Stepping towards recognition

Posted in News

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten made history on Monday 6 July when they co-hosted a summit at Kirribilli House to mark the beginning of NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week 2015. Attended by 40 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, the event was centred on the subject of recognising First Peoples in the Australian Constitution.

“I can't recall any meeting where the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have held a meeting together with the Aboriginal leadership across the country,” said Aden Ridgeway, a former Senator. “That in itself I think says a lot about the seriousness in which the issue’s being taken.”

The 7:30 Report highlighted Tony Abbott’s address: “What we now need to do is to end that echoing silence in our Constitution, the echoing silence, the omission of Indigenous people from our Constitution.”

Bill Shorten added: “Until we include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on our nation's birth certificate, it's just not complete.”

Constitutional changes are the key focus of Recognise, a national campaign supported by the Uniting Church in Australia through contributions to the steering committee and local events.

There are two key components that Recognise hopes to address – the historical exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from Australia’s Constitution and the racially discriminatory language within the Constitution.

The Monday summit was the first in a series of steps that will be taken by political and Indigenous leaders towards an agreed referendum proposal. The next steps, decided upon at the summit, will include the establishment of a referendum council, a series of approximately 40 community conferences and forums, and a discussion paper to be released by the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition.

The Prime Minister also used the opportunity to announce that the question for the referendum will be finalised and put forward by mid-2016; Indigenous leaders had hoped a question would be finalised by the end of 2015.

It is likely that the referendum will take place in 2017. This would coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, which resulted in consitutional ammendments to include Aboriginal people in the census and gave the Federal Government the power to create laws for Aboriginal people.

Whilst these steps forward are encouraging for supporters of the Recognise campaign, the scope of the referendum and consequent changes to the Constitution remain unclear.

There is widespread public support for the formal recognition of Australia’s First Peoples in the Constitution, and there have been few objections to the idea of inserting a clause identifying Indigenous peoples as the original inhabitants of Australia. Changes to racially discriminatory clauses, however, have proven more divisive.

It is important to note that there are people within some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, including people within the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC), who are looking for more substantive action than changes to the Constitution. For many, this means the introduction of a treaty between independent sovereign nations of Indigenous peoples, the British Crown and the Australian Government.

Those who gathered for the summit on Monday are well aware of the work that will be required to weave a shared story between different Indigenous communities and individuals, as well as between First and Second Peoples.

“None of us claim to speak for all of our people and we want you to understand that and we also want our people to understand that,” Kirstie Parker, co-convenor of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples told the Guardian Australia on Monday.

“We have come together as people who are prepared to have a conversation about righting a historic wrong in Australia’s history.”

This is a conversation that the Uniting Church in Australia and the UAICC have been having for many years now.

In 2000, at the ninth Triennial Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, it was minuted that the church would call on the Federal Government to “provide constitutional acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples as the ‘First Peoples’ and for the removal of racist provisions in the Constitution.”

At the gathering in 2012, the 13th Assembly resolved to encourage Uniting Church councils, groups and members to engage with education campaigns and support the views of the UAICC.

The Uniting Church will continue discussions on this issue at the coming 14th Triennial Assembly meeting in Perth. The UAICC will submit a proposal to the Assembly, noting that Congress encompasses a diverse set of views on the topic of constitutional recognition, and asking the Uniting Church to support recognition as step towards issues of treaty and sovereignty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

For more information about Uniting Church in Australia responses to the subject of constitutional recognition for First Peoples, please visit UnitingJustice.

Updates about Assembly proposals, including the UAICC proposal relating to constitutional recognition, will be provided in the August edition of New Times.


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