Our attitude must change

NEVER in the history of voting has a cause been pushed in my face more than the YES vote. Voting is a choice and suddenly as someone that had done all my research, all my reflecting and was confident on where my vote was leaning towards, I am not sure I want to vote either way. If we are talking about listening to the people, well, if we are hearing there is a NO vote campaign also out there and if we are listening, we should not be biased and listen to all the voices. I do not need to read or hear councils, organisations and individuals telling me that YES is the better vote, I am quite capable of making up my own mind and I know there will be a lot of confused people that are going to follow the voice that shouts loud.

I came to this country as an immigrant in the seventies. I have since that day embraced this country, its people, which to me is our indigenous people and have made it my goal to fill my ignorance of them with readings, stories, and some from the indigenous people themselves. Since becoming a citizen not too long after my arrival I have always felt Australian, even if I have kept some culture from my country. I have been entitled to the same thing as every other Australian and I have never expected or demanded anything less. What I do not understand is that who do we think we are if we must give our true owners of this country permission to be in our referendums. They are no less Australian than any one of us and if we have said sorry in the past and nothing has changed, if we say things but our attitude does not change nothing is going to change. There is always going to be that division. We are all Australians and entitled to the same things.

Our indigenous Australians do not need our vote to say that they have every right like anyone of us and if I and every other Australian do not need a referendum to be entitled to have a voice then they should be entitled to nothing less. This has become so much about politics and less about our people and long after the referendum decision has been made nothing is going to change.

The only thing that needs to change is our attitudes and perhaps if there can be a referendum on that we will start treating every single Australian to way they should be treated.

How arrogant are we to think that we have the right to say YES or NO. Give them a voice like anyone of us and then there will be no need for a waste of voting time. For goodness sake when will it stop being them and us?

Dilene Hinton, Inverloch