BEAM Mitchell Environment Group have thrown its support behind the Voice to Parliament – the referendum that proposes to change Australia’s constitution to recognise First Peoples of Australia.
Proposed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the Voice was first suggested in 2017, when delegates gathered at the first National Constitutional Convention near Uluru.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart called for ‘established of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution and a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making and truth-telling about our history’.
If Australians vote ‘yes’, the Voice will form an independent and permanent advisory body, which will give advice to the Federal Government on matters that affect the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
BEAM Mitchell stated the Voice was a ‘small step’ in the healing and justice that the Statement from the Heart invites all Australians to embrace.
“The Voice, then truth telling and then Treaty will further this process,” BEAM Mitchell said in a statement released last week.
“The time for reconciling the reality of our hostile and cruel past, with where we would all like to fit as Australians supporting justice is, now.
“BEAM acknowledges the Taungurung and Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners of the land that we in BEAM live and volunteer on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.”
BEAM also invited all its members and the wider community to embrace the opportunity provided by the referendum process, and to learn more about the process.
For more information, visit voice.gov.au.
