Australia’s political rivals yesterday met Aboriginal leaders in Sydney to work toward “correcting” the constitution by recognizing the nation’s first indigenous inhabitants.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has previously declared he would “sweat blood” to update the document which was written more than a century ago and fails to mention Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.
“Our task — our mission if you like — is to correct the great silence in our constitution,” Abbott told a gathering of political and indigenous leaders at his harborside Kirribilli House residence late on Sunday.
Photo: AFP
However, he said what was presented to the people had to be “something that can be owned ultimately by the vast majority of the people of our country.”
“Yes, it has to be worth doing ... but it has to be doable,” he said.
Australian opposition Labor Party leader Bill Shorten, who was part of the rare bipartisan meeting with 40 indigenous leaders, also backed the call for change.
Photo: Reuters
“Until we include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our nation’s birth certificate, it is just not complete,” he told reporters yesterday.
Support for the “Recognise movement” is high, with a Fairfax Ipsos national poll published yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald putting it at a record 85 percent. Eleven percent were opposed.
Australian lawmakers formally recognized indigenous people as the nation’s first inhabitants in 2013, but there has been debate about how the wording of the constitution should be changed.
“The Aboriginal community wouldn’t want just some symbolic change; we need to do something a bit more substantial,” Northern Land Council chief executive Joe Morrison told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Some want a clear ban on racism included in the constitution, but indigenous leader Noel Pearson has argued instead for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives to be given a say in laws which affect them.
“I think a lot of practical benefit will flow from the symbolic recognition — if we get the model right,” said Pearson, who is from Cape York in Australia’s far northeast.
Abbott has prioritized improving the lives of indigenous Australians, who have significantly lower life expectancies than others in the nation, with many living in remote and poor communities.
He said he would spend a week running the nation from an indigenous area, in the Torres Strait Islands and Northern Peninsula in the far north of the nation, next month, following a similar scheme last year. Aborigines are believed to have numbered about 1 million at the time of British settlement in 1788, but there are now just 470,000 out of a total population of 23 million.
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