DEAR News Of The Area,

I AM supporting the change to the Referendum because our Constitution needs to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the original inhabitants of Australia with over 60000 years of being here.

That’s a lot of years compared to the men who wrote our Constitution 122 years ago and did not acknowledge this pre-existence of our original inhabitants.

On a personal level I am supporting the change and the Voice because my great grandmother Margaret Hawkins did not have a voice.

Margaret was a Darkinjung woman born on the Upper McDonald River, a tributary of the Hawkesbury River, and at 30 she hit a policeman with a stocking at Windsor Police Station, was charged with assault and put in Parramatta psychiatric centre where she never came out of and died there 22 years later.

Margaret had what we now know as postnatal depression and my great grandfather, an Irishman, took her to the police station.

She never saw her six children again.

Margaret didn’t have a voice.

And neither do any other First Nations people who are incarcerated at horrific rates and so many die in custody.

A Voice to Parliament would be a practical way to stop incarceration at such high rates for what are often minor offences.

It’s nothing to be scared of.

And not much to ask for.

Regards,
Dianne JACOBUS,
Bellingen.