A Rightful But Not Separate Place - ABC listen

A RIGHTFUL BUT NOT SEPARATE PLACE It is 54 years since W.E.H. It represents the desire for reconciliation and what the country’s twenty first prime minister Gough Whitlam called our people’s “rightful place in this nation”. The Expert Panel put forward five amendment proposals – the repeal of section 25, the repeal of section 51 and its replacement with a new power with a preambular recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a new clause recognising Indigenous languages and a new non-discrimination clause – the most substantive of which was the constitutional guarantee against discrimination. It is my sincere hope that opposition leader Peter Dutton will join our 31st Prime minister Anthony Albanese in proposing to the Australian people at a referendum next year an amendment that will secure the rightful but not separate place of indigenous Australians in the constitution of the commonwealth. The following words were proposed by the prime minister at Garma in Arnhem land in August this year and I include the words the prime minister used in his preface to the three operative sentences: In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the First Peoples of Australia: There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.