18 September 2023

I bill myself as a writer and creative bloke, but the truth is I spent half my working life helping people. No, not six months! At least a dozen years working on community projects ranging from helping refugees to young people. The most satisfying projects always involved working with Aboriginal people.

I always came away from every meeting, home hang-outs or a simple call with having learned something. It struck me early on that the struggles we had against the Ottomans was similar to what Aboriginal people have gone through. My friend Josh and elders such as Uncle Dave Williams have shown me a number of parallels with the issues their people have unjustly gone through since 1788.

We lost millions of people, our homes, our cities, our lands. Some of our kids were kidnapped and taken to the Janissaries, others abused. Aboriginal people had a similar heartbreaking tale where kids were taken, where our government forced assimilation and created policies that were racist against people who had lived in their lands, peacefully for 120,000 years.

Recently I have struggled to accept that some Australians would be cold hearted enough to reject the opportunity to recognise these peoples in their lands under a constitution that was drafted in 1899 without consulting Aborigines.

There is no mention of Aboriginal people or recognition of them in the Australian constitution. Yet we recognise the British. After 120,000 years of being on their lands, the least we can do is recognise them. The Constitution will finally recognise these people along with all citizens of the Commonwealth.

The Voice doesn’t mean you lose any rights. In fact, I wish Aborigines were automatically part of parliament and elected as Head of State, instead some dude who is usually a former general is made Governor-General representing an unelected monarch, but all that is too radical for most. The Voice is simply an advisory group. Note the term, ‘advisory.” A group to advise parliament and the cabinet about matters pertaining to Aboriginal people. Simple!

Joshua Staines, who is a local government manager, businessman, musician and activist. When he talks, its important to listen as he has understood the mood of First Nations better than most. “I support the voice 100000 per cent as a First Nations man. Having worked in quite a few different organisations, emerging industries and with various levels of government I can attest that First Nations voices being heard is the first step to those voices being respected and valued.”

Josh continues, “from a lot of older Australians we hear “I didn’t learn that in school” and “I’ve never met a First Nations person”. These are often responses we hear when educating about stolen generations, colonisation, closing the gap etc. So let’s change that! Let’s have a voice that can’t be thrown out, that must be heard. Let’s forever have a voice that speaks to our shared history.”

Let’s not have future generations not know, he goes on to explain.

As migrants and second generations, we forget that we went through war and persecution and we didn’t have the chance to correct and address what we lost.

Few people helped us in Asia Minor, Pontus, Cyprus. Today we have a chance to pay it forward and help people who need it. They lost everything, their pain should be our pain. My grandparents and parents would be ashamed of me if I didn’t help our First Nations. I am of course a religious person who took the words of Christ at its purest meaning, help those who need it, don’t be racist, love one other and help the poor and by God recognise the Voice!

Speaking of my grandparents, they would also be ashamed of someone like Dutton, a man who was against the Rudd Government’s apology to the Stolen Generations. What a heartless and cruel man. Every day my pappou would look out from Lesvos to the lands we lost in Asia Minor, the family and friends he lost. Cruelty which the Turkish government has never said sorry for. Here in Australia, Aboriginal people share a similar heartbreak to pappou Vasileios. For his sake and the sake of Aboriginal people, for Australia and for the Christ which my parents taught me all about, I will be supporting the Voice.

My friend and former schoolteacher Nick Rodinitsis points out that “only eight out of Australia’s 44 referendums have succeeded in being passed. Each had bipartisan support to meet the high threshold of not just a majority of voters across Australia but also the requirement to have a majority of votes in the majority of states, four or more of the six; the ACT and the NT are only counted in the national vote.”

Nick explains, “the chances of this referendum were significantly hurt the moment Dutton opposed it and it will go down on party lines.” Nick points out that the Coalition picked up their lowest vote every and there are many prominent Liberals supporting the Voice such as NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman, Bridget Archer, Julian Leeser, Simon Birmingham, Paul Fletcher, Andrew Bragg, Julie Bishop, Malcolm Turnbull, Nick Greiner, Kate Carnell who is the National Convener for Liberals for Yes vote. Nick feels that the Government could have explained The Voice better from the outset.

Dr John Martino from Melbourne reminded me that it was Keating who once told parliament that one should imagine suddenly being dispossessed of land lived on for tens of thousands of years and then told by usurpers we wont recognise you, the land never belonged to your people, except, it actually did belong to the Aboriginal people. As it did in Asia Minor for Hellenes or anywhere else people have been illegally dispossessed. Gough Whitlam who once went into bat for those less fortunate once said, “it’s time for a change.” He was correct, we can change how we recognise the traditional owners of these lands and how we listen.

*Billy Cotsis has heritage from Asia Minor and documents Greek communities around the world