Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

I was at QandA audience tonight. Here's what I was thinking: Prof Megan Davis is a Member of the Referendum Council and Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. In the Griffith Review, Professor Davis outlined the long road to the Uluru Statement. 1/

Prof Davis explains there have been multiple Government committees, such as the 1983 Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, the failed 1999 Referendum, and the Expert Panel that carried out public consultations in 2011. 2/

Referendum Council, which delivered its report on #UluruStatement in 2017, is the 1st national consultation process to focus almost exclusively on engaging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 12 dialogues drew on principles from Aboriginal-led historical statements. 3/

Prof Davis writes: ‘I had spent a year urging those involved in the dialogues to suspend their disbelief that the system could not reform. Law reform, I said, was about imagination and imagining the world can be a better place. The law can oppress and the law can redeem. - 4/

- 'The participants in the dialogues put their faith in us to deliver a fair and robust reform proposal to government.’ - Prof Davis #UluruStatement was gifted to the Australian people, not to politicians, but it is politicians who are holding up the process of truth-telling. 5/