PM Anthony Albanese and the Yes campaign are in frantic damage-control mode. Again. The exposure of the full text of the foundational document of the Indigenous Voice referendum, the so-called “Uluru Statement from Heart”, has revealed the real agenda behind the “Voice”. Instead of the single page of apparently (but only apparently if you didn’t read too carefully or critically) benign motherhood statements, the full 26 pages of the document are a litany of hateful, vindictive rhetoric, and radical plans to systematically dismantle the Australian state.
No wonder the government and the Yes campaign are in such a panic.
Anthony Albanese has attempted to slap down Coalition accusations the Uluru Statement from the Heart is more than one page as “absolute conspiracy and nonsense”, amid claims the Indigenous Australians agency has faced political pressure to fall into line with the government […]
[Professor Megan Davis, a leading member of the referendum working group] says: “Politicians of bad faith like Pauline Hanson and the Coalition, who are on a unity ticket, are pointing to a Henry Parkes Oration I gave in 2018, where I say the Uluru Statement is not only the one pager, that there’s 18 to 20 more pages for Australians to read.
The Australian
In other words: How dare you take notice of my own words! Just like other Voice campaigners, who used to tell anyone who’d listen that the referendum was just the vehicle for land seizures and reparations payments, but who suddenly started disavowing it all once the opinion polls headed south.
Now Davis is playing the “trust us, would we lie to you?” card.
Who would knowingly and willingly mislead the Australian people? Not us. The Referendum Council report and website contains the official documents and they’ve been live online since 2017. It shows the one-page Uluru Statement from the Heart.
The Australian
And hid away the other 25 pages that they didn’t want anyone to read. It took an FOI request to get the full statement into public view.
So, who would knowingly and willingly mislead the Australian people? Possibly the sort of person who says stuff like this…
Professor Davis, who was one of the Uluru Statement’s main authors and a key member of the PM’s hand-picked Referendum Working Group, said in her 2018 Parkes Oration: “The Uluru Statement from the Heart isn’t just the first one-page statement; it’s actually a very lengthy document of about 18 to 20 pages, and a very powerful part of this document reflects what happened in the dialogues”.
In May 2022, she wrote in this newspaper that: “The Uluru Statement … is occasionally mistaken as merely a one-page document ….in totality (it) is closer to 18 pages and includes … a lengthy narrative called ‘Our Story’.”
And in November last year, she spoke at the Sydney Peace Prize Award Ceremony and Lecture saying: “It’s very important for Australians to read the (Uluru) Statement, and the statement is also much bigger, it’s actually 18 pages.”
…And then denies everything she said before and swears black and blue it’s only one page, after all.
Why would she do that?
It’s because this part – after page one – is so full of anger, entitlement and the demand to atone for the past 240 years of Australian history that the PM now wants to pretend that it doesn’t exist or has no status. In other words, it is political dynamite.
Former Referendum Council co-chair Mark Leibler also denies that there is more than one page.
“I was at Uluru for the national convention and witnessed the adoption of the statement – it was one page.”
The Australian
Which, again, appears to contradict his own previous statements. The Referendum Council’s official report quotes extensively from what it admits are “extracts from the Uluru Statement from the Heart” — extracts that are definitely not in the one-page document previously shown to the Australian public.
Here are some representative quotes: “The invasion that started at Botany Bay is the origin of the fundamental grievance between the old and new Australians.”
“This is the time of the Frontier Wars when massacres, disease and poison decimated First Nations … The Tasmanian Genocide and the Black War waged by the colonists reveals the truth about this evil time.”
“The taking of our land without consent represents our fundamental grievance against the … Crown.” “Makarrata is another word for Treaty … it is the culmination of our agenda.” “Any voice to parliament should be designed so that it could support and promote a treaty making process.”
“Treaty would be the vehicle to achieve self-determination, autonomy and self-government.” “The true history of colonisation must be told: the genocides, the massacres, the wars and the ongoing injustices and discrimination.
The Australian
None of those statements are in the one-page Statement — but they are in the 26-page one, verbatim.
They’re not fooling anyone: least of all Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Senator Nampijinpa Price said the [National Indigenous Australians Agency]’s FOI team had in July confirmed to her office that “Document 14” in the FOI release – which is 26 pages long – was the Uluru statement and that email confirmation would be forthcoming later in the day. That email was never delivered.
“I note the escalation of this issue from the FOI team to the CEO of the NIAA likewise raises questions,” Senator Nampijinpa Price wrote.
The Australian
Sounds like someone realised they’d been caught out — and the true agenda of the “Voice” was about to be laid bare for all Australians to see.