The debate regarding the Voice to Parliament has, as expected, degenerated into a treacherous campaign of misinformation by the naysayers. The extreme right, as usual, seems intent on just fostering more division.
I think most intelligent Australians are aware of the appalling acts that were perpetrated on Aboriginal people and the dislocation from their tribal lands, after white colonisation. Now after 235 years that can’t, and isn’t going to be, undone; Australia’s population is now made up of people from ‘all the lands on Earth’ and we all ‘call Australia home’.
One of the main arguments from the naysayers is ‘I wasn’t there 200 years ago and what happened wasn’t my fault’; what an arrogant copout. None of us was there 200 years ago but that doesn’t mean we now can’t try new ways to rectify many longstanding problems affecting Aboriginal people who have been marginalised for years.
There has been a lot of money spent over those years on Aboriginal issues with limited results. Maybe it’s time, and just makes good sense, to give Aboriginal people more say in those difficult issues that affect their wellbeing. There is an old saying that ‘with responsibility comes self-esteem and success’.
Another p**s-weak argument by the extreme right is ‘why is Albanese rushing this referendum through, and where is the all the detail’. Well Albanese took it to the last election which he won, therefore he has a mandate to do it.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
