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Home >News >YES! to a first-nations voice to Parliament

YES! to a first-nations voice to Parliament

2023-04-13

via We Are Union

Racial justice and first-nations justice is indivisible from economic justice, and not just because some of our members are first nations people.

Victorian Trades Hall Council will proudly serve as a hub for the YES! campaign, lending our campaigning skills and resources to the effort to win a Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to parliament.

Many of our volunteers are already gearing up, ready to have conversations with their communities about the importance of a Yes vote. Every week day sees dozens of ordinary Australians streaming into Trades Hall to pick up corflutes (yard signs), posters, and commemorative YES campaign T-shirts.  

Over 100 activists have already attended Voice campaign conversations training, facilitated by Marcus Stewart, proud Nira illim bulluk man, "Yes" campaigner, and member of the Referendum Working Group, with assistance from Trades Hall's organisers and campaigners.

The activity recalls the hall's proud tradition of campaigning in referenda. Trades Hall was also the home of the 1916 and 1917 referenda on conscription, and hosted hundreds of actions during the 2017 Equal Marriage plebiscite. But the union movement's commitment to the Voice campaign goes deeper than tradition.

Voice is union business

Racial justice and first-nations justice is indivisible from economic justice, and not just because some of our members are first nations people.

The success of the labour movement depends on the unity of the working class. While our first nations brothers and sisters are denied a voice over the issues that affect them then the voice of the working class is diminished.

As unionists we insist upon the principle that every worker should have a say over the conditions of their employment and the policies under which they live. “Nothing about us without us” - no exceptions. Where politicians of any persuasion can get away with imposing policy on a community without consultation, it is in the interests of the working class to change the system. That is true whether the community is welfare recipients, public housing tenants, or Aboriginal people.

Some fantastic Murri comrades summed it up in the 60s -

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together”.

Our solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander comrades is not charity. It is the struggle of the working class.

We rise together.