We love to walk - it's what we do. We love history - we do that with equal passion. And as many placards read yesterday - "History is calling."

Yesterday, Sydney and cities around Australia walked in support of a constitutional amendment to create an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. What walk!

A reading of Australia's past and its present is where we find the overwhelming reasons in favour of this important nation building constitutional amendment. It's essential infrastructure for the nation's soul!

Yesterday's march in Sydney kicked off at Redfern Park, where Paul Keating concluded his Redfern address just over 30 years ago with these words.

"There is one thing today we cannot imagine.
We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose
genius and resilience maintained a culture here through
fifty thousand years or more, through cataclysmic changes
to the climate and environment, and who then survived two
centuries of disposession and abuse, will be denied their
place in the modern Australian nation.
We cannot imagine that.
We cannot imagine that we will fail"

In the same speech, Keating also pointed out -
"We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own
conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course,
the world and the people of our region would not.
There should be no mistake about this, our success in
resolving these issues will have a significant bearing on
our standing in the world."

"It begins, I think, with that act of recognition
Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.
We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional
way of life.
We brought the diseases. The alcohol.
We committed the murders.
we took the children from their mothers.
We practised discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice."

Things wrapped up at Victoria Park with a performances from Dan Sultan and Missy Higgins. Love was in the air.

#love #yes #voteyes #ulurustatement #sydney #australia #history