Radical Heart Read online

  Shireen Morris is a lawyer, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, and a senior adviser on constitutional reform to Cape York Institute. She is the co-editor of The Forgotten People: Liberal and Conservative Approaches to Recognising Indigenous Peoples with Damien Freeman (MUP, 2016) and the editor of A Rightful Place: A Roadmap to Recognition (Black Inc, 2017). Shireen is a regular commentator on TV, radio and print media.

  ‘This unique memoir is the story of an individual pilgrimage by a non-Aboriginal Australian into the heart of Aboriginal hope. It might even be capable of reversing the government’s glib and hurried rejection of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.’

  Thomas Keneally

  ‘For seven years, Shireen Morris has been one of the most passionate and courageous advocates for Indigenous people and their overdue recognition in the Australian Constitution. Anyone who has followed the debate will know of Shireen’s articulate and persuasive advocacy. This book, for the first time, gives expression to her own story—not the experience of blackfellas or whitefellas, but the unique perspective of an Australian who is the daughter of Fijian-Indian immigrants. This story provides a crucial new frame for contemporary reconciliation that incorporates the Indigenous, the British, and the multicultural. Her book shows that reconciliation is not just about black and white. It’s the responsibility of all Australians.’

  Noel Pearson

  MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

  Level 1, 715 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

  [email protected]

  www.mup.com.au

  First published 2018

  Text © Shireen Morris, 2018

  Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2018

  This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

  Text design and typesetting by Cannon Typesetting

  Cover design by Design by Committee

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  9780522873573 (paperback)

  9780522873580 (ebook)

  Contents

  Introduction: Seven Years

  1 Where I Come From

  2 Discovering Cape York

  3 The Expert Panel

  4 The ‘One-Clause Bill of Rights’

  5 To the Right and Up

  6 In Search of the Radical Centre

  7 Forging the ‘Con Con’ Alliance

  8 Low Expectations

  9 Black Robe

  10 The Art of Persuasion

  11 A Snowflake’s Chance in Hell

  12 The Uluru Statement from the Heart

  13 The Rejection

  Conclusion: Towards a Fairer Australia

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Index

  Introduction: Seven Years

  THIS FEELS LIKE a seven-year itch, needing expression. An itchy brain callus, or unresolved intellectual irritation. The kind that develops from consistently butting one’s head against brick walls.

  We try a multiplicity of tactics: digging under, going around, climbing over. We try using cooperation, compromise, military-like manoeuvres and alliances. But there are more brick walls and ever higher hurdles.

  It’s not the people blocking progress. The people want change.

  Working on Indigenous constitutional recognition for the past seven years has demonstrated to me that most Australians harbour a deep desire to resolve the fundamental torment of our nation—the nagging moral question that has troubled our country since 1788. The majority of Australians want to address the injustice that has for too long characterised this nation’s dealings in Indigenous affairs. They want to see the First Peoples finally ensured a fair go in our nation’s Constitution.

  The political action, however, is yet to meet the people’s intent. The politics is the problem, and the lack of morally courageous leadership. Changing the Constitution requires a ‘double majority’ referendum. But getting the support of a majority of voters in a majority of states is not unachievable—if only there were leaders willing to champion the cause.

  It makes you want to shake them. Tug their smug neckties. Yell obscenities to wake them from their cosy cocoons of power and galvanise them to action. But they are so busy clinging: clinging to power, and wielding it for little.

  In September 2017, it made my brain callus itch.

  I took myself off to the tropical island of Gili Air, near the coast of Lombok. As far from Australia as my frequent flyer points booked two days prior would take me. I tried not to think about the Constitution or the politics for one whole week. It was partially successful. But in between novels, swimming and bouts of intestinal trouble (it was the ice cubes, insidiously hidden in cocktails), I reflected on the past seven years.

  Seven years thinking about how Australia’s Constitution might be reformed to provide a fairer place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Seven years working with Indigenous leaders, constitutional lawyers, thought leaders and politicians, trying to find the common ground. Seven incredible years, where ingenuity, creativity and teamwork led to many triumphs; and too many defeats. A frustrating story, itching to be told.

  I’ve set out the intellectual case before, through legal articles, opinion pieces and TV arguments. A thesis. Now I want to tell the story of hunting the radical centre on Indigenous constitutional recognition.

  I tell it not as an Indigenous Australian. Though I was born in Melbourne, I don’t subscribe to Andrew Bolt’s strained and superficial definition of Indigeneity as meaning simply being born in a place.

  As a non-Indigenous advocate for Indigenous constitutional recognition, some would say I occupy a strange position. I am descended neither from First Nation, nor from British coloniser. I am descended from those who came after. My parents, like so many immigrants, came here in search of opportunity. But I have no dual citizenship (as far as I know). I am just Australian.

  As an Australian, I was filled with hope witnessing the unprecedented achievement of the First Nations’ Uluru Statement from the Heart, endorsed by a standing ovation of the Indigenous delegates at Uluru in May 2017. I saw how far we’d come in the political debate. I knew this was the best chance Australia had ever had, and perhaps will ever have, of meaningfully addressing the legacy of our colonial past.

  Then in October, in a statement full of lies and fearmongering, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the Uluru Statement, and hopes were dashed. It was a callous display of unilateral exercise of government power over the powerless. The historic First Nations consensus was rejected by yet another government that assumed it knows better what is good for Indigenous people, than Indigenous people themselves.

  Turnbull said the Australian people would not support a First Nations voice to Parliament—a constitutionally guaranteed Indigenous advisory body, to provide Indigenous input on laws and policies with respect to Indigenous affairs. I believe he is wrong. Omnipoll and now Newspoll research have proved him wrong: around 60 per cent of Australians support an Indigenous constitutional voice—and that is in the face of sustained government opposition.1

  I hold on to hope, because something extraordinary and historic was achieved at Uluru, creating a unique opportunity and momentum that will not easily be beaten. This moment is historically unprece
dented. Indigenous Australians formed a national consensus on the reforms they want. This has never happened before. Key conservative supporters of the proposed reforms are lined up and growing in number. Those constitutional conservatives (commentators, lawyers and politicians), who would usually argue ‘No’ to constitutional reform, on this issue are now saying ‘Yes’—to the same reform Indigenous people have asked for. This has never happened before either. Labor and the Greens support the proposals, and public advocacy for the Uluru Statement is growing ever louder. The nation seems poised on the verge of breakthrough progress in Indigenous affairs—in spite of the lack of political leadership.

  Just imagine if there was some.

  This book is not the full story of this achievement: the full story is decades of Indigenous advocacy for serious constitutional reform. This is only my story of seven years’ hard slog and teamwork, a mere snippet in the 200-plus years of our country’s search for reconciliation.

  It’s a story of politics, law and strategy. Of failed solutions and breakthrough ideas. Of bridging divides and forging unexpected alliances. Of changing our minds to adopt better solutions, and watching so many others slowly change theirs too. Of building empathy and seeing things from others’ points of view. Of searching for the elusive ‘radical centre’ and finding it exists—only to watch it undermined. Of standing up to power, despite the fear.

  This story is told drawing on my personal recollections, notes, emails and letters, as well as research material publicly available. My intent here is not to objectively recount the long history of this struggle, but to tell how it felt to be a part of the action: watching history being made by the reformers, revolutionaries and geniuses with whom I have been privileged to work—the leaders who try so hard to change Australia for the better, and may yet succeed.

  In many ways, I tell it as an outsider. It sometimes feels like you need to be either blackfella or whitefella—not immigrant descendant—to have a legitimate point of view about the past and future of our nation. In other ways, I tell it as an insider, observing from within the unfolding action in my work as constitutional reform adviser to Noel Pearson, one of the main drivers of the constitutional recognition movement.

  Yet this world and work are more than a job. I, like so many others, want to see a better and fairer nation, for all Australians. Primarily, therefore, I tell this story as a hopeful citizen. As an Australian who wants to see change in my lifetime.

  1

  Where I Come From

  WHITE AUSTRALIANS TEND to ask me where I’m from. ‘I’m from Richmond’ or ‘I’m from Melbourne’ isn’t usually the answer they’re looking for. What they’re really asking, politely and often out of genuine curiosity, is ‘How come you aren’t white?’

  It’s an understandable question. The common assumption that the typical Australian is of the pale-skinned European variety still prevails, despite our rich diversity. As if being white is self-explanatory, but being dark-skinned requires further justification—which seems odd, given the First Peoples of this land were black.

  Perhaps this fact has been successfully scrubbed out of our national memory and so our contemporary national identity? Witness the mainstream reaction to the performance of a traditional Aboriginal war dance on our Aussie Rules football field: the outrage suggested such cultural expression was somehow offensively un-Australian. Yet is there anything more Australian?

  I don’t mind explaining how I turned out to be Australian. It’s why I’m here, and why I have a stake in the Indigenous constitutional recognition debate. Perhaps my background is the reason I care.

  I’m Australian, yet not white, because the British—the former rulers of my ancestors’ subcontinent—took colonised peoples all around the world. My people were cheap labour. This brought hardship and injustice to my forebears. But it also, eventually, brought the opportunities and privilege of the West. My family story is shaped by the exploits of Empire. The shaping was both bad and good.

  In the land of my forebears, British rule exacerbated division. It pitted Hindu against Muslim and exploited schisms of caste and class. It gutted the Indian economy to feed British wealth and plundered Indian jewels to adorn British museums. White men with monocles called the shots over skinny brown bodies, sending reluctant Indian sepoys to fight for Crown and Commonwealth in return for the promise of independence. That independence came too late, and came with bloody fragmentation of the nation.

  The English word for the spoils of conquest or thievery, loot, is derived from a Hindi word, lut. As Indian politician Shashi Tharoor demonstrates in Inglorious Empire, the British relentlessly looted India and transformed the once prosperous—though far from perfect—nation into one of the poorest. Indians starved so their conquerors could prosper.

  The exploitation was also exported. The British took industrious Indians across the seas to the colonies, to flee the slums and see the world, and to pay their debts. Debts owed to their white landlords under crooked taxes, exacted through force and paid off through hard labour.

  My people were indentured servants sent via British ships to the Caribbean, Mauritius, Ceylon, Kenya, and to South Africa—where Mahatma Gandhi fought apartheid in relation to his own people but as a young advocate, it seems, not the blacks.

  It is confronting to read Gandhi’s descriptions of the Indigenous Africans as ‘savages’, differentiating his subcontinental crew of darkies as somehow superior to the African variety. As if there was a hierarchy: with whites at the top and Indians understandably below, but not as low down as the local blacks, whom he referred to with the derogatory term adopted by the ruling Afrikaners: ‘kaffirs’. How is it that even the Great Soul, the intelligent lawyer, bought into the colonial rhetoric?

  Colonialism is clever, its neat categories seductive. They become accepted, even by the oppressed, even as they try to resist. Even today. Even as we fight back, we fight among ourselves. This is how it clings to power.

  Gandhi was an inspiration to my family and me, so accounts of his early racism are dispiriting. His views about Africans seemed to broaden as he aged, however. Gandhi went on to lead India’s nonviolent resistance to British rule. Perhaps he was just a lawyer, working each legal and political system as best he could given the circumstances and politics. Perhaps he just had to worry about his own people first and foremost. History is never just one thing. In colonial stories, heroism and villainy coalesce and combine.

  Here in Australia, some call for removal of statues of white colonialists—Arthur Phillip, Governor Macquarie, Captain James Cook. Others defend their colonial legacies. Maybe both are right. In 2016, some Ghanaians protested about Gandhi’s alleged racist attitudes and called for a statue to be toppled.1 But in South Africa, the heroic Nelson Mandela said the Mahatma’s teachings helped topple apartheid.

  Colonialism may be clever, but its heroes and villains are never clear-cut.

  My mother’s family went from Andhra Pradesh in South India to the Pacific islands of Fiji. They were girmitiyas, contracted under indentured-service agreements to grow sugarcane for the British. After serving out their indenture many settled in Fiji. They stayed for generations, and called themselves Fijian-Indians.

  Mum is one of seven Fijian-Indian siblings who were born and grew up on a sugarcane farm in Lovu, near Lautoka in the west of the island of Viti Levu. Her mother’s mother was known as a holy woman in a village further inland, deep in the hills. It was either holiness, or hallucinations. My grandmother told me the stories: the old woman would disappear into the jungle to chant and pray, then return dishevelled, her hair matted. She was a spiritual teacher, privy to the ways of ghosts and gods. My grandmother Nani learned from her.

  Nani now lives between Fiji and Australia, moving between adult daughters. She is tiny and buoyant and prays daily to Krishna, and to the famous Indian guru Sai Baba—the fraud reports on 60 Minutes held no sway against her convictions. Though dead, Baba still visits her personally from time to time, his afro hal
oed in godly light.

  Her praying weaves its miracles. At ninety-two, she remains a nimble soul who finds hilarity in small things despite having lived a hard life. Hers was a ‘love marriage’, ironically. Mum’s father was a vivacious headmaster at the Lovu school, a champion of his children’s education, and an alcoholic.

  Things in Fiji were tough and simple. Mum and her siblings walked barefoot to school, studied, worked in the sugarcane, and hid under the house when necessary. The house was raised to accommodate floods, and children scared of thumps and screams. They didn’t have much, but they had each other and their education.

  Mum was a smart, studious and quiet girl. She prayed daily to Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, wisdom and learning, and sought solace in nature, the moon and stars. She wanted to be an astronaut, to travel to space, and kept a textbook under her pillow, open on the key page so its lessons could seep into her brain. I tried this once with maths and saw numbers in my sleep.

  Education was the family’s passion. Mum recounted once being sent home from school because fees hadn’t been paid. She sobs like a child recalling how she had to leave class, when she was so eager to learn. Each of the siblings remains scarred in their own way—the brother perhaps most of all, for he was a boy and couldn’t protect them. Today the children are grown up: doctors, teachers and a nurse. Education bred gumption.

  Once, on a visit home during her uni holidays in Australia, Mum poured a full bottle of her dad’s whiskey down the sink. He ceased yelling, perhaps in awe. He had insisted on university education, and now the balance of power was shifting. Soon the women would rule the roost.

  Our family culture is determined by the feisty Fijian-Indian females from that sugarcane farm in Lovu. They grew up full of sass and sex appeal, with skinny Third World legs adorned in seventies flares and miniskirts, eventually sporting kick-arse curves fed by Western junk from uni cafeterias. They were quick to attract husbands; some attracted two. They became six matriarchs, presiding over their raucous brown progeny, creating their own educated empire that extends now from Fiji to Australia, New Zealand and the UK, yet remaining tied to each other and to Nani, their long-suffering mother, under whose distant guidance you could say they attempted to colonise the West right back. My cousins and I were forged by these fire-tongued women. They raised children who could think and talk. Women ready to battle. The powerful conquerors of our own destinies.