Oh boy, it’s the same sex marriage debate all over again!
The video shows a confrontation between an Indigenous mother and daughter and an elderly white woman in the coastal Queensland town of Poona. It has accrued more than 1.5 million views across Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.
In the 48-second clip, the woman filming is heard shouting at a white woman to leave a stretch of foreshore which belongs to the Butchulla people and saying they “owned these lands to the exclusivity of all others which comes under federal native title”.
“You might not like it, but guess what? Times are changing. You don’t own the land, we do. Get off it, please,” the woman filming is heard saying.
Ms Hanson shared the video on her official Facebook page with the caption: “This is just a taste of what is to come if Australians don’t stop [Prime Minister Anthony] Albanese’s race-based Voice and its Treaty”.
However, the viral clip is not what it seems.
ABC Investigations can reveal the footage shared by Ms Hanson was less than half of the original length, removing context of the incident.
The original version, posted 2.5 years ago by Butchulla woman Samala Cronin and her mother and elder Gemma Cronin, showed the argument actually began when the elderly woman’s husband had confronted them for filming.
This is the culmination of a long process by Indigenous Australians to work out how they can move forward with non-Indigenous Australia given everything that has happened over the last 253 years. Indigenous leaders and elders from all around the country spent years talking to each other, which resulted in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. That statement calls for the government to enable a constitutionaly enshrined Voice to Parliament and a Makaratta Commission (this would assist governments with the processes of treaty and truth telling).
It’s important to note that the Labor government is not inventing this out of nowhere. The referendum is happening because they have listened to what Indigenous Australians are asking for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart and are attempting to implement it, despite recent polling, out of respect. Indigenous Australians have been asking for this since 2017, and deserve the opportunity to take it to a referendum.
The referendum is just a vote on the Voice to Parliament. You are being asked whether an Indigenous Voice to Parliament should be enshrined in the constitution. It would be able to proactively and reactively make recommendations to government, but it would have no power to change things by itself. It is not a third chamber of parliament, it is just an advisory committee made up solely of Indigenous Australians. This is important for two reasons. Firstly, other advisory committees for Indigenous Australians often have a very low percentage of Indigenous Australians actually working for them, which means their advice is still just mostly coming from a non-Indigenous perspective. Secondly, it solves the issue of governments continually disbanding Indigenous advisory committees every time they come into power. Governments cannot change the constitution, so if there is an advisory committee in the constitution it will have more security.