An allied reason for a YES vote is the failure of many attempts at reform for aboriginals:
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (99 Aboriginal deaths) was a loser. Decades later the Indigenous community still waits for change.
The Bringing Them Home report was the originator for the.apology. 13 February 2018 marks the 10th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations issued by Kevin Rudd. It has achieved nothing. Peter Dutton was notably absent.
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But we can do it. First Australians in the new Constitution were discriminated against. The 1967 referendum – in which over 90% of voters agreed that First Australians deserved equal constitutional rights – remains the most successful referendum in Australian history.
If a YES vote is so morally obligatory, why are Jacinta Price, Peter Dutton and Warren Mundine objecting?
This writer has different reasons for each, and would be delighted to hear from others,
First Peter Dutton: He is Leader of the opposition and by definition, or by our inherited history of political parties, is required to oppose. Also he is leader of a coalition which includes the Nationals, once titled the Country Party. And he needs to appease his partner organisation. Rural dwellers are conservative, notoriously unwilling to change. An urban–rural political divide has been observed worldwide in many nations. In the United States they call the mid-west the red states -they vote predominantly for one party - the Republican Party. Donald Trump's party.
Jacinta Price, an aboriginal woman, is opposed to a yes vote. She is Coalition Senator who told about 1,000 attendees of recent event that she and her fellow Indigenous politicians already provide a voice for their people in federal parliament. Two reasons are offered for her NO vote, One is that she is a member of the Coalition, under Peter Dutton and second that she has achieved very little so far and is worried that an aboriginal voice to Parliament will expose her lack of achievement.
Warren Mundine is a member of the Bundjalung people, the traditional owners of much of coastal northern New South Wales. In the election of the Tony Abbott-led Liberal-National coalition in 2013, Abbott appointed Mundine as chairman of the Australian government's Indigenous Advisory Council. In January 2017, Mundine lost his position when the council was dissolved by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
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On 22 January 2019, at the behest of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, the New South Wales state executive of the Liberal Party installed Mundine as candidate for the seat of Gilmore in the 2019 federal election.
Mundine is urging a NO vote to further his political career.
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