The Uluru Statement from Heart, one year on: Can a First Nations Voice yet be heard?

EDITOR'S NOTE: One year ago, an unprecedented gathering of Indigenous elders and academics, delegates and activists, held out an invitation to non-indigenous Australians to join with them in a process of truth-telling and political attentiveness. * A voice, not a veto Shireen Morris, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Melbourne University Law School One year on from the historic achievement of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and seven months after the Prime Minister's unwarranted rejection of its call for a First Nations constitutional voice, I am hopeful meaningful constitutional recognition can still be achieved. Then came the "shock and heartbreak" of the Turnbull government's rejection of the Voice to Parliament, one of the key recommendations of the Uluru Statement and the Referendum Council's report. The following day the Prime Minister, Attorney-General and Indigenous Affairs Minister released a joint statement that the Uluru proposal was neither "desirable or capable of winning acceptance in a referendum." Teela Reid, a Wiradjuri and Wailwan woman and lawyer who was part of the constitutional dialogue process that produced the Uluru Statement, asked the Prime Minister why he rejected the recommendations from Referendum Council for a "representative First Nations voice to advise Parliament on the issues that affect our lives" and "not a third chamber."