Patrick Dodson says ‘many Australians want to see the right thing done’ and he will keep issue alive

Hopes for an Indigenous voice to parliament and constitutional recognition will reignite again this afternoon, when the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition holds its first public hearings at Barunga in the Northern Territory.

The committee’s co-chair, Senator Patrick Dodson, told Guardian Australia he is committed to keeping the issue alive and working towards bipartisan consensus, despite the federal government’s public rejection of the Uluru statement.

“It’s at least still in the sphere of the parliament, it’s not off the agenda yet,” Dodson said. “It’s terribly important. Once something is dealt with in the parliament, it tends to be dismissed, it’s gone and it doesn’t return for a long time. Particularly in First Nations affairs, they don’t tend to go back and visit those issues very often.

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“I hope its not just ideological attitudes that are driving their opposition to First Nations recognition.”

If that is the attitude of parliament, he said, it is way behind the desires of the Australian people.

“Many Australians want to see the right thing done, and I think we should focus on that as much as we focus on the hardships we experience. As we saw in the LGBTI marriage plebiscite, the Australian people are well in front of where the government is, and I think that’s pretty much the case when it comes to recognition of First Nations in the constitution, or in legislation.”

The Northern Land Council will make the first public submission this afternoon.

About 200 elected members from the NT’s four land councils have been meeting at Barunga this week to discuss a memorandum of understanding with the Territory government around a treaty process.

The Joint Select Committee is the most recent in a line of inquiries, including the Referendum Council (2017), the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017), the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (2015), and the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians (2012).

“I’m well aware of how long its taken,” Dodson said. “All of those people who have gone before us basically wanted justice, wanted proper respect, wanted to be dealt with in an honest and honourable way, and be recognised appropriately for the uniqueness of who we are.”

Dodson said the committee was interested in hearing solutions and detail.



“It’s one thing to say you want a voice but how do you exercise it against the political realities that you come up against every day of the week, whether it’s local, state or federal government?” he said.

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“And the other matter is, what kind of power you’d like to see voted on, to entrench the voice? We’re looking for things that will help clarify how future referendum questions would look, and how any legislation would look.”

The committee has already received 57 submissions, including one from the former co-chair of the Referendum Council and the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition, Mark Leibler, who wrote: “Is it asking too much of non-Aboriginal Australia and Australians that we support this aspiration? Are we so mean-spirited, so lacking in national ambition and imagination that we would tell Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples we reject their advice to the nation as to how they wish to be recognised?”

Leibler said it was not too late for government to change its mind.

“Policy shifts in line with prevailing community sentiment is one of the hallmarks of a truly healthy democracy, a fact most recently acknowledged by the prime minister in his pithy comment on the announcement of the banking royal commission, that the ‘government’s policy remains the same until it’s changed’,” he wrote.

“An informed and respectful reconsideration by the government of all that the Uluru statement provides and symbolises represents a historic opportunity to reinforce Australia’s democracy and the health and wellbeing of our nation.”

Dodson and his co-chair, the Liberal MP for Berowra, Julian Leeser, have suggested that a non-constitutional model established by legislation might be a way to gain bipartisan support.

Labor has proposed to do this if it wins government and then move to enshrine it in the constitution once it has bipartisan support.

The committee has been given a deadline of 29 November for its final report, with an interim report due by the end of July.

