Immigrants: Our Moral Duty to Support the Voice
Despite our varied backgrounds and paths to Australia, most immigrants share this journey of struggle and adaptation, and have come to thrive in our vibrant multicultural communities. I am incredibly grateful to this country, for providing me with so many opportunities to be well educated, and to lead a free and healthy life. Australians, for the most part, celebrate this immigrant story, and are proud of the diversity and multiculturalism we have created, often pointing to the leadership and achievements of diverse immigrants.
But the opportunity and relative prosperity me and my family have enjoyed in Australia makes me feel for the unequal opportunities still suffered by Indigenous Australians. In the so-called land of opportunity, in their own land, Indigenous Australians have often been deprived of these opportunities we have enjoyed. How can we allow this? We learn of the history of injustices against Indigenous Australians in school, and dutifully recite our acknowledgements of country, but how many of us really know Indigenous cultures and perspectives, beyond these symbolic gestures?
Our practical and political failures in Indigenous affairs still haunt us. Year after year we fail to close the gap, and nothing much seems to change. Every election, we vote in politicians who are tasked with making laws and policies for Indigenous people and affairs, yet every February we bemoan our comprehensive failure to improve outcomes. Under the Constitution, lawmakers are gifted the power to shape pivotal matters regarding Indigenous communities, sometimes defining entire livelihoods. But the Constitution does not require politicians to make these heavy decisions in consultation with the Indigenous communities they target.
Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Indigenous voices go unheard. Time and time again, we see the detrimental impact on Indigenous communities, in the Stolen Generation, in the Northern Territory Intervention, and narrowly avoided Dan Murphy’s debacle, to name a select few. Indigenous Australians deserve a constitutionally guaranteed Voice, as called for by the Uluru Statement, to enable them to determine their own futures.
The Australian public will soon vote for a constitutionally embedded Indigenous advisory body, empowering Indigenous people to have a say in legislative and policy decisions which affect them.
In May, Australia’s peak religious organisations came together to issue a Joint Resolution calling for bipartisan action to hold a referendum on a First Nations voice. It makes me especially pleased to see the multicultural unity that is forming behind this modest proposal. The joint resolution was signed by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikh, Hindu and Buddhists – an unprecedented coalition of community support.
Multicultural communities also have a role to play in building support for the referendum. all, Indigenous Australians have played a monumental role in welcoming immigrant communities to this country and helping us to establish a place for ourselves. Despite all they have suffered, Indigenous Australians have welcomed us to their country. We owe it to them to show our solidarity and support for a First Nations constitutional voice.
Migrants and their descendants need to know: our voices count. We not only have the opportunity, but the duty, to do justice by the traditional owners of the land which has given us so much. We must support Indigenous Australians to take charge of their own futures.
A First Nations voice referendum provides the opportunity to create real, structural change, to truly recognise and give power back to Indigenous Australians in the founding document of Australia, the Constitution. We all want to close the gap. We all have an interest in ensuring that Indigenous people have the right to be heard. And now, we have to step up and make this a reality.
Caroline Xu is 5th year LLB student at Sydney University and an intern with the Radical Centre Reform Lab.