Speaking in Arnhem Land at the Garma Festival, Albanese told Weekend Today if Australians choose to vote no in the referendum because they don’t understand the significance of the campaign, there will be no change.
“I think Australians will ask themselves, how would I feel if it was the case that if I had a daughter in childbirth, she was more likely to have issues if she was Indigenous than if she was non-Indigenous?” he said.
“If I had a son, a teenage son, he is more likely to go to jail than to go to university.
“These are the sort of issues that we need to deal with.”
Albanese said the Voice to parliament will lift all Australians up and close the gap for better outcomes across sectors from health to education.
He said the question that will be asked in the referendum is a simple one as Australia is the only country not to constitutionally recognise their First Peoples.
“When we look at all of the former colonies there’s only one that stands out as not giving acknowledgement to First Peoples,” he said.
“And that is all it does, is recognise Indigenous Australians in our nation’s founding document.
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“This place wasn’t empty in 1788.”
He pointed out that the Voice won’t only include constitutional recognition but will include an advisory body – although it will have no funding, program or veto responsibilities – the parliament will be encouraged to listen to First Nations people.
The prime minister is yet to confirm the date the referendum will be held, with speculation it will be October 14, saying it will be held in the last quarter of the year.
”I’ll be announcing in coming weeks what the date is,” he said.
”There’s been some suggestion that this is not the right time,” Albanese said.
“I say, 122 years after Federation, half a century after the referendum in which Indigenous Australians were counted, more than a decade after extensive processes were established… if not now, when?”
Albanese will hold another major speech at Garma Festival today calling out statistics on the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
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