“When it comes to referendums generally, Australia’s not got a history of approving them or supporting them.
“When it comes to Aboriginal rights, it’s probably worse than the other referendums.”
Although mana whenua in New South Wales and Northern Territory states have representative systems, Moran says it needs to be elevated to national level across all states and territories.
“Without a national system, it is not fair, equitable, successful, or efficient to have a system whereby NSW or Northern Territory have any legislative land rights. That is not a good model for two of us out of the states and territories empowered to elect and have our own representatives, acknowledging that those two representative systems are yet to fully embrace or represent the culture.”
And there has been some support from Aboriginals towards the No campaign too, including politicians. But Moran says there are two sides to the “no”: not giving rights and the referendum not giving enough rights.
Regardless, Moran is still advocating for a Yes vote
“They’re really sceptical people, Australians. As I said, the record shows they’ve not supported their own proposals for referendums and, quite frankly, have not been very friendly to first nations. We forced them to the Commonwealth’s court to get them to even acknowledge we existed in 1993. To hopefully become acknowledged as equal human beings is quite a hard task on this side of the Tasman.”
– Originally published on Te Ao Māori news