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Keywords: Constitutional Recognition

  • AUSTRALIA

    Voices beyond Yes and No

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 10 May 2023
    17 Comments

    Later this year, Australians will vote on a referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, but many Indigenous Australians remain undecided, reflecting the complexities of the issue. The debate over the Voice to Parliament extends beyond the referendum question to encompass broader concerns about the constitution, treaties, and achieving true equality.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Frank Brennan and an Indigenous Voice to Parliament

    • John Warhurst
    • 04 May 2023
    20 Comments

    Frank Brennan's book An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a constitutional bridge is an urgent contribution to this important national debate around the shaping of the Voice and the referendum question. It is a book concerned with what’s likely to be successful rather than a manual on how to vote. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Referendum: Appealing to the heart and mind

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 March 2023
    4 Comments

    Frank Brennan’s book An Indigenous Voice to Parliament is important in pointing out the difficulties facing the Referendum, the conditions to be met if it is to be passed, and in implicitly judging the current state of play.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    This Australia Day, all eyes are on the Referendum

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 January 2023
    18 Comments

    Australia Day has long been a source of controversy for Indigenous Australians. This year, the Referendum on Indigenous Voice to Parliament promises to be a major battleground in the ongoing debate over Australian identity, and will serve as a reminder of the deep-seated history of dispossession, discrimination and the long road to reconciliation. 

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2022: Distinctive Catholic voices in the election campaign

    • John Warhurst
    • 12 January 2023

    The Church must speak up to be relevant, but those who seek to ‘speak for the church’ must be brave. They risk exposing themselves to claims of bias unless they stick to a very narrow agenda and speak in extremely measured terms. Yet if they are too bland they risk being irrelevant to the sharp end of political debate and their intervention becomes little more than a symbolic ritual.   

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2022: An Indigenous Voice: Truth, treaty and reconciliation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 January 2023

    We have a lot of work to do if there is to be any prospect of a successful referendum on the Voice to Parliament, which Indigenous people have put to us as the mode by which they want to be recognised in the Constitution. They have said they want a Voice. Now, we can debate whether it be a Voice to Parliament or a Voice to Parliament and government, or a Voice just about particular laws.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Unpacking the Statement from the Heart

    • Glenn Loughrey
    • 14 December 2022
    1 Comment

    In reflecting upon the Statement from the Heart, we need to explore what it is, what it is not, and how it works. The creative dynamic of the Statement is that it is a tool of justice and heart-healing. It is restorative justice writ large, involving the elements that make up the process leading to a resolution of the past and a creative response to the future by enacting justice in the present.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    An Indigenous Voice: Truth, treaty and reconciliation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 December 2022
    15 Comments

    We have a lot of work to do if there is to be any prospect of a successful referendum on the Voice to Parliament, which Indigenous people have put to us as the mode by which they want to be recognised in the Constitution. They have said they want a Voice. Now, we can debate whether it be a Voice to Parliament or a Voice to Parliament and government, or a Voice just about particular laws.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Indigenous cultural fishing should be supported, not criminalised

    • Paul Cleary
    • 21 November 2022
    2 Comments

    An intense and often ugly battle over marine resources has been unfolding between State authorities and Aboriginal people along the NSW coast. At the heart of the conflict is the NSW government’s refusal to acknowledge the right to cultural fishing by Aboriginal people, unlike other states and the federal Native Title Act (1993). 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Speaking truth to power: In conversation with Tim Costello

    • Barry Gittins, Tim Costello
    • 07 October 2022
    1 Comment

    Reverend Tim Costello's informal status as a nagging conscience to many Australian governments, including the Howard government in which his brother Peter served as federal treasurer, was formally acknowledged when the National Trust of Australia chose him as a ‘National Living Treasure’. Barry Gittins speaks to Tim Costello about the nature of power, and its place and exercise in public life.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The price of mistrust

    • Julian Butler
    • 29 August 2022

    The absence of trust undermines our ability to meet basic human need, to feel supported, to share resources and to effectively divide responsibilities. Mistrust imposes its own ‘price’ on every ‘transaction’, every engagement with others becomes more costly as we need to account for the perceived insincerity and unreliability of others.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reflections on the Voice to Parliament: Vicki Clark and Frank Brennan

    • Frank Brennan, Vicki Clark
    • 18 August 2022
    3 Comments

    How can individuals and organisations engage with and support progress on reconciliation? In this conversation, Fr Frank Brennan SJ (Rector, Newman College) and Vicki Clark touch on progress of reconciliation in Australia in light of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, the Yoorrook Justice Commission and the Victorian Treaty process.

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