Submission: The imperative of constitutional enshrinement
18.03.2021
This is a submission that was made to the consultation process on the Interim Report to the Australian Government on Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process (October 2020) by a group of 40 public law experts from across the country. That consultation process closes on 31 March 2021. The submission expresses a strong and unanimous view that for the Voice to have legitimacy, …
Membership Models for an Indigenous Voice: What does representation mean for First Nations?
Dani Larkin
11.03.2021
The Elders, Traditional Owners and community voices at the Regional Dialogues and the First Nations Constitutional Convention that adopted the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017 were clear on two things. First, that the First Nations Voice would be constitutionally created and protected (constitutional enshrinement), that would guarantee is existence and establish its power …
Consultation and a First Nations Voice: Building on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission
Harry Hobbs
05.03.2021
In January Ken Wyatt, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, released the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Interim Report. Developed by a Senior Advisory Group led by Professors Marcia Langton and Tom Calma, the 239-page report adds considerable detail to the Uluru Statement from the Heart’s proposed First Nations Voice. The report offers a series of practical and feasible options for how …
Constitutional conversation, institutional listening and the First Nations Voice
Gabrielle Appleby & Eddie Synot
04.03.2021
The Australian government is currently undertaking a process of what it calls “co-designing” an Indigenous Voice that is intended to speak to the Australian government and Parliament when policies and laws are being developed that have a significant impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is much focus in the Interim Report on the detail of the Voice …
On Voice, and finding a place to start
Sana Nakata
03.03.2021
Where to start
It is hard to know where to start sometimes. Australia-as-we-know-it is often said to start at 1788. But we know better. Still, the forces of our contemporary political moment, our disciplinary training, our institutional arrangements so often have us starting at a point in which Australia has already come to exist. I find this hard …
The relationship between Parliament and the Voice and the importance of enshrinement
Geoffrey Lindell
02.03.2021
In 2017 the Uluru Statement from the Heart called “for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”. It stated that in 1967 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders “were counted.” In 2017 they sought “to be heard.”
As was observed by Sir Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister, in Central Power in the Australian Commonwealth (1967, at 152, 28) …
Constitutional Recognition: Two Decades On
Megan Davis
01.03.21
I am excited to write the first post for the Indigenous Law Centre’s Indigenous Constitutional Law Blog. I have been wanting to establish this initiative for many years: to set up a platform for foundational information and analysis on the Constitution and Indigenous peoples’ for Australia’s lawyers and broader civil society as we enter the second decade of constitutional reform and recognition …