2834

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Submissions: Your Feedback

Submissions from people and organisations who have agreed to have their feedback published are provided below.

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Submission Number
2834
Participant
Garry Alan Coff
Submission date

Our First Nations people have struggled for many years dealing with the impacts of substandard health services, problems within the education system that emphasise the differences rather than celebrate the culture, inequity around land rights and most importantly the lack of opportunity to having a Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
The Indigenous communities need control of their communities, they must be allowed to deal with their children and their issues in their own way. This is why the people in their communities want their voices to be heard.
“Australia doesn’t make sense without recognition. Australia is incomplete without recognition. How could there be an Australia without its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island indigenous peoples?”
As long as our indigenous peoples remain unrecognised, we are a nation missing its most vital heart. We can see a future where we walk hand-in-hand with our First Nation brothers and sisters; it imagines a future in which our children’s, children walk towards a time when an understanding of the culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity enriches our shared sense of nationhood.
Our call for a Voice is a basic right within the tradition of the Australian ideal of a fair-go. We know it is well overdue for our nation to extend a fair go to Aboriginal and Torres Strait people through a historic referendum the basic human right ‘to have a Voice’.
The government must:
1. Honour its election commitment to a referendum once a model for the Voice has been settled;
2. Enable legislation for the Voice to be passed after a referendum has been held in the next term of Parliament; and
3. The membership model for the National Voice must ensure previously unheard Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have the same chance of being selected as established leadership figures.
This is our moment, Australia, we must take action to ensure the Voice is enshrined in the Constitution.

 

 

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and custodians of country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to the people, the cultures and the Elders past, present and emerging.