Aboriginal people feel Labor isn't listening to them after voice defeat, Uluru statement co-author says
One of the architects of the Indigenous voice to parliament says Aboriginal Australians increasingly feel the government isn't listening to their views on laws and policy design, warning against closed-shop public consultations in the wake of the referendum defeat.
Megan Davis, a constitutional scholar and signatory to the Uluru statement from the heart, said the re-elected Albanese government was facing growing displays of discontent and needed a new approach to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Davis said Indigenous policy frameworks were failing and engagement with government was subject to growing 'exclusivity'.
'They consult only those who have contracts with them, or are enlisted in the Closing the Gap 'partnership', so to speak,' she told Guardian Australia.
'Good public policy cannot be served by limiting your consultation to a hermetically sealed segment of a community.
'As a consequence, many Aboriginal people are now saying that the no vote has been interpreted as bureaucrats and government no longer needing to listen to community voices on laws and policies.'
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The comments come at the start of National Reconciliation Week, and on the eighth anniversary of the release of Uluru statement, the 2017 request from Indigenous leaders built around the concepts of voice, treaty and truth.
Running until 3 June, Reconciliation Week follows heated debate about Indigenous welcome to country ceremonies during the election campaign.
After Labor's 2022 victory, Anthony Albanese committed to implementing the Uluru statement in full but promised a different approach after the October 2023 referendum was soundly defeated by voters.
Last year the prime minister said Labor would deliver the first comprehensive economic policy for Indigenous Australians, part of efforts to close the disadvantage gap. He used a speech at the Garma festival to pledge improved avenues for private-sector investment and to lift home ownership in Indigenous communities, as well as helping companies and job creators to directly reach Indigenous people.
Speaking from Harvard University, where she is a visiting professor, Davis said Albanese's vision of 'progressive patriotism' and Australian design models was at odds with the agenda of Indigenous reconciliation, which was first conceived overseas.
She said Australia's brand of reconciliation was too limited to private actors and private action. 'That of course has its place and like many mob I have served my time on reconciliation action plans, but it doesn't ask anything of the state that is structural,' she said.
'It's the structural [change] – the public structures of the state – that incontrovertibly lead to change.'
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The federal government declined to respond to the comments on Sunday.
Despite the voice defeat, Davis said Uluru advocates wanted to meet non-Indigenous Australians, 'and yarn about the things we have in common and the things that we don't and the things we can agree on and the things we disagree on'.
'After all, the word parliament comes from 'parle', the French word for speak,' she said.
'That's what the voice is about and that's what we are doing now is speaking, speaking to yes and no about the referendum and yarning about our shared future.'
Albanese's post-election reshuffle included the Northern Territory senator Malarndirri McCarthy as minister for Indigenous Australians and Marion Scrymgour, the MP for Lingiari, as the government's special envoy for remote communities.
This month Scrymgour said she would speak to Albanese about progressing the remaining elements of the Uluru statement, to help the country heal and move forward.
The Cape York leader Noel Pearson told the Australian newspaper after the election that Albanese had run away from Indigenous policy, likening his moves to a Houdini-like disappearance.
Davis said Indigenous people deserved to be consulted on the decisions which affected their lives, 'because we know our communities better than you and the laws and policies will be of a better quality'.
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