Filmmaker Rachel Perkins, co-chair of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, says it’s “alarming” that some people still don’t know what the Voice to Parliament is, only weeks from the referendum.
Key points:
- Rachel Perkins was the keynote speaker at an event in honour of her late father
- She said too many people did not know “why we want” the Voice
- The film director says she won’t see “another moment like this in my lifetime”
Delivering the Dr Charles Perkins Memorial Oration, named after her father, at the University of Sydney on Tuesday night, the Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman said a lack of understanding was a “problem the Yes campaign has”.
“If I have learned one big, alarming, sometimes depressing thing from travelling the country in recent months, and from wading through the press … the most depressing thing of all about this referendum that you read on social media is that people don’t know what the Voice is, or why we want it,” she said.
“They have not read the words, the words that were very carefully chosen, after many years of deliberation amongst Indigenous leaders from all over Australia.
“This is a problem the Yes campaign has because people do not willingly approve a measure they don’t understand and, second, because not understanding makes them prey to a No campaign without much concern for the truth.”
In May, leading No campaigner Warren Mundine also said there was “not enough information out there” about what the Voice was or how it would work.
“When I talk to people on the ground … I say the biggest majority of people are not Yes or No people,” he said.
“They haven’t even heard of the Voice yet. And there are other people who have heard of the Voice but they don’t know what it is yet.”
Ms Perkins is the founder of Blackfella Films, a company which focuses on Indigenous Australian stories.
She has directed films including Mabo, Bran Nue Dae, Jasper Jones and the television series Mystery Road.
Her father organised the “Freedom Ride” bus tour in 1965 while a student at the University of Sydney. It aimed to highlight the state of race relations in the country.
Dr Perkins became the first Aboriginal man to graduate from the university in 1966.
Ms Perkins on Tuesday said she was continuing her father’s legacy of activism ahead of the referendum on October 14.
“It presents us with an extraordinary opportunity to bind this nation together with its first people, its greatest ever handshake placed in the Australian constitution,” she said.
In her keynote address, Ms Perkins took aim at Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s position on the Voice.
“Sooner or later, there will be a treaty with the Commonwealth … but the Voice is for the here and now,” she said.
“And I’d say much the same to voters, tempted by Mr Dutton’s argument that we should limit the referendum to just constitutional recognition.
“Mr Dutton would leave the Voice out of it, because he says enshrining it in the Constitution is divisive.
“Then he says if the coming referendum fails, a government he leads would hold another referendum on constitutional recognition, which of course would not be divisive.”
Ms Perkins believed the opposition’s plan would represent “no change … to the strategy employed for the last decade, which has yielded no significant closing of the gap and nothing to alleviate the plight of people in communities that he [Mr Dutton] describes as squalid”.
Mr Dutton has been contacted for comment.
Earlier this month, the Liberal leader said he would hold a referendum for constitutional recognition within his first term if elected prime minister at the next federal election.
“I believe very strongly it is the right thing to do,” Mr Dutton said.
“But enshrining a Voice in the constitution is divisive.”
Ms Perkins said this year’s referendum represented an opportunity to bring the country together, drawing parallels with the 1967 referendum.
“I am here tonight, because the vision my father believed, and they believed in, still lives,” she said.
“I will not see another moment like this in my lifetime.”