Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants to enshrine the recognition of Indigenous peoples in the Australian constitution and set up an advisory body called "Voice". The opposition does not consider it necessary, while many Indigenous people would like a treaty to be negotiated with all their communities first.

Canberra (AsiaNews) – After months of discussions and debates, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that Australians will vote in a referendum at the end of the year to decide whether to formally recognise the country’s Indigenous peoples – Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders[*] – in the constitution.

Prime Minister Albanese yesterday unveiled the question that will be on the referendum ballot, saying that legislation will be introduced to parliament next week before a parliamentary vote in June. The referendum is expected between October and December.

If approved, the Australian constitution would recognise for the first time the existence of Indigenous peoples (who currently number 700,000), and would set up an advisory body called "Voice" to give Indigenous Australians the opportunity to express their opinion on government policies but without any veto power.

A group of 250 Aboriginal leaders proposed such a body in 2017, and drafted a document called the “Uluru Statement from the Heart” for that purpose. Considered historic in many respects, it did not find unanimous support among Indigenous people.

Rejected also by then Conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the Uluru Statement notes that Aboriginal people feel powerless when attempting to address the structural problems plaguing their communities who, compared to the descendants of British settlers, have a shorter life expectancy, poorer educational performance and health conditions, and proportionately higher incarceration rates.

According to a survey conducted last year, 60 per cent of non-indigenous Australians would like the government to do more for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, but the project to create “Voice” does not enjoy unanimous support, either among Australian politicians or Indigenous peoples.

Some fear the division of the country along racial lines; some groups have campaigned in recent months for the "no", arguing that the issue has been reduced to a for or against dichotomy, hiding the diversity of opinions within the Indigenous population themselves.

The opposition also argues that Aboriginal people are already well represented in parliament with 11 Members, but according to Voice supporters they come from specific constituencies and do not represent Aboriginal interests as a whole.

Some believe that the Uluru Statement itself does not represent all indigenous groups in Australia, while others would like to have more guarantees about how the new representative body would function. It is presently unclear how it will actually operate.

According to some, the new body would have 24 members from across continental Australia and the Torres Strait Islands, but recently, Mr Albanese irritated some of Voice’s supporters by saying that it would be "subservient" to parliament.

The prime minister also said that the details about the advisory body would be worked out after the referendum.

Some Aboriginals fear that their recognition in the constitution might entail surrendering their lands to the Australian government; they also do not approve of the process, preferring direct negotiations with the federal government with legally binding agreements signed by Canberra.

Australia is in fact the only nation in the Commonwealth that has never signed a treaty with its Indigenous peoples.

Lidia Thorpe, a former spokesperson for the Green Party, left the party (which has now said it is in favour of a "yes" vote) because she wanted a treaty to be negotiated first.

The Uluru Statement calls for the establishment of a Makarrata[†] Commission to oversee the forthcoming work and reveal the truth about the history of Aboriginal communities.

For international observers, a "yes" vote at the polls is by no means a foregone conclusion. To pass, the proposal must get 50 per cent of the national vote and a majority in at least four out of six Australian states.

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[*] The Torres Strait Islands are a  group of islands  located off the coast of the northern state of Queensland.

[†] Makarrata is a Yolngu word that means “the end of a dispute between communities and the resumption of normal relations”.

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• indigenous people
• aboriginals
• torres strait islands
• voice
• advisory body
• referendum