There’s a fear of the unknown with regard to constitutional recognition, minister tells ABCs’ Q&A program at Garma festival

Conservative politicians, who balked at the call for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice in parliament, were speaking from a fear of the unknown, the Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, has told a special broadcast of Q&A.



At the Garma festival in northeast Arnhem Land on Saturday night, Scullion was asked during the ABC show about comments by his party leader, Barnaby Joyce, after the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which informed the referendum council’s recommendation.

Joyce was criticised for misinterpreting the statement calling for a parliamentary voice after he suggested it would create a third chamber of parliament, and the questioner suggested that this, along with other negative reactions by politicians, amounted to fear mongering.

Scullion said such comments weren’t “mischief”, but there were several of his colleagues and other Australians who did not understand what the Uluru statement and council’s recommendation were about, and there was a fear of the unknown.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Comedians Steven Oliver and Aaron Fa’aoso are called forward during the bungul dance at the Garma festival. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

“There are so many ways this can get off the rails and not many ways it can stay on. But I’m confident,” he said.

Panel member Noel Pearson said he felt National party members were the biggest supporters of the push for an Indigenous voice.

“They lived with blackfellas, they know blackfellas, and they’re highly sympathetic to our cause. So I was disappointed to Barnaby Joyce’s knee-jerk reaction … but I have not given up on our main constituency.”

Marcia Langton, an academic, said people opposed to the proposition “believe Australia is a white country and don’t want to admit how Australians obtained this country”.

She said it was ironic that some parliamentarians had recently run into dual citizenship problems, and predicted the constitution would be amended to deal with their status before dealing with the status of Indigenous people.

Earlier, the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had refused to commit to supporting the council’s recommendation or to being a driving voice for its support among the Australian people. His comments – made to the media after a warmly-received speech at the festival – prompted confusion and suspicion from the co-chair and some members of the referendum council. Turnbull had spent two days at the festival, and twice addressed people in Yolngu Matha.

The first questioner on Saturday’s Q&A said Turnbull’s efforts were noted and appreciated, but asked Scullion if he knew of a single non-Indigenous bureaucrat who was fluent in an Indigenous language.

Scullion said probably not, “but more than 60% of my staff are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Not because that’s a selection, just because they’re very good at what they do.”

He said that if 10 years ago students were learning an Indigenous language local to where they lived, learning about the culture and the history of dispossession, the current conversation around constitutional reform would not have been so difficult.

“How can you reconcile with what we’ve taken away unless you understand exactly what that is?”

Djapirri Mununggirritj, a Yothu Yindi board member, said she was “pretty amazed” to hear the prime minister speak in a way that was fully understood by Yolngu members of the audience and which prompted others to wish they spoke Yolngu Matha.

Pearson said he hoped part of the agenda going forward would revisit formal recognition of the original languages “because they are such a fundamental part of the origin of our nation”.

The Garma festival, held over four days in the Northern Territory to discuss Indigenous issues and to share culture between first nations and non-Indigenous attendees, continues until Monday.