A Bill of Rights must stand above any future constitution and must be the guide to a new Australian Constitution. If we have to work within the framework of this old Royalist Constitution with all its enshrined inequalities and inequities and its protection of the minority called government then we will continually find ourselves battling against the odds. A Bill of Rights is a moral document and laws are made from it – not the other way around.

Noel Pearson, who is and has been a great advocate of Aboriginal Rights has lately given a highly emotional diatribe on ABCs RN. Sometime this week the Kings neoLibs, not forgetting of course that they have no power without the Nats, are due to hand down their internal report on the Uluru Statement .. what can we expect? We can expect the usual can kicking avoidance, clouded in false legalese, treating both us, the people of Australia, and the First Nations people – which let me be clear ARE, whether they realise, and whether they like it or not, part of the People of Australia – as ignorant slaves to a minority reactionary government. In the past I’ve had a lot of respect for Mr Pearson but here I have to take issue with him. He’s hurt, the indigenous people are hurt and they have every reason to be, but to say that unless we, the People of Australia, enable a referendum on the recommendations of the Uluru Statement he will bring down any referendum on a Self Determining Australian Republic is crass stupidity.

Mr Pearson says, “The Labor Party will have to choose .. between an Australian Republic & Indigenous Recognition”. This is a ridiculous statement Mr Pearson, because there will then be no choice. We, the people of Australia will choose an Australian Republic! An Australian Republic built on a Bill of Rights with a new Constitution will give indigenous Recognition as a matter of course – without this Republic the Indigenous Peoples will have to battle against both the evils of reaction and the ancient Constitution … just like all the rest of us.

Why on earth would you shoot yourself twice in the same foot, Mr Pearson? You say you want recognition and therefore reconciliation in the current Royalist Constitution, before a Republic. The current Australian Constitution cannot allow what you ask for. It’s designed not to allow it to happen and the current parliamentary system, with a bunch of reactionary neoliberals determined to protect their self interest alone, will find you their greatest ally. You will effectively be joining with your, and the People of Australia’s, greatest enemy to bring down your only hope, our only hope – democracy, equality under the law and social equity – an Australian Republic.

It is not just the Indigenous Peoples that have less rights, now, under this current Constitution .. the past 5 years have seen much of progressive democratic Australia stripped of their Natural, their Democratic and their Civil Rights. The royalist Australian Constitution allows this. It’s designed for this. Australia can have no Republic, Australia can not have Democracy, and the First Nations will not get Recognition & Reconciliation under the current Constitution. Read it, Mr Pearson.

We, all of us, must join together and produce a Bill of Rights – it’s a simple document and requires neither government aid nor interventions to produce. An Australian Bill of Rights is the founding document of a Free, Equal and Equitable Republican Democracy.

The only true opposition that the framing of such a document as a Bill of Rights will come from, is from those who wish to enshrine self interested protections within it. They will use all the unequal powers and tricks hidden within an old outmoded constitution to hinder a document of social conscience. You will not get for your people, what the rest of us can’t, under the current Australian Constitution.

Do you Mr Pearson, intend to set up your people in a place of inequality and inequity with all the rest of the People of Australia?

Yes. Your people have been treated appallingly by Australia – through our self interested complacency – and they had been treated even more appallingly by previous generations of Australians .. but its Australia’s current Constitution that has allowed it to happen and the small minded bigotry of the Liberal, Country and now National Party, not the people of Australia.

Mr Pearson, you are an Australian. Mr Pearson, I am an Australian. Mr Pearson, I have less rights than you and less opportunities under the neoliberal interpretation of this current Royalist Constitution. If you believe, as it is apparent that you do, that you can decide how indigenous people will approach a Republican referendum, then Mr Pearson make them Republicans and make them throw aside their petty self interests and join with us, the people of Australia, to enable a Bill of Rights – with or without the government.

“I am, we are, YOU are Australian!”