Constitutional recognition report handed to Prime Minister

Co-chairs Mark Leibler (left) and Patrick Dodson hand the panel’s report to Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo: Cole Bennetts, courtesy Reconciliation Australia.

The Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians has handed its report to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, at a ceremony at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

Addressing the gathering, which included parliamentarians and the Young Freedom Riders, constitutional recognition panel co-chair Patrick Dodson called on all Australians to move forward as a nation.

“We gather to take a remarkable step forward – forward to a nation that acknowledges its history and heritage in its founding document,” he said.

“Although our cultures are old as time, they are a beating pulse of our nation’s identity. What a grand thing it is that Australia is custodian of one of the oldest continuous living culture in the world.”

Receiving the report from Dodson and his co-chair, Mark Leibler, Prime Minister Gillard urged people to visit the You Me Unity website to read the report and learn about constitutional recognition.

“As a nation we are big enough and it is the right time to say yes to an understanding of our past, to say yes to constitutional change, and to say yes to a future more united and more reconciled than we have ever been before,” the Prime Minister said.

The expert panel of Indigenous and community leaders, constitutional experts and parliamentary members was established a year ago to advise the Government on how best to recognise Indigenous Australians in Australia’s Constitution.

“After visiting 84 communities across regional, remote and metropolitan Australia, after holding more than 250 consultations and receiving more than 3,500 submissions we are pleased to present the unanimous – I stress unanimous – report of our 22 member panel to the Prime Minister,” said Leibler.

The Prime Minister thanked the panel for their tireless work over the past year and acknowledged the challenge ahead of achieving nation-wide consensus.

“But we should take hope from the fact that of the referendum most successful when presented to the Australian people, it was the 1967 referendum when people decided they wanted to say yes to change,” she said.

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, said the report would be the foundation for many more conversations across the country.

“We know that change will not happen without the support of the majority of Australians,” she said. “It will not happen without more conversations – across kitchen tables and around barbeques, in workplaces and neighbourhoods, cities and towns in every state and territory.”

The Government has also thanked the Australian Human Rights Commission, the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, Reconciliation Australia and the many people who lodged submissions, participated in consultations or helped the panel with its research.

Dodson noted that during the consultations people had told the panel over and over again that now was the time for change.

“This is a time when truth and respect for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples needs to be achieved through recognition in the constitution.”

A video of the handover on the You Me Unity website includes interviews with some of the panel members and highlights from the event.