establishing proper legal relations between the Australian State and First Nations peoples. A First Nations Voice provides the first step to appropriate engagement, through institutional reform. Constitutional provision for a Voice to Parliament has …
How Culture Shapes Australia’s Referendum Record
Paul Kildea
11.06.21
Richard Albert’s Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking and Changing Constitutions offers a comparative, conceptually rigorous treatment of a complex and significant field in the study of law and politics. In this post I focus on Richard’s ideas about amendment difficulty and how they might help us to make sense of Australia’s recent referendum record and ongoing debates around the constitutional enshrinement of a First Nations …
The First Nations Voice: A modest and congruent, yet radically transformative constitutional proposal
Gabrielle Appleby
11.06.21
Richard Albert reveals in the final page of the introduction to his book, Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking and Changing Constitutions, what he wants others to take away from it. First, he wants scholars to reflect on their system of constitutional amendment, to inspire interest in the subject matter and his arguments. Second, he wants the book to be a resource for those embarking on constitutional change: to become ‘a focal resource for leaders involved in making or remaking their constitution …
What do we know about public attitudes to a First Nations Voice?
Francis Markham and William Sanders
15.05.2021
The cases for and against enshrining a First Nations Voice in the Australian Constitution are often said to hinge on its chances of success at a referendum. For example, in late 2020, when asked why the Coalition had rejected calls to enshrine a First Nations Voice in the Constitution, the Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt argued …
The Latest Australian Constitutional Values Survey
Jacob Deem
13.05.2021
Establishing a First Nations Voice to Parliament has been an emerging focus of the push for constitutional recognition of First Nations since 2015. It emerged as a priority for reform from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves, as articulated in the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017. The proposed Voice has become the centre of efforts to give First Nations a permanent say in …
Designing a Voice to Parliament to strengthen First Nations sovereignty
06.05.2021
Four years ago, the Uluru Statement from the Heart changed my mind on constitutional recognition. Like many, I saw the Recognise campaign and its push for a symbolic recognition of First Peoples in the Constitution as a distraction. A government and corporate-sponsored campaign that would do little to alter the systemic injustice and racism that harms First Peoples across Australia, while giving the appearance of a grand gesture of change …
“It’s you young ones’ fight now”
Bridget Cama
23.04.2021
I have witnessed many people, from diverse walks of life, black and white, stand in front of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and gaze at it in silence after reading it for the first time.
1…2…3… the seconds tick on.
At most they will whisper, “wow” …
The First Nations Voice: An Informed and Aspirational Constitutional Innovation
Gabrielle Appleby & John Williams
25.03.2021
All constitutional settlements are a product of their time, place and history, and of the values, knowledge and aspirations of their drafters. In navigating the reality and ambitions of the settlement, drafters will, of course, draw on what they know. A sensible attempt at a new constitutional settlement should be anchored in deep reflection of what has gone before. But …
Submission: The imperative of constitutional enshrinement
18.03.2021
This is a submission that was made to the consultation process on the Interim Report to the Australian Government on Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process (October 2020) by a group of 40 public law experts from across the country. That consultation process closes on 31 March 2021. The submission expresses a strong and unanimous view that for the Voice to have legitimacy, …
Membership Models for an Indigenous Voice: What does representation mean for First Nations?
Dani Larkin
11.03.2021
The Elders, Traditional Owners and community voices at the Regional Dialogues and the First Nations Constitutional Convention that adopted the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017 were clear on two things. First, that the First Nations Voice would be constitutionally created and protected (constitutional enshrinement), that would guarantee is existence and establish its power …
Consultation and a First Nations Voice: Building on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission
Harry Hobbs
05.03.2021
In January Ken Wyatt, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, released the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Interim Report. Developed by a Senior Advisory Group led by Professors Marcia Langton and Tom Calma, the 239-page report adds considerable detail to the Uluru Statement from the Heart’s proposed First Nations Voice. The report offers a series of practical and feasible options for how …
Constitutional conversation, institutional listening and the First Nations Voice
Gabrielle Appleby & Eddie Synot
04.03.2021
The Australian government is currently undertaking a process of what it calls “co-designing” an Indigenous Voice that is intended to speak to the Australian government and Parliament when policies and laws are being developed that have a significant impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is much focus in the Interim Report on the detail of the Voice …
On Voice, and finding a place to start
Sana Nakata
03.03.2021
Where to start
It is hard to know where to start sometimes. Australia-as-we-know-it is often said to start at 1788. But we know better. Still, the forces of our contemporary political moment, our disciplinary training, our institutional arrangements so often have us starting at a point in which Australia has already come to exist. I find this hard …
The relationship between Parliament and the Voice and the importance of enshrinement
Geoffrey Lindell
02.03.2021
In 2017 the Uluru Statement from the Heart called “for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”. It stated that in 1967 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders “were counted.” In 2017 they sought “to be heard.”
As was observed by Sir Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister, in Central Power in the Australian Commonwealth (1967, at 152, 28) …
Constitutional Recognition: Two Decades On
Megan Davis
01.03.21
I am excited to write the first post for the Indigenous Law Centre’s Indigenous Constitutional Law Blog. I have been wanting to establish this initiative for many years: to set up a platform for foundational information and analysis on the Constitution and Indigenous peoples’ for Australia’s lawyers and broader civil society as we enter the second decade of constitutional reform and recognition …