NAIDOC Week 2021: It’s Time.

NAIDOC Week 2021: It’s Time.

Megan Davis

09.07.21

It is common practice in constitution making around the world that detail of a particular constitutional institution is deferred to the parliament at a later date. Indeed, this was the case with Australia’s High Court. The Court was established and its core functions set out in the Constitution in 1901, but it was set up two years later in legislation by the Parliament.  

The same idea applies to the First Nations Voice. As Sean Brennan’s post explains …

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NAIDOC Week 2021: What a referendum ballot could and should look like

NAIDOC Week 2021: What a referendum ballot could and should look like

Ron Levy

08.07.21

If and when the Australian people go to a referendum on whether to constitutionally enshrine a First Nations Voice, they will express their views on a ballot paper. For many Australians, they will never have seen a referendum ballot; for others, it will be over 20 years.

Can design of the referendum ballot lead to a more informed and deliberative engagement of voters with the question at hand? This matters because informed consent, not just consent, by citizens …

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NAIDOC Week 2021: 1967 to 2021: What will a successful referendum look like in 2021/2022?

NAIDOC Week 2021: 1967 to 2021: What will a successful referendum look like in 2021/2022?

Paul Kildea

07.07.21

Momentum is building towards a referendum for a constitutionalised First Nations Voice. Optimists look back to the 1967 referendum, when more than 90 per cent of Australians voted to include Aboriginal people in the powers of the Commonwealth. But Australia’s overall referendum record is daunting: just 8 of 44 referendums have passed since Federation. What steps can we take to help ensure a successful referendum on a First Nations Voice …

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NAIDOC Week 2021: The Wording is Not the Problem

NAIDOC Week 2021: The Wording is Not the Problem

Sean Br​ennan

06.07.21

One challenge on the path to a successful Voice referendum is to get the wording right for the constitutional amendment. The most important thing is clarity: a well-defined purpose, and clear and simple words that give effect to that purpose. The work here is largely done. The vision for practical reform that emerged from the Regional Dialogues and at Uluru supplies the purpose for this constitutional amendment. The delegates at Uluru called for a representative First Nations institution that would give them a voice – particularly to the nation’s chief law-making body, the …

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NAIDOC Week 2021: Why a legislated voice is not a “constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament”?

NAIDOC Week 2021: Why a legislated voice is not a “constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament”?

Elisa Arcioni

05.07.21

Creating an Indigenous Voice in ordinary legislation is creating a fundamentally different thing to establishing it, or “enshrining” or “protecting” it, in the Constitution. And if we consider what the intention of the Voice is, only constitutional enshrinement makes sense.

The First Nations Voice called for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart is intended to be an institutional vehicle through which First Nations peoples can speak to government and …

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Representation and Good Governance: Institutional Transformation via Voice to Parliament
First Nations Voice, Parliament, representation ICL IndigConLaw First Nations Voice, Parliament, representation ICL IndigConLaw

Representation and Good Governance: Institutional Transformation via Voice to Parliament

Kate Galloway and Dani Larkin

18.06.21

The Uluru Statement from the Heart recommends a First Nations Voice to Parliament, Treaty with First Nations, and Truth-telling as essential components for establishing proper legal relations between the Australian State and First Nations peoples. A First Nations Voice provides the first step to appropriate engagement, through institutional reform. Constitutional provision for a Voice to Parliament has …

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Designing a Voice to Parliament to strengthen First Nations sovereignty

Designing a Voice to Parliament to strengthen First Nations sovereignty

06.05.2021

Four years ago, the Uluru Statement from the Heart changed my mind on constitutional recognition. Like many, I saw the Recognise campaign and its push for a symbolic recognition of First Peoples in the Constitution as a distraction. A government and corporate-sponsored campaign that would do little to alter the systemic injustice and racism that harms First Peoples across Australia, while giving the appearance of a grand gesture of change …

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The First Nations Voice: An Informed and Aspirational Constitutional Innovation

The First Nations Voice: An Informed and Aspirational Constitutional Innovation

Gabrielle Appleby & John Williams

25.03.2021

All constitutional settlements are a product of their time, place and history, and of the values, knowledge and aspirations of their drafters. In navigating the reality and ambitions of the settlement, drafters will, of course, draw on what they know. A sensible attempt at a new constitutional settlement should be anchored in deep reflection of what has gone before. But …

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Submission: The imperative of constitutional enshrinement

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, …

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Membership Models for an Indigenous Voice: What does representation mean for First Nations?
First Nations Voice, representation ICL IndigConLaw First Nations Voice, representation ICL IndigConLaw

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 …

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Consultation and a First Nations Voice: Building on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission

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 …

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Constitutional conversation, institutional listening and the First Nations Voice

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 …

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On Voice, and finding a place to start

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 …

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The relationship between Parliament and the Voice and the importance of enshrinement

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) …

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Constitutional Recognition: Two Decades On

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 …

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