00:00 A year ago, or 18 months ago probably more like, you were standing at Gama when Anthony
00:06 Albanese announced the voice would be, the referendum would be going ahead.
00:11 Now 18 months later, how have you changed and how has the debate changed in your eyes?
00:18 Sadly I think my worst fears have been realised in that these things are too big for the media.
00:27 I don't think we can squeeze in the fragility of 200 years of this history into a newspaper
00:34 headline or a television news grab or a radio interview or a debate.
00:41 These things are too much for our media and our politics and so we trivialise and we distort
00:49 and we platform rhetoric and we shout but we don't really speak.
00:56 The animosity of the debate has increased over the past year, two years.
01:03 Do you think the media are to blame for that?
01:05 I don't think the animosity has increased, I think the media has just given it a voice.
01:11 Some of the ludicrous stories that have been platformed, some of the hateful things that
01:16 have been platformed, racism platformed.
01:19 And I think personally, I think there needs to be a reckoning in media around the destructive
01:26 tendencies and instincts of what passes for media coverage and the need for a more constructive
01:31 approach to actually start with what we agree upon rather than what we disagree upon.
01:37 We're in the Northern Territory so it would be remiss of me not to ask a Northern Territory
01:42 centred question.
01:43 One in four people here are Indigenous and they're a population of people who would likely
01:49 largely be affected by the outcome of this referendum, whichever way it goes.
01:55 Is that something that voters in the Territory should be keeping in mind?
02:00 I think it means a lot to all of us.
02:02 I think the voice is something that cuts across so many things in our country.
02:08 There is the reality of the failure of policy to achieve the outcomes that First Nations
02:16 people so desperately need.
02:18 And I think you would hope with representation that allows a stronger input from Aboriginal
02:25 communities through an enshrined voice brings about those sort of policy outcomes that people
02:31 so desperately need.
02:33 These things that are much bigger than what we will vote on one particular day because
02:39 we'll have to wake up the next day and ask ourselves again, who are we?
02:44 What does it mean to be Australian?
02:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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