Requesting a voice to parliament has a long and sorrowful history for the First People of Australia. At the first federal parliament in Canberra, opened on 9 May 1927 by the Duke of York (later King George VI), two Wiradjuri elders, known as Jimmy Clements and John Noble, walked 93 miles from the shameful Brungle Aboriginal Station to voice their sovereign rights. No-one listened.
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There was an even longer and sorrier history for the First People requesting their voice be heard by colonial and imperial government. In Tasmania, in November 1830, Mannalargenna, the legendary leader of the Northeast Nation, agreed to end hard-fought resistance to the colonists when promised he could present his bitter grievances about the alienation of his country and stealing of his daughters to the governor.
With this formal assurance, he agreed that the people still living on their own country could be temporarily removed to an offshore island in the Bass Strait. The promise that the governor would listen to Mannalargenna and act to redress the injustice, was a ruse. The people of the northeast clans were transported Flinders Island where they were joined by the rest of the First People for permanent offshore detention.
Successive governors progressively slashed the expenditure needed to support the exiled original owners on Flinders Island, even though funding came from money recouped from the sale of their stolen country, known as the Land Fund. How those funds were disbursed and for whose benefit was a matter for the government alone to decide.
Petitions from the ever-diminishing exiles on Flinders Island about their rights and wants never got a hearing, not from the parliament in Hobart, nor the Colonial Office in London, nor from Queen Victoria.
It is not my purpose here to give a history lesson. I cite these stories, among so many, as historical context for 'the torment of our powerlessness' expressed in the Uluru Statement From the Heart, and to pose the question: how far has the Australian public advanced in generosity toward our First People? Given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are the only citizens for whom explicit laws are made and policies created under the 'Race Power' Section 51 of Constitution, should we deny them a voice in policies that directly affect them?
Some significant people tell us that an advisory voice would be completely inconsequential. They say a Treaty with the Commonwealth is what is needed. While I agree that the First People deserve something much more substantial and empowering than an advisory committee, that can be no reason to vote No to the Voice when First People have overwhelmingly requested it.
No is always a regressive response, as I learnt at the last referendum for an Australian Republic. My naive political calculation was that the sizeable Progressive No vote, for which I had campaigned, would be taken into consideration as an expression of true republican ideals when formulating a better model for the next referendum. The progressive votes were subsumed into the vote of monarchists and imperialists to convince successive governments that Republic was out of reach in reign of the Queen. Now it looks to be off the table for the reign of her heir, so I won't get another the chance to vote for a Republic.
To echo Josie Douglas, a director of the Central Land Council, 'there is no such thing as a Progressive No'.
True, we do not need a referendum for Treaty. Some states are already negotiating Treaty with First Nations, a process that depends upon government being willing to make it happen.
In whose dreams would a federal government have the political will to advance Treaty if they were humiliated by a failed referendum and endured a damaging juggernaut of lies about land seizures and reparations resulting from a mere advisory body. Equally, the insistence that there could be six designated First Nations Senators created by a stroke of the government pen, using the Electoral Act, is a dream from an alternate universe to the one Australian politicians inhabit.
Whatever the motivation, voting No is a slap in the face of the aspirations of the First People who extended a hand of love and friendship. Surely, we can find it in our hearts to accept their modest invitation to walk together into a better future? The least we can do is write Yes.
Cassandra Pybus is a Tasmanian historian and author.
