Moree is a farming town on the black-soil plains 630km northwest of Sydney with an ugly past and an elegant presence in the weary struggle to reconcile Aboriginal and white Australia.
In the broiling summer of 1965, Charles Perkins, the first Aboriginal man to graduate from university, who’d also flirted with a professional football career in England, rolled in with other “Freedom Riders” aboard their bus from Sydney. They gathered young boys, shunted to an Aboriginal mission on Moree’s outskirts, and took them to a place where they were unwelcome – the town’s public swimming baths.
Moree erupted: enraged men punched one Freedom Rider and the activists were covered with eggs, tomatoes and spit. But the mayor backed down and allowed the children to swim; Perkins’ Freedom Riders had turned an unwelcome international spotlight on the then-disguised but widespread discrimination against Aboriginals in small-town Australia.
Last month, I found several of those boys – now contented retirees living in Moree homes they own – and spoke to them about the then-forthcoming, and since defeated, nationwide referendum on changing Australia’s 122-year-old constitution: Australians were asked to recognise Aboriginals as the first inhabitants and accord them a special “Voice to Parliament”.
The Moree boys’ lives had been much changed by their early experience. One tearfully pointed to the two university degrees on his lounge room wall, inspired, he said, by Perkins. Another was able to forgive the white garage owner who had denied him a mechanic’s apprenticeship on discovering his Aboriginal identity. A third spoke proudly of how the town’s changed attitudes had allowed his children to marry into white families.
Most wanted the referendum to succeed but were fearful about the divisive nature of the referendum debate and the reopening of old wounds. Of course, the referendum was roundly defeated on October 14 – the same day New Zealanders voted to bring in a new government in which one partner, Act, is also insisting on a referendum to decide a racial issue: the overriding of the Treaty of Waitangi’s court-established implications for co-governance with Māori.
Politicians, such as Act leader David Seymour, are absolutely entitled to raise and to seek to resolve concerns about the judicial interpretation of the treaty. But surely the Australian experience suggests the blunt instrument of a screeching, bruising media debate culminating in a simple “Yes” or “No” vote is no way to decide deeply complex racial issues. These are delicate, nation-changing decisions that different peoples must live with.
Although this column is on record supporting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s effort to accord Aboriginal people constitutional recognition and a Voice to Parliament, it is not the failure of his initiative that has been the most harmful to the nation. Rather, it was the vindictive, shrill, misinformed and politically weaponised campaigns – primarily but not all from the “No” side – that linger and sadden.
So dispiriting has been the whole experience that it is easy to agree with those such as University of New South Wales law professor George Williams, who argues that a different approach to constitutional reform is now needed in the light of the rise of powerful new influences such as social media. There is a need, he argues, for stronger civics education for people to learn about their system of government.
I suggest the same applies in New Zealand. And let those who wish to challenge Māori influence first demonstrate they have broad political support before forcing the nation to make a choice.
They know in Moree how old wounds can still sting.
