Geoff Helisma | Commencing in December 2016, The Referendum Council hosted a series of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-designed First Nations Regional Dialogues, which culminated in the National Constitutional Reform Convention at Uluru in May 2017. The dialogues engaged 1,200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates from a population of around 600,000. Supported by the government and the opposition, it was the first time in the nation’s history that such a process had been undertaken. That process produced the Uluru Statement, which stated in part: “We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. “When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country. “We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.” In October 2017, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the idea wasn’t “desirable or capable of winning acceptance”. In 2005, then prime minister John Howard dissolved the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which, until then, was the formal indigenous voice to the Australian Government. “They got rid of it because it was influential, because it was able to communicate with the community and make a difference in our services being delivered,” says Torres Strait Islander Thomas Mayor, co-chair of the Uluru Working Group. This Saturday, a Harmony Day event is being held in the small barn at the Grafton Showground on Saturday March 24, starting at 9am. At noon, Mr Mayor, who is also the Maritime Union of Australia’s Northern Territory branch secretary, will deliver the keynote address, with a focus on the Uluru Statement. The Independent spoke with Mr Mayor. What now given that the Prime Minister rejected the Uluru Statement? We need to build a people’s movement. The Uluru Statement is one of many petitions and statements, recommendations from royal commissions and expert panels, [including] the Barunga Statement [1988]. None of them have really been adopted or implemented by government, so the view is that we can’t let this one be another one of those and just gather dust in the halls of parliament. The Uluru Statement says in part: “We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”. How do you perceive that could be achieved? The Makarrata Commission would supervise treaty-making, basically. In all of the 13 dialogues around the country there was a strong message from the participants and at Uluru: that there needs to be a settlement. The treaty is a strong claim from the indigenous population. The thing with it is that treaties are under way, but they’re hugely difficult. You’ve got a very powerful government and then you’ve got layers of government, local state and federal. There needs to be some structure, a framework behind treaty-making, and that would support First Nations to be able to negotiate, and … they’ll be a commission to ensure treaties are being made fairly. In a ‘Living Black’ interview you said the establishment of ‘truth’, in the telling of Australia’s history in regard to its indigenous peoples, or as I would prefer to put it ‘fact’, “was something that came so strongly out of every dialogue and then out of Uluru itself that people, our people want the truth to be told about our history, what happened, where the massacres were, you know, how we’ve been oppressed, how we continue to be oppressed in the very recent past and the present”. Why is that such an important issue so we can move forward as a united nation? It’s important to reconciliation. The truth has to be known by the population for a Makarrata to be reached, for treaties to be made. If there is going to be an outcome, that the wrongs are righted, that truth telling is going to be really important. The other part is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders want that truth telling because they want people to understand where they’ve come from, what has happened and why these social issues exist. Once the population of Australia understands that truth, those facts, then it’s more likely that healing can be done. How do you hope to educate people who carry tacit racism, those who say things like ‘get over it’, ‘it’s not our fault or responsibility’ or ‘it happened so long ago’, and those who perceive that the welfare state is unfairly weighted towards people indigenous to Australia? They’re simply wrong. They have not got the facts straight. That’s a part of the truth telling. The Makarrata Commission would have a role in making sure that it is really clear with the public: this perception of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people is not true, it’s wrong. On the Australian Government’s Parliamentary Library website, Noel Pearson is quoted – “The Yolngu concept of Makarrata captures the idea of two parties coming together after a struggle, healing the divisions of the past. It is about acknowledging that something has been done wrong, and it seeks to make things right”. My observation of late, particularly around the appropriate date for Australia Day, is that there’s not much leadership exploring Mr Pearson’s ‘concept of Makarrata’; how can this divisive, mostly ideological divide be mended? The decision makers in parliament need the will of the people putting pressure on them to act on Makarrata. At the end of the day, politicians are elected by the people and, so, as many people as possible who understand there is unfinished business and a wrong to be righted here, The leadership. is not going to come without the people speaking out and supporting what came out of Uluru. First nations are very many across the country; how would a Makarrata Commission represent all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people? The fact is that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists [who] push to be heard on what we want on constitutional recognition and other things, they sought a bigger budget to fund more dialogues and include more people. We were seeking many more dialogues to reach more nations. The Referendum Council applied a formula to what they had; they did the best with what they had. The formula was 60 per cent landowners connected to Country, from the 13 regions, 20 per cent from indigenous organisations in the regions and 20 per cent active indigenous people in the regions. There was an effort to ensure people from the Stolen Generation were invited and that there was gender balance. With what the Referendum Council had from government, they did their best to make sure of the best representation. The two co-chairs of the dialogue were locals who selected five local facilitators for the workshops and I was one of the five facilitators from Darwin. A lot of invites went out; for example we tried to cover every first nation in the Northern Territory. That’s why I believe in this so much. I saw that there was a really solid attempt to get a broad range of views and then try and reach a consensus based on the synthesis of all of those dialogues. The strongest things to come out of that were the truth telling, treaty making and a voice to affect decisions made about us. I considered things from the past and things that have failed to be accepted. We need to be able to have a voice. ATSIC was smashed by John Howard; it was repealed in 2005. ATSIC at least gave the ability for people in communities to elect their representatives. It was recognised that Howard got rid of it, less than the reasons they came up with, [though], … other organisations had trouble with leadership at the time but they didn’t get crossed out like ATSIC did. They got rid of it because it was influential, because it was able to communicate with the community and make a difference in our services being delivered. If Makarrata Commission is created, is there a still a need for constitutional recognition and the required referendum? That goes to ATSIC and other government bodies from the past, because parliament has control over legislation. The constitution is the rule of law that politicians have to follow and, therefore, to enshrine the voice in the constitution, it protects it. It’s the more difficult task. But what I’ve said to politicians who have asked the same question, ‘Myself and my brothers and sisters in this struggle, if we throw everything at this, setting up this representative voice that would be elected by the communities and we achieve that, [without constitutional recognition] it can be undone politically like John Howard did to ATSIC for political expediency, then we have wasted our time. The idea is we take on the tougher ask; many of us are confident Australians will support this. Without a proper public education campaign, a recent poll showed that 57 per cent of Australians already support their being an indigenous voice to the parliament. If we can get it in the constitution, it not only gives it more weight, because it’s come from a majority of people and states; unequivocally, the majority of people [will] have said this is needed to help [achieve] self determination. Could you enlarge on the concept of having “power over our destiny” that will result in “our children flourish[ing]” – how will gaining that power heal the dysfunction found in many Aboriginal communities where various, federal, state, territory and local government initiatives have failed? They’ve failed because many of them haven’t genuinely consulted the people. They’ve been inconsistent. Many of these programs have started up and then been cut. The difference is that there will be leadership genuinely accountable to their people. One of the problems that our people have at the moment is that anyone can be a spokesperson for indigenous people. You talked about the Australia Day debate. We had media, for example, picking [Alice Springs town councillor] Jacinta Price as a spokesperson. The point is any indigenous person can be asked to speak for the people but there isn’t a proper process in place. At a local level, in some places that exists. But on a national level there isn’t. I’m not saying there should be a national spokesperson for all nations, but structure is important and that would assist in the message coming genuinely from the people, because you would have leaders that are chosen and accountable to the people. Finally, there are some commentators who perceive that your position with the Maritime Union of Australia is some sort of conflict; what are your feelings on that? The track record of the Maritime Union is there for anyone to see if they bother to look. The union has been a strong supporter of social justice struggles, not just in Australia, but around the world. I’m an elected branch secretary of the Maritime Union and I’m a Torres Strait Islander. Who is anyone else to say that another organisation is not able to support this struggle?