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Rome: One of the Catholic Church’s leading proponents of the Indigenous Voice to parliament fears the referendum will leave Australians divided – no matter the result – and he lays the blame on both sides of politics for not striving harder to find common ground.
Father Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest and human rights lawyer, will use a lecture in Rome on Saturday to urge Australians to recommit themselves to a “deep inner listening” towards each other and the land. He will remind Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton that they bear responsibility for the tone of the debate.
Brennan presented a copy of his book on the subject, An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, which was released in March, to Pope Francis when they met at the Vatican this week. Brennan dedicated the copy to the 86-year-old with an inscription reading “hoping and praying for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament”.
Along with the visit of Indigenous elder Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann to the Vatican for reconciliation talks with the church this week, Brennan’s speech to the Pontifical Gregorian University will offer a contemporary Australian perspective on the recognition of Aboriginal rights, and warn that voters will face a stark choice in the referendum, slated to be held in October.
“Neither side of the parliamentary chamber has done what was needed to bring the country together, to bring reconciliation in our land, to bring the country to ‘Yes’,” Brennan says in a draft copy of his address circulated on Friday.
“Whichever way the referendum goes, we will be left with a country divided, and that is a tragedy.”
The long-time Indigenous rights advocate has been a prominent critic of the breadth of the federal government’s proposed referendum question, arguing that its reference to the Voice making representations to executive government raises the prospect of many legal challenges.
The issue of the potential for legal challenges is one that divides legal experts, with a number of authorities maintaining there is no problem, including Brennan’s own brother, leading litigator Tom Brennan, SC. Their father, the late Sir Gerard Brennan, was a former High Court chief justice and wrote the lead judgment in the Mabo case.
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