Hard News: The Voice

The City of Melbourne declared its position in favour of the Voice to Parliament at the March 21 Future Melbourne Committee meeting.

The deputy chair of Aboriginal Melbourn Olivia Ball said Melbourne is the “first capital city” to declare its position on the referendum.

“I, along with all the Councillors who were present that night [March 21], voted in support of the motion,” she said.

Cr Ball said the Voice is a “fulfilment of the right to self-determination”, which Aboriginal nations have been fighting for a long time.

“The collective right to self-determination is fundamental to international human rights law and found in the UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples,” she said

“The Voice means the First Peoples will be able to advise the parliament, government and public service on matters affecting them, and their right to do so will be enshrined in the Constitution.”

However, Victorian upper house Liberal MP Beverley McArthur has a different perception on the Voice to Parliament, who linked the Voice to racial divisions in South Africa, as reported by The Age.

The Voice will “divide the nation on colour” and it will become “a legal and legislative nightmare”, she wrote in the Spectator Australia magazine.

Cr Ball believes that the Voice can be a “unifying” rather than “divisive moment” for Australia.

“In the past 25 years, we have seen a surge in understanding and support for the claims and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this country, typified by the Walk of Reconciliation in 2000, when some quarter of a million people walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge,” she said

“More recently, we see growing numbers of non-Aboriginal Australians marching on 26 January each year in support of their Aboriginal counterparts.”