Australia’s moment of truth is about us listening to our First Peoples

Lead strategist at DOA, Christian-Paul Stenta makes a heartfelt plea for the forthcoming referendum to give indigenous people a voice in the Australian Constitution.

So we’re heading into a referendum to vote if our First Nations people should have a Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution. This will be a dominant narrative over the next 18 months in Australia. I’m not an Indigenous Australian, however when the Prime Minister announced this important and historical vote, I remembered back to the feeling I had when it was announced there would be a national vote on whether to legalise same-sex marriage in Australia. I’m not suggesting that being a gay man is the same, or at all like, being a First Nations person. Nor should my feelings about the Marriage Equality plebiscite be likened to the feelings a First Nations person might have if this referendum is successful. I only share my experience in the hope that it reminds us of what’s at stake.

As a gay man, I am well versed in what it’s like to live a life navigating the opinions of others. Being born in the early 80s meant that I was figuring out who I was amid a cultural backdrop that was steeped in the fear and prejudice of the AIDS crisis. I’d had my fair share of cuts and bruises along the way, but I distinctly remember a moment in my late teens when I thought for the first time ‘just how good I had it’. I’d largely been spared the horrific experiences of homophobia that others had endured. Those cuts and bruises were far more casual than the violent prejudice others had faced. The well meaning advice to not ‘talk to others about that’ by a priest at my school. Or when I was a youth worker, and told that I should always be careful to make sure no one thought I was a pedophile. And my personal favourite, frequent reminders that I was lucky I wasn’t ‘too obvious’ and that ‘I wouldn’t have guessed you were one’, as though I was some master of disguise.

So when the plebiscite was announced, it wasn’t particularly surprising that I largely fell silent. In an instant, I relived every cut and bruise, every opinion that had been offered. I kept across the debate, but I couldn’t bring myself to meaningfully talk to others about it. After a lifetime of enduring other people’s opinions, I was quietly terrified of what might be revealed if I opened Pandora’s box. It’s one thing to laugh off Barnaby Joyce preaching about the sanctity of marriage; it’s another to find out what your loved ones really think. Yes, they might accept me and want the best for me, but would that be enough to get them to go out and actually cast a vote in support of my community? Could Australia really be trusted to do the right thing? After all, our track record on referendums and plebiscites didn’t exactly fill me with confidence that we’d go so far as to vote for a Fair Go for all. So, despite repeated requests by my partner to call and send messages to family and friends, I did what I could whilst maintaining an emotional wall around me. I just had to get through it.

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