Posted

The way the public debate is conducted in this country can be so frustrating, as the reaction to the Uluru statement this week demonstrates, Barrie Cassidy says.

Source: ABC News | Duration: 1min 59sec

Topics: government-and-politics, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, australia

Transcript

BARRIE CASSIDY:

Sometimes — well, often really — the way the public debate is conducted in this country is so frustrating.

Just consider what has happened since the Uluru statement.

The delegates at Uluru put out their ideas for what should go to a referendum. For them, that was the end of a painstaking 10-year process.

And even now, their ideas will only influence — heavily you would think, but influence and not bind — the referendum council.

It's that council that will put the final recommendations to the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition at the end of June.

But already some politicians and media analysts have tried to shoot the whole thing down in flames.

Here's the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce.

BARNABY JOYCE:

If you overreach and ask for something that will not be supported by the Australian people, such as another chamber in politics or something that sort of sits beside or above the Senate, that idea just won't fly.

BARRIE CASSIDY:

The fact is nobody is talking about a separate chamber. Nobody's talking about some sort of Aboriginal parliament.

Just an advisory body — that's all.

No powers to do anything other than provide a voice, an opinion, and hopefully some influence.

Yet even that is being dismissed — prematurely — because somehow it would mean treating one group differently from another.

The argument goes that if Indigenous people are treated as a separate class of citizen, then who would be next in the queue?

Really? The first Australians were here 50,000 years before anybody else. How on Earth does recognising that fact create a precedent for others? A precedent for other groups to exploit?

Let them try. I would be fascinated to hear their arguments.

Aboriginals are unique in the true meaning of the word. That's the point of going down this path in the first place, surely — to recognise that fact.

The work of the Uluru delegates should be respected. But more than that, so should the intelligence of all Australians. The public as a whole should be given a break.

The opinion makers — the politicians — would do well to wait.

Wait just another month for the final recommendations before trying to hit the whole thing out of the park.