https://haveyoursay.voice.niaa.gov.au/submissions
I’m a school teacher and university academic working hard to help my students understand post colonial history and the need for all of us to participate in reconciliation to heal this country and it’s precious First Nations people. These are things I never learned about here when I went to school.
I left apartheid South Africa as a small child, thinking I had moved to a free and just country, only to discover as an adult that there was a more insidious form of apartheid every bit as damaging that still underpinned society here in beautiful Australia.
First Nations voices are powerful. They contain the deep knowledge of the Millenia. They also contain the deep wisdom of those who know human suffering.
Uluru Statement of the Heart provides a voice for the First Nations people of this country to restore what was stolen and lead us all in building a socially just, sustainable society on their terms.
It is important for every human to have a say in matters that affect them. This is a basic human right that needs to be actively restored to those who have had it obscured by historical and systemic iniquity.
A voice to parliament for society’s most marginalised and oppressed will improve the lives of all, simply because it affords us all a more just and equitable society.
Our constitution contains embarrassing elements that do not reflect the moral and ethical fabric of contemporary Australia. The changes needed must be enshrined at every level of society, including of course the documents that set out our direction and values as a nation ie our constitution.
We are a nation with heart. The statement comes from the heart and it is time for our leadership to respond from the heart.
Treaty was promised by Bob Hawke in 1988. Don’t make Australia wait any longer for social justice. It is time.
Elaine Meyer,
Perth.
