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Submissions: Your Feedback

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

The views expressed in these submissions belong to their authors. The National Indigenous Australians Agency reserved the right not to publish submissions, or parts of submissions, that include, for example, material that is offensive, racist, potentially defamatory, personal information, is a copy of previously provided materials, or does not relate to the consultation process.

An auto-generated transcript of submissions provided as attachments has been made available to assist with accessibility. These transcripts may contain transcription errors. Please refer to the source file for the original content.

Please note not all submissions are provided in an attachment. For submissions without an attachment, click on the name of the person or organisation to view the text.

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If you require any further assistance please contact Co-designVoice@niaa.gov.au.

 

Submission Number
32
Participant
Anonymous
Submission date

As a non-Indigenous Australian I spent my childhood through to my early adult years, naïvely going about my life with little consideration for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their incredible culture. Even when I became ‘somewhat’ aware, I lacked the empathy and experience to truly understand the difficulties, complexities and biases that our First Nations People face. It is only in recent years that I am beginning to understand and have deep empathy for the lack of respect, inclusion and integrity we have for our Indigenous peoples.

When I first heard of the “Uluru Statement from the Heart” I had just spent my 50th birthday “on country” with an amazing Indigenous woman who shared her story, our local country’s story and a little women’s business and lore with me. I realised that we owe our First Nation’s people more than the respect, inclusivity, integrity and apology that I hoped would heal our hearts and allow us to move forward in harmony. We owe them a voice. We owe them the ability to speak for themselves, through themselves and of themselves. We have this for ourselves, it is only fair that our Indigenous have the same rights.

As an Australian, I am writing this submission to ask our Government to please consider 3 key points:

• To hold a referendum (which was a commitment made at the last election) once a model for the Voice has been established.

• To enable legislation for the Voice to be passed once the referendum is held and in the next Parliament term.

• To include previously unheard Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the membership model for the National Voice.

I firmly believe that having a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution will give Australian people a better future. It will empower our Indigenous to walk beside us in confidence and will help to heal the hearts of our nation.

 

 

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.