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Showing posts from October, 2011

Statehood, the constitutional convention and regions

The Centralian Advocate printed this letter to the editor: If the Australian constitution is to acknowledge Aboriginal people as the first Australians then this will likely be a symbolic gesture. Symbols and acknowledgements can be important; it can lift peoples’ hopes. Going beyond symbolism will be very difficult because changing the Australian constitution requires broad bi-partisan support from across political parties. This support exists now, and only to the point of acknowledging the ‘first Australians’, but there is still a long way to go. Putting the Australian constitution aside, what is more important to us is Statehood because we have the opportunity to design a completely new constitution. We start with a blank canvass. A planned convention in late 2011 intends to involve delegates from across the Territory to do exactly this. What a number of us on Town Council have said, and what we are calling for others to support, is for the new constitution to actively prote