Rome: One of the Catholic Church’s leading proponents of the Indigenous Voice to parliament fears the referendum will leave Australians divided – no matter the result – and he lays the blame on both sides of politics for not striving harder to find common ground.
Father Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest and human rights lawyer, will use a lecture in Rome on Saturday to urge Australians to recommit themselves to a “deep inner listening” towards each other and the land. He will remind Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton that they bear responsibility for the tone of the debate.
Brennan presented a copy of his book on the subject, An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, which was released in March, to Pope Francis when they met at the Vatican this week. Brennan dedicated the copy to the 86-year-old with an inscription reading “hoping and praying for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament”.
Along with the visit of Indigenous elder Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann to the Vatican for reconciliation talks with the church this week, Brennan’s speech to the Pontifical Gregorian University will offer a contemporary Australian perspective on the recognition of Aboriginal rights, and warn that voters will face a stark choice in the referendum, slated to be held in October.
“Neither side of the parliamentary chamber has done what was needed to bring the country together, to bring reconciliation in our land, to bring the country to ‘Yes’,” Brennan says in a draft copy of his address circulated on Friday.
“Whichever way the referendum goes, we will be left with a country divided, and that is a tragedy.”
The long-time Indigenous rights advocate has been a prominent critic of the breadth of the federal government’s proposed referendum question, arguing that its reference to the Voice making representations to executive government raises the prospect of many legal challenges.
The issue of the potential for legal challenges is one that divides legal experts, with a number of authorities maintaining there is no problem, including Brennan’s own brother, leading litigator Tom Brennan, SC. Their father, the late Sir Gerard Brennan, was a former High Court chief justice and wrote the lead judgment in the Mabo case.
Brennan hopes a “reconciling spirit” will blow through the chambers of parliament during the next three weeks while elected leaders lay the groundwork for the three-month campaign but said, given the reluctance of all major political parties to consider any amendments to the proposed change to the Constitution, the wording of the change “might not be perfect”.
Previously a member of the Indigenous Voice co-design senior advisory group, Brennan argued changing the wording from “executive government” to “ministers of state” could broaden support for the referendum.
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He will tell the audience in Rome that, while the government has gone so far as to assure the parliament that it would have the power to legislate whether and how representations by the Voice need to be considered by the executive government, it should “tweak the words” to ensure that public servants performing routine administrative tasks will not be required to consider representations by the Voice.
“We can vote ‘No’ to a constitutionally enshrined Voice either because we continue to think that all constitutional entitlements should be held ‘in common with all other Australians’ or because we are not convinced that the Voice will work effectively; or we can vote ‘Yes’ because, whatever the imperfections of the wording and the risk of future complications, we think it is high time that Australia’s First Peoples were recognised in the Constitution in a manner sought and approved by a broad cross-section of Indigenous leaders.”
Brennan will say that, while only eight out of 44 referendums have succeeded in Australia since federation, he hopes “this one will be the 9th”.
“May the Australian people bring the country to ‘Yes’, recognising the rights of our First Peoples who have occupied the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit for tens of thousands of years,” he says.
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