Jenna Price | Voice to Parliament debate should not be led by non-Indigenous people

Let me start with the easy one first. Australia Day. 1988. Adored every minute of it.

Here's why.

I'd been brought up to be very, very grateful to Australia for accepting my refugee parents when no-one else would. In my eyes, Australia Day represented a moment to celebrate my gratitude to this country for taking my parents in.

Turns out I'm not the only first generation kid to feel this way. New research from refugee and migrant settlement agency AMES Australia says new migrants want to celebrate Australia Day. They were asked: "Is a national day such as Australia Day important for the nation?"

Nearly 80 per cent said yes. They said it makes them feel more welcome in this country - and the vast majority wanted to become citizens. Just 10 per cent said no, Australia Day didn't matter.

But here's the crunch - only one in four knew that Australia Day celebrated (yes, celebrated) the dispossession of First Nations people. To our new arrivals, Australia Day was just another way to show up for their new home. That was how I felt.

I still feel grateful. I'd love a day where everyone can express that feeling - maybe May 8 which some describe as Mate Day, but I just don't want it to be on a day where so many First Nations people feel angry, sad or hurt. I've made the argument before that if we want to keep January 26 as a national holiday, it should be like Yom Kippur, a day of atonement (Australia could learn a lot from my homies), maybe a day where no-one gets plastered, starts whacking mates or sets off fireworks.

I know that's a big ask. But for Gaia's sake, let those who were affected make the decision. What do First Nations people want to do about Australia Day? They should lead, not the newbies.

And it should be precisely the same on the vote for the Voice. Don't get me wrong. When we have a referendum, sometime this year, I will be voting 100 per cent for the Voice.

But I wonder why I'm voting. Surely this should be a vote only for First Nations people, for self-determination, best explained by the expression, "nothing about us without us".

That describes putting power in the hands of those who have experienced injustice and in the case of Australia, that means putting power into the hands of Aboriginal people. That means having the Voice campaign debated and led by Aboriginal people.

Now I know we can't change the constitution without a referendum (so please don't tell this grandmother how to suck eggs) but surely this conversation about the Voice shouldn't be led by Peter Dutton, who seems utterly determined to undermine confidence in the process.

In darling Kirstin Ferguson's new book, Head & Heart, the Art of Modern Leadership, she talks about all the qualities you need as a leader and this hits me hard when she talks about empathy: "With better understanding of what it is like for others, we can be better leaders."

When I listen to Peter Dutton talk about the Voice to Parliament, I don't have any real confidence that he has any empathy for what it's like to be an Aboriginal person in this country - plus I didn't see him acting on Alice Springs when he was the minister for home affairs between 2017 to 2021.

Alice Springs has been in chaos for many years. As veteran stats cruncher Don Weatherburn, formerly of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and now professor at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of NSW, points out, the growth in assault figures began around 2019 and affected not just Alice Springs but also Darwin, Palmerston and Katherine.

During that time, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a senator since 2022, and now apparently furious on the state of Alice Springs, was herself a councillor and then deputy mayor of Alice Springs.

I'm very much in favour of alcohol bans in many places, such as the one now proposed in the territory, and hope it also comes to Parliament House where it would do a massive amount of good. That's definitely one group of people who definitely deserve laws decided by others.

So I'm proposing that all non-First Nations people be, yes, banned from leading conversations about the Voice to Parliament, that separately elected group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who woud have the responsibility and the right to advise our Parliament on national matters of significance to their people.

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It's not as if First Nations people have all got the same view anyhow. From the fierce eloquence of Noel Pearson (whose takedown of Price on Radio National breakfast last year was epic) and the power of academic and lawyer Megan Davis to those who oppose it such as the newly honoured Bess Price (now a Member of the Order of Australia) and her daughter Jacinta and Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, there is capacity for a broad and free-ranging debate.

White people do not need to pitch in. They aren't losing anything. And maybe Peter Dutton thinks he would be dispossessed. Ooh, not a bad idea!

As Megan Davis and George Williams write in their excellent book, Everything you need to know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart, there is only one way to change the constitution. It must be supported by the people voting at a referendum.

"The good news is that Australians overwhelmingly voted 'yes' at the last referendum held on Indigenous issues."

And that, surely, is the least we can do.