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‘Get it right’: Pearson pleads with Queenslanders to support the Voice
Indigenous leader Noel Pearson has called on his fellow Queenslanders to support the Yes case being put before them, noting the precedent of Eddie Mabo creating history from the state.
In a speech to the Queensland Media Club after the federal government last month passed legislation authorising a referendum, Pearson argued 80 per cent of Indigenous Australians supported the Voice and white Australians should support them.
Pearson, a lawyer who founded the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, told a lunch in Brisbane “whitefellas have got to take responsibility for this”.
“It is your Constitution, this is your nation, and it is your children’s future that depends on this: to get it right,” Pearson said.
Referendum question:
Australian voters will be asked - ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ - whether they support a proposed law:
- “To alter the constitution to recognise First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.”
If the referendum is carried by a majority of people in a majority of states, these words will be added to the Constitution:
“In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
- there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
- the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
- the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.”
Source: The Australian Government Referendum Question 2023.
Pearson said he was unworried by polling which showed Queenslanders were beginning to lose support for the referendum.
Joined at the event by Cape York Indigenous council mayors Keri Tamwoy and Wayne Butcher, Pearson suggested the referendum was the “ultimate State of Origin”.
“I come to you – and Keri and Wayne do as well – as Queenslanders,” he said, noting that land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo had previously led a successful campaign from the state.
“Eddie Mabo was a Queenslander. We would like our own state to back us. We would like our own state to own us. This is the ultimate State of Origin, this referendum.
“We need to show the way here in Queensland.”
Tamwoy, 45, was applauded after talking about the local health failures that occurred within a multibillion-dollar health system she argued was “failing us miserably”.
“When I go home, I have to prepare for two funerals,” Tamwoy said.
“I sit here with a heavy heart because how many of our people must continue to die well before they age, before Australia does the right thing by us.
“We are all Australians.”
Butcher, from Lockhart River, agreed with Tamwoy that most people on Cape York supported the Voice.
He said it was also a question of whether Australia should continue to accept failure.
“There are only two ways of looking at it: we stay the way we do business now and invest in failure; or, we change the way we do business right now, whether it is with the federal government or with the state government,” Butcher said.
“There is a moral question on the table here.”
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Tony Moore is a senior reporter at Brisbane Times and covers urban affairs and the changing city.Connect via X, Facebook or email.