Professor Jakelin Troy, Director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at the University of Sydney, is in favour of a renewed campaign for the Republic but says it must to recognise the sovereignty of the country’s First Peoples. “Any new system of government should correctly recognise that Aboriginal Australians initially owned the country. A republic should include more Indigenous representation in our parliaments accompanied by a set of rights equivalent to treaty rights enshrined in law so that Aboriginal people don’t have to keep fighting.” She also foreshadows that there could be an Aboriginal Head of State at some stage. [“An Australian Republic ‘could benefit Aborigines’ ” by Carolyn Conlan, Al Jazeera online, 25 January 2016]. Read the full interview below.
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
