It did not take long. Things started getting ominous as soon as Ken Wyatt had delivered his speech on the proposed referendum the day before. By mid August, it was all but done for. Here, however, is a pertinent commentary from a veteran of the several recent parliamentary enquiries – all inconclusive – committee co-chair, Senator Patrick Dodson, an Indigenous Senator from WA, who speaks with long experience and commonsense. Dodson is blunt, rightly so: “We either deliver the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full or continue down the failed path of soft reconciliation measures”. WfaAR comments that there is no reconciled Republic on offer on this track because there is no central focus to rally the cause around. On the link is the article that he had published in Nine Media the next day. [“Treaty when? Dodson warns of betrayal and airbrushing of Indigenous ambition” by Patrick Dodson, Nine Media, 11 July 2019]
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
