The Referendum on the Voice brings Australia to a threshold moment, since it looks not only to our past but to our future, not only to what we have been but to what we can become.
The Church is politically nonpartisan and does not mandate/dictate how one should vote.
It does, however, encourage all within the Catholic community to form their own (informed) decision regarding this referendum, first and foremost by reading the original source document – the Uluru Statement from the Heart – in full, and also to access the official Australian Electoral Commission document covering the yes and no positions.
In the video resource below Archbishop Mark Coleridge and Bishop Tim offer their own personal reflections on the enduring call of reconciliation and the experiences that will help inform their vote.
For further Church views, such as the endorsement of the Uluru Statement from the Heart (as distinct from the Referendum on the Voice) by the Archdiocese of Brisbane, and the Plenary Council of Australia you can link here and here.
A more recent Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference statements on the Referendum is linked to here.
Transcript
Archbishop Mark Coleridge:
I don’t think anyone doubts that with the referendum on The Voice coming the whole nation stands at a fairly crucial moment on our journey together and I do underline together. Because the referendum on The Voice whatever your position may be is a moment for the whole nation, it’s not just about the three percent who identify as indigenous it is about the hundred percent of us who identify as Australian. Because I think we do have a sense that this referendum, which is the tip of an iceberg. As it were goes to the heart of the national life. My own view and I’m here with Bishop Tim Norton is that the whole question of reconciliation going back to the beginnings of European settlement in Australia really has been and remains a running sore at the heart of the nation. And until the running sore is healed, Australia will never quite be the nation that we are capable of being. So, in that sense, as far as I can see the referendum is about unlocking the potential, not just of our indigenous peoples and the gift that they are. But unlocking the vast potential of Australia as a nation, but that can’t happen unless there is the fundamental healing that reconciliation looks to.
Bishop Tim Norton SVD:
Well as you say Mark it’s a decision for the whole country, but it’s a personal decision for every Australian person. And from my personal point of view, I did a walk as you know to Cherbourg the community of Cherbourg here in the Archdiocese it was a 300K walk. It was both fundraising and awareness raising for Emmanuel City Mission. But Cherbourg is the most disadvantaged local community in the country, in the country. And between 2019 and 2022 there were nineteen youth suicides, nineteen. So, stats like that, we you and I, people like us, we can’t fix this, we absolutely can’t fix this it’s only indigenous people that will know, in a sense how we might approach this therefore, their voice is very critical in these sorts of things what we’ve done really hasn’t worked so well in the past at all.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge:
I think what we’ve done is treat the symptoms but not the causes. And in doing that the symptoms have just recurred again and again and again. And I listen to the voices of people like Bishop Charles Gautier up in Darwin, our old mate. And he describes the situation of the indigenous peoples in the Territory as being apocalyptic. I’ve come to recognise that the status quo is not an option. And I don’t think anyone claims that it is. I think we’ve got to ask the question, not what might go wrong but what needs to happen for things to go right. For things to be better.
Bishop Tim Norton SVD:
As a Divine word missionary I tend to look at these things I suppose it in a somewhat more global situation. So, looking at truth and reconciliation commissions across the world where people have been damaged and it’s often indigenous people who’ve been hurt so much. So, in Australia we actually have as Christians an opportunity here to pursue reconciliation and when opportunities come our way as Christians, I think it’s not just staying with the past, it’s actually trying to work a way forward and from Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 5, we’ve been given this ministry of reconciliation it’s ours to work with and we’ve got an opportunity here.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge:
Yeah, and in the midst of all of that I think we have to find, we as the church, you know, as gospel people, we have to find a genuinely Christian voice. A genuinely gospel voice we’re not politicians, we’re not activists, we’re not lobbyists or anything of that kind. So, in the end I think we’ve got to, our contribution and it is unique, is to speak with a gospel voice which ultimately becomes the voice of Jesus himself.
Bishop Tim Norton SVD:
Yeah, this is an opportunity now that we as Christian people have to really, so that indigenous people can actually be the subject of their own history. And we have this opportunity, it’s the Christian way, it’s reconciliation, it’s this historic moment, I think it’s time to take it.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge:
So, there will be disagreement, we all know that. The call is surely for us to listen to each other. And that can be harder than it sounds. And in listening to each other, to disagree, if we do disagree, to disagree respectfully. And for all of us surely to agree that something, even if the referendum fails, that something needs to be done to tackle these underlying causes in a way that will in fact bring the whole nation together. With the running sore at the heart of the nation healed and a whole new future beckoning. So, the stakes are high, but if the referendum fails, the journey will go on. And we will be absolutely part of that journey. But in the very distinctive way of the gospel and in the end of Jesus Christ.