Morris - Radical heart: three stories make us one

Shireen Morris is a lawyer, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, and a senior adviser on constitutional reform to Cape York Institute. She is the co-editor of The Forgotten People: Liberal and Conservative Approaches to Recognising Indigenous Peoples with Damien Freeman (MUP, 2016) and the editor of A Rightful Place: A Roadmap to Recognition (Black Inc, 2017). Shireen is a regular commentator on TV, radio and print media.

This unique memoir is the story of an individual pilgrimage by a non-Aboriginal Australian into the heart of Aboriginal hope. It might even be capable of reversing the governments glib and hurried rejection of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Thomas Keneally

For seven years, Shireen Morris has been one of the most passionate and courageous advocates for Indigenous people and their overdue recognition in the Australian Constitution. Anyone who has followed the debate will know of Shireens articulate and persuasive advocacy. This book, for the first time, gives expression to her own storynot the experience of blackfellas or whitefellas, but the unique perspective of an Australian who is the daughter of Fijian-Indian immigrants. This story provides a crucial new frame for contemporary reconciliation that incorporates the Indigenous, the British, and the multicultural. Her book shows that reconciliation is not just about black and white. Its the responsibility of all Australians.

Noel Pearson

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

www.mup.com.au

First published 2018

Text Shireen Morris, 2018

Design and typography Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2018

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Text design and typesetting by Cannon Typesetting

Cover design by Design by Committee

Printed in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

9780522873573 (paperback)

9780522873580 (ebook)

T HIS FEELS LIKE a seven-year itch, needing expression. An itchy brain callus, or unresolved intellectual irritation. The kind that develops from consistently butting ones head against brick walls.

We try a multiplicity of tactics: digging under, going around, climbing over. We try using cooperation, compromise, military-like manoeuvres and alliances. But there are more brick walls and ever higher hurdles.

Its not the people blocking progress. The people want change.

Working on Indigenous constitutional recognition for the past seven years has demonstrated to me that most Australians harbour a deep desire to resolve the fundamental torment of our nationthe nagging moral question that has troubled our country since 1788. The majority of Australians want to address the injustice that has for too long characterised this nations dealings in Indigenous affairs. They want to see the First Peoples finally ensured a fair go in our nations Constitution.

The political action, however, is yet to meet the peoples intent. The politics is the problem, and the lack of morally courageous leadership. Changing the Constitution requires a double majority referendum. But getting the support of a majority of voters in a majority of states is not unachievableif only there were leaders willing to champion the cause.

It makes you want to shake them. Tug their smug neckties. Yell obscenities to wake them from their cosy cocoons of power and galvanise them to action. But they are so busy clinging: clinging to power, and wielding it for little.

In September 2017, it made my brain callus itch.

I took myself off to the tropical island of Gili Air, near the coast of Lombok. As far from Australia as my frequent flyer points booked two days prior would take me. I tried not to think about the Constitution or the politics for one whole week. It was partially successful. But in between novels, swimming and bouts of intestinal trouble (it was the ice cubes, insidiously hidden in cocktails), I reflected on the past seven years.

Seven years thinking about how Australias Constitution might be reformed to provide a fairer place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Seven years working with Indigenous leaders, constitutional lawyers, thought leaders and politicians, trying to find the common ground. Seven incredible years, where ingenuity, creativity and teamwork led to many triumphs; and too many defeats. A frustrating story, itching to be told.

Ive set out the intellectual case before, through legal articles, opinion pieces and TV arguments. A thesis. Now I want to tell the story of hunting the radical centre on Indigenous constitutional recognition.

I tell it not as an Indigenous Australian. Though I was born in Melbourne, I dont subscribe to Andrew Bolts strained and superficial definition of Indigeneity as meaning simply being born in a place.

As a non-Indigenous advocate for Indigenous constitutional recognition, some would say I occupy a strange position. I am descended neither from First Nation, nor from British coloniser. I am descended from those who came after. My parents, like so many immigrants, came here in search of opportunity. But I have no dual citizenship (as far as I know). I am just Australian.

As an Australian, I was filled with hope witnessing the unprecedented achievement of the First Nations Uluru Statement from the Heart, endorsed by a standing ovation of the Indigenous delegates at Uluru in May 2017. I saw how far wed come in the political debate. I knew this was the best chance Australia had ever had, and perhaps will ever have, of meaningfully addressing the legacy of our colonial past.

Then in October, in a statement full of lies and fearmongering, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the Uluru Statement, and hopes were dashed. It was a callous display of unilateral exercise of government power over the powerless. The historic First Nations consensus was rejected by yet another government that assumed it knows better what is good for Indigenous people, than Indigenous people themselves.

Turnbull said the Australian people would not support a First Nations voice to Parliamenta constitutionally guaranteed Indigenous advisory body, to provide Indigenous input on laws and policies with respect to Indigenous affairs. I believe he is wrong. Omnipoll and now Newspoll research have proved him wrong: around 60 per cent of Australians support an Indigenous constitutional voiceand that is in the face of sustained government opposition.

I hold on to hope, because something extraordinary and historic was achieved at Uluru, creating a unique opportunity and momentum that will not easily be beaten. This moment is historically unprecedented. Indigenous Australians formed a national consensus on the reforms they want. This has never happened before. Key conservative supporters of the proposed reforms are lined up and growing in number. Those constitutional conservatives (commentators, lawyers and politicians), who would usually argue No to constitutional reform, on this issue are now saying Yesto the same reform Indigenous people have asked for. This has never happened before either. Labor and the Greens support the proposals, and public advocacy for the Uluru Statement is growing ever louder. The nation seems poised on the verge of breakthrough progress in Indigenous affairsin spite of the lack of political leadership.