Several recent articles in the Shepparton News have put forward reasons to vote no at the coming referendum.
These reasons basically depict the Voice to Parliament as a divisive attempt to give a section of the community more rights than the balance of the population.
In fact, the proposed amendment to the constitution seeks to redress the inequalities that currently exist.
The First Nations people of Australia have the highest infant mortality rate, the highest incarceration rate, the lowest life expectancy and the poorest educational and health outcomes of any group.
In all of the arguments put forward as reasons to vote no, I have not seen one that offers any positive strategies to reverse these inequalities.
Our history in Aboriginal affairs is littered with failed policies, abandoned government bodies and meddling by various political parties.
The voice offers an opportunity to set up an advisory body with a mandate from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island community to provide informed input to decision making policies and strategies.
This amendment to the Constitution allows our elected parliamentarians to legislate for the voice within clear guidelines, conferring no special powers on any group, and will enable Indigenous Australians to have a direct say in policies which close the gap.
The voice will change Australia from being an outlier when compared with other nations (Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Norway and the United States) which have provided their original peoples with constitutional recognition.
The voice is long overdue and is a modest change.
I recommend that we all vote yes on October 14.
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