‘We are one Australia’: Fair Australia Indigenous delegation demands to be heard in Canberra
A delegation of Aboriginal Australians have travelled to Canberra thanks to the Fair Australia (powered by ADVANCE) campaign, to ask the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader to hear their ‘no’ case in opposition to the Voice.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price hosted the 22 community leaders, including 11 from Ngukurr in Roper River.
Organised by ‘no’ campaign Fair Australia, they are seeking meetings with Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton to offer their simple message: the Voice will divide Australians by race, rather than uniting us as a nation.
Nationals senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has warned the PM not to expect First Nations people to vote “yes” on the Voice to parliament referendum.
Senator Nampijinpa Price introduced the Indigenous community representatives from across the country to politicians from different parties.
Senator Price said Aboriginal people did not want to be divided or segregated, as the divisive Voice will do.
“We stand as one under this flag as Australians – whether we are from the first peoples of this country, whether we’re from those who came on the first fleet, and the settlers and the migrants that come to this country,” she said.
“We are one Australia.”
Senator Nampijinpa Price said there was a legitimate fear in communities that the Voice would stoke division and undo any work to close the gap.
“We’ve overcome segregation in our country, to then go ahead and put it in our founding document, that is not the right thing to do going forward,” she said.
Fair Australia delegation member and social worker Molisa Carney said existing representative bodies that were supposed to be representing Indigenous people were “ignoring” them.
“Why aren’t our politicians … going out to the remote communities. In those communities, no one knows about the Voice,” she said.
“And what about our poor children, the next generation – what are you going to provide for them? Division? Segregation, you’ve already done segregation.
“We’re all Australians here, we’re meant to be working together – not against each other.”
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