www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/contributor/leah-swann
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​Back in 2023, I posted this. Sadly, the No vote got up and our nation remains in limbo.



"Right now I’m travelling home from Venice, a beautiful, crazy, labyrinthine city celebrated for the spell it casts on all who visit.
The thing about Venice’s famous identity is that it was consciously made. Although built over centuries, the city has a stunning coherence that floods the eyes and the heart like a single artefact.
While I've loved my time in Venice, I'm glad to be coming home for a crucial moment in our own identity-building – a constitutionally recognised voice for First Nations Australians, an identity for more than a city – for a special country at the bottom of the world, with incredible lands, cultures and peoples.
Back when I was twenty five, after a few years as a journalist, I got a media job at ATSIC. What followed was an eye-opening journey into the painful administration of Aboriginal Affairs, and, on many field trips and through making friends, an insight into the astounding richness of an ancient, holistic culture in harmony with nature in ways most of us can barely imagine. I saw beautiful art works, hopeful First Nations young people starting businesses, took part in grassroots movements towards the first Sorry Day and the national Sea of Hands, read the RCDIAC recommendations, and interviewed women who’d had their children taken from them.
One mother started drinking to numb the pain. She reconnected with one of her children, a son, decades later.
“I knew him as a little boy. Now, as a man. But I didn’t see the turning. They took that from me. I can never see it. Never be part of it.”
Another woman lay down on the road where the van containing her three stolen children had driven away. She was still lying there the next day, when members of her community found her and carried her home.
“They told us the children would have a better life,” she told me. “But it wasn’t a better life."
What these families suffered can never be undone.
Years later, I went to work at World Vision – an organisation with a mind-blowing humanitarian footprint in 100 countries that owes its success to a proven development principal – communities thrive when they have a say in the decisions that affect them.
This is undeniable.
This is what the vote today is asking for – a mechanism for First Nations people to have a say in what happens in their communities.
No-one will be hurt by it.
And there is so much to be gained.
First Nations people can build the skills and capabilities sought by local communities themselves, transforming the lives of children and addressing their long-term needs.
And we – by whom I mean the 97 percent of Australians who are migrants or descended from migrants – get to take a step forward in friendship and healing, and intentionally build a nation where fairness exists for everyone, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike.
As Noel Pearson said in his Garma speech, there are three great elements that can be woven together for this nation – ancient, 65,000 year old Indigenous beginnings, the British rule of law, and the great achievement of our multicultural unity.
These threads make us unique among the world’s nations.
Pearson is speaking from a visionary standpoint – seeing what is possible.
The very phrase, a Voice TO Parliament, expresses the idea that there’s no overnight cure to the issues First Nations people face.
This is not a problem to be solved, but a vision to be enacted.
In Venice, the extraordinary did not happen by accident. It began with a vision that evolved and transformed organically, embracing new elements as the centuries passed, re-inventing itself – and Venetians are proud of their culture.
A Voice to Parliament would work with what exists – the government of the day. It could be the beginning of a new direction for our nation.
At World Vision, I heard a colleague lay out why he’s voting YES:
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 "With my head, because the evidence is clear a Voice will work. Communities do better when they are listened to.
With my heart, because this is what First Nations Australians are asking of us. I’m listening. More than 80 percent of First Nations people want us to vote Yes. It’s crystal clear.
With my hand. Because First Nations people did the work, had the consultations, jumped through the hoops, wrote the Uluru Statement, worked their guts out to find a way forward – and now it’s up to us. This could be the single most powerful word I ever write when it comes to putting this nation on the right track for a harmonious future."

I’m with him. And this word will be Yes.
Because Venice, like Rome, wasn’t built in a day – no great civilizations are. But I believe that a constitutional Voice to Parliament is the next step towards a mature Australia."