Our speaker on 29 June 2023, Tom Calma AO, rightly attracted a large audience. Among the many highly significant roles he has filled, including as Human Rights Commissioner, he is Chancellor of the University of Canberra, 2023 Senior Australian of the Year, and a long-standing human rights and social justice campaigner. Together with Indigenous Elder Professor Marcia Langton of the University of Melbourne, he is the instigator of the Voice to Parliament, which arises from the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
We were treated to a down to earth, clear, humble and rational exposition of the history and prospects for the Voice to Parliament.
There have been many prior Indigenous consultative bodies that have been set up and disbanded again and again, in various forms, by various brands of government together with or without Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Tom never used denigratory language, but I would call what he was describing, over a succession of decades, as governments treating existentially important issues for Indigenous people as a political football, for political point-scoring. Rarely was it to seriously address righting wrongs, often taking advantage of some aspect of innate racism in the wider Australian community. Or to repeat a well-known aphorism, using “Lies, damn lies and statistics”, to present information in an unfair way.
This is inescapable, given Australia’s history of explicit racism, from the declaration of “terra nullius” in 1788, to the Australian Constitution’s explicitly racist clause 25; from the context of discredited Western imperial social Darwinism through the 1920s to the 1950s and even later, to the White Australia policy, which was not progressively dismantled until 1973. Thankfully since then, what has occurred at least in Australia’s large urban centres over recent decades is increasing anti-racist enlightenment, particularly through our education system from an early age.
How does one get justice for the wrongs done to, and still reverberating through, Indigenous societies, with past casual genocide, vivid recent memories of a stolen generation and people herded into reserves without even some of the most basic human rights, with young Indigenous people profiled by police and disproportionately filling our gaols? The Uluru Statement from the Heart of 2017 was a genuine attempt to bring about lasting reconciliation in an open model, already exemplified in some aspects of government functioning in Australia, and well established in some post-colonial countries abroad. The Voice is its implementation.
Currently reports in the media would indicate a decline in support for the YES vote in the upcoming referendum, but other surveys and information, which Tom Calma finds more trustworthy, show maintained support for a Voice to Parliament in its current form in larger population centres, running at around 60 per cent and in some cases even 80 per cent. Tom says he maintains neutrality so that people think things through for themselves, but I say it makes little sense not to vote YES. What we often see is prominent people heavily criticised and the whole project rejected. Which brings to mind two Australian sayings: the tall poppy syndrome, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I hope we desist from both.
Juris Jakovics
Helping children from war-torn Ukraine to holiday in Poland
Our club has recently raised and sent funds to the Rotary Club of Warsaw in Poland, together with funds from the Rotary Club of Hall. The total amount we sent last Thursday, 29 June, was A$9,500, including a contribution of A$2,500 from the Rotary Club of Hall.
The funds we sent came in large part from fundraising at our Changeover Dinner on 22 June at the Saffron Restaurant in Kingston. A diplomat from the Embassy of Ukraine attended the dinner, along with a representative of a Ukrainian youth organisation, who spoke eloquently and emotionally about Ukraine’s current plight and thanked us for our fundraising efforts.
The project is being co-ordinated by the Rotary Club of Warsaw. Our communication has been facilitated via our long-standing member Olek Gacarz.
The Rotary Club of Warsaw has provided the following information on the project:
- who: 50 Ukrainian people, mainly children, including 4 teachers
- travelling: from Ukraine by bus
- period: 10 days in July 2023
- where: The Pine Club (Klub Susnowy), 10km from central Warsaw
- for: accommodation, meals and various cultural and sporting activities
- total cost: 21,500 EUR (35,600 AUD)
- via donors to date: Rotary clubs in Warsaw, Frankfurt and Canberra.
This is a great project deserving and receiving our club’s wholehearted support. Our connection with Rotary in Poland goes back many years:
(1) with former Honorary RCCBG member, the late Jack Olsen, a former member of the Rotary Club of Canberra and sponsor of our club’s inauguration;
(2) Jack rejuvenated Rotary in Poland in the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union;
(3) our club visit to Poland in 2018 organised with Olek’s help; and
(4) ongoing projects we have supported through the Rotary Club of Warsaw.
We can all identify with the task of helping Ukraine to combat and deal with an unjust and inhumane aggressor in whatever small way we can.
Juris Jakovics
Membership matters