Mr Kent (Letters, 23 August), asks, if the Voice doesn’t have legislative authority and all parliament does anyway is ‘make mountains out of molehills’, why bother? ‘There are far too many questions,’ says Mr Kent before conjuring a few about proposals that no-one is suggesting, and comfortably chanting ‘No’. And yes, the Voice doesn’t mow the lawns, put out the garbage, do the dishes, or even, while we’re still in the kitchen, dumbfounded by a litter of straw windmills, whip up Mr Kent’s dreamt-of homogeneous flag in the blender.
So let’s make things easier and look at what the Voice might do instead of furphies about what it won’t do. As well as formalising respect for First Nations peoples and the suffering they have endured since colonisation, the Voice, to my understanding, aims to realise the idea that policy is best informed by those who are most affected by it. Not rocket science. No inherent time restrictions imposed on those speaking or listening. No inherent restrictions on the diversity of opinions that may be considered. Just a notion of good governance at least worth considering. We may one day even emulate the Welsh Well-being of Future Generations Act,2015, which obliges their parliament to consider the impacts of policy and legislation on future generations. But whoa there, that’s a dream for another day.
Right now we have the chance to honour our First Nations peoples and to enshrine the principle that their wishes, whether homogenous or not, should at least be considered by federal parliament on matters directly affecting them. As minimal as that may be, it embraces celebrating diversity in a grown-up democracy, not the entrenchment of division that so worries Mr Kent. Beyond the world of windmills, that entrenchment of division seems to me best served by the maintenance of the status quo. Let’s move on.
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. 
