100% this is a terrible idea.
Common Law and the constitution enshrine rights for all citizens based on personal responsibilities. If you are a responsible citizen, then you have rights that cannot be taken away. The right to own property is one. I remember talking to Cedric Jacobs a great Indigenous footballer from WA and later on a Church Pastor. He wrote a book called Healing a divided Nation. His view was everyone is equal. If you want to own property go to work and earn it.
We should be strengthening the rights of ALL citizens regardless of Race, Colour or Creed to come to Australia and enjoy the greatest country on Earth....the British played an incalculable role in creating Modern Australia, the railways, the Hospitals, The Roads, the infrastructure, we truly are the greatest Nation on the planet. I agree not everything that happened 200 years ago may have been just and fair....however you dont take away from our freedoms today by creating divisions in our modern society. Enshrining Racism in the Australian constitution is not well thought out and is not the way to help the indigenous people or communities.
Healing a Divided Nation should be the goal...not creating Division. Please think about this. rather than joining a cheer squad feeling justified that you are helping by voting Yes. Why do we need to change something that is not broken?
Common Law should recognise that Blackfellas owned the entire bloody continent for 65,000 years. When did they sell it? Alternatively, where's the Treaty they signed transferring possession to the Crown? Talk about 'payments' to blackfellas - what do you reckon the country would be worth if you divvied it up into quarter-acre plots and paid market rates to the original owners? $485 trillion?
I spent a couple of hours yesterday at Main Beach, Byron Bay - maybe behind only Bondi in terms of iconic Australian beaches. If you could bottle that sensory experience, the combination of perfect weather, glorious, blue-green water, friendly waves, soft white sand, kids, families, babes, you could trigger a spiritual orgasm up the Kundalini of anyone you fancied - but fair dinkum the place would quickly be overrun and ruined. As I floated there meditating on how *smile* lucky I am to be able to access this whenever I want, the thoughts bobbed up and down in my brain like Commetti's Cork.
I found myself thinking of the quote from First Dog On The Moon, the Melbourne cartoonist who moved to rural Tasmania and likes to say, "It's terrible here, don't come," and thinking that's how we kind of feel as Australians. Come, sure. But also maybe don't. Cos it's ours and we love it and the longer it's too far from everything else for you to make the effort the better. Yeah, come, spend your pounds and your euros, then if we want ya we know where to find ya. Bon voyage, thank you, come again in another eight years.
Then another quote kept ringing in my mind's ear:
“We did not land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us.” Malcolm X said it, speaking of the African-American experience. It was beating me about the cerebrum on this particular day because every Australian either came to Australia from somewhere else themselves, or their ancestors did. Except blackfellas. They never came to Australia, Australia came to them. Was
imposed on them. Without a say in the matter. There was no Australia until 250-odd years ago. And every year we rub our home invasion in their faces. African gangs? Jesus H., they got nuthin' on Colonialism.
So, while I understand
@The_General 's point about all being equal and not treating anyone differently, the fact is we have
always treated blackfellas differently. And they've always
been different. They are the only group of people in this country who had it stolen from them. (It's inarguable that we stole it from them. No you and me as individuals, it happened before our grandparents were born, but "we" did.) (aside: the White Australia policy was racist, but Chinese people have been here since the 1840s and they were always counted in the census.)
Constitutional Recognition and the Voice to Parliament will not be some power-sharing structure, although no doubt that's what the Murdoch media will try to whip up a frenzy about. It is acknowledgement that yes, Australia is this great country that "We" have built over the past two-and-a-half centuries. But it's a house we built on someone else's property. We just said it was ours now and if they kicked up a stink about it we killed them or herded them into camps, or took away the children we'd raped into them.
It's a healing measure, a handshake, a hug, and it can have so many positives, for all of us. It's beyond time we listened to the wisdom of the thousands of generations who had the joint looking like curated gardens before Artie Phil and co. set up camp and released rabbits, carp and the rest. "We" have proved we don't know how to manage the joint. We've nearly kiiled off the koala, for *smile* 's sake - and we like them! We've dried the rivers, eroded the soil, poisoned the earth. We have *smile* it up immensely. We need help.
We're approaching the anniversary of the Lismore floods, an event that devastated so many up here (rain-induced PTSD is real) - blackfellas told us 200 years ago that the damn joint was an occasional lake! They knew that if you didn't use fire to shape the landscape it'd burn everything at some point. We have dozens of millennia of land and water management practices honed specifically for this continent to draw on.
Australia has always had this cultural cringe of feeling we have little history or culture, yet we had this incredibly old, rich, culture, history and knowledge just waiting for us to take an interest. Aboriginal History is Australian History. There's just Before, and After. Now it's time for Whole.
This is a great country. We invented the stump-jump plough, the bionic ear, the black box and the goon bag. We gave the world Nellie Melba, Barrie Humphries and Shane Warne. But just because it's the best bloody country in the world it doesn't mean there's not room for improvement. And sure, it's quintessentially Australian to say, "Mate, just get over it, move on, stop ya whinging", that macho attitude has caused us untold grief, from drinking ourselves to oblivion, beating each other up, necking ourselves, etc. etc.
Too often we get in our own way, shoot ourselves in the *smile* and trip over our own entitlement. Get this right and there will no bloody stopping us. Carn.
