The Voice referendum: A moral question, not a political toy

Highly politicised conversations on the Voice to Parliament has Australia in an “oppositional binary”, Wiradjuri reverend Glenn Loughrey says.

The ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns are widely launching their advertisements with the referendum possibly five months away.

This referendum is attempting to realise the Uluru Statement from the Heart, “[an] absurd, generous offering to Australian people”, Glenn said.

“The people who were decimated by those who came here are now saying, ‘We’d like you to walk with us while we make Australia a better place,’ ” he said.

“If you’re not heard, you’re not seen. And if you’re not seen, you don’t exist. You are ‘Persona nullius’ …an empty person, empty shell of something”.

Though now a proud Wiradjuri man, it took Glenn multiple decades to fully understand and embrace his Aboriginal identity.

Glenn said he grew up in a family that “for a whole lot of historical reasons… didn’t identify as Aboriginal”.

“My parents, my uncles, and aunts, even up until this day, don’t talk about who my grandmother really was. It’s just a family secret, but everybody else knew what it was,” he said.

At 68 years old, Glenn is a reverend, author, artist, ANU honorary associate professor, and chairman of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Commission.

Glenn has been the vicar of St Oswald’s in Glen Iris for the past eight years, temporarily pausing to put his voice towards this referendum.

Campaigning for the Voice across Australia full-time, yindyamarra, meaning ‘everything and everybody go slowly and be gentle’ is central to Glenn’s work.

But only recently did Glenn start to feel comfortable to say “this is who I am. I know who I am and I’m okay to be who I am”.

Glenn had an inbuilt “fragility meter… when [getting] up in front of a group of white people”.

“I [would think], ‘Just how much truth can I tell these people before they put me back on the mission… How much are people capable of listening to before they… take it out on me?,’ ” he said.

This referendum is not about constitutional law but instead “a very simple moral and ethical and… spiritual question,” Glenn said.

“I’m fearful, like many Aboriginal people, that if… 60% of Australians vote no, every time I walk into a room, I’m looking around to see which of the 60% doesn’t want me there,” the reverend said.

“It’s a process and over the next three, four, five generations, we will solve all these problems, but we are not going to do it in the next electoral cycle”.