2023 Dungala Kaiela Oration
The Vice-Chancellor’s welcome to the Dungala Kaiela Oration, delivered at the Rumbalara Football Netball Club on Thursday 24 August 2023.
Thank you Uncle Dixie Patten; thank you Uncle Colin Walker and Belinda Briggs.
It’s fantastic to be in Shepparton again, and once more at the Rumbalara Football Netball Club. I acknowledge all the Elders of the Yorta Yorta people, and the Elders of all the Indigenous peoples of Australia who have collectively cared for the lands and waterways of this vast continent for many tens of thousands of years. I pay my respects to the Elders past and present, and I acknowledge Indigenous people present or viewing this event.
I also particularly acknowledge Paul Briggs and everyone at the Kaiela Institute. Paul is always incredibly welcoming whenever we are on Yorta Yorta country, and I have learned a huge amount from him over my years in Australia. I also appreciate Paul’s unique contribution to the University over many years. In 2005 he became the first Indigenous man to be a member of the University Council, which is our supreme governance body. And he has made an extraordinary contribution through Rumbalara in the Academy of Sport, Health and Education (ASHE) partnership for the past 19 years, and the Dungala Kaiela Oration for 15 years. Paul is a great leader who is inspiring a new generation of other leaders here in Shepparton, including a number of people who are in the room and will be on the platform tonight, and I want to record my gratitude for Paul’s longstanding and continuing leadership.
I also acknowledge the Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, Jane Hansen.
I am delighted to welcome Professor Megan Davis, the Dungala Kaiela Orator for 2023. We are really delighted that you have travelled to be with us, Megan, for this important event and at this obviously very important time in the life of the nation.
The Dungala Kaiela Oration is about giving Indigenous people a voice, particularly here in the Goulburn Valley region, though I also think that the importance of the messages spoken here year by year goes out well beyond the Goulburn Valley, to the whole of the Australian nation and even to other countries beyond Australia.
Not all the speakers who have given the Dungala Kaiela Oration have been Indigenous, though many are. But every single Orator who has ever spoken here has understood and emphasised the importance of empowering the Indigenous voice, Indigenous self-determination, and Indigenous culture as something vital and permanent in the life of this country.
And I think that the great work that you and Pat Anderson and many others have done in advancing the agenda of the Uluru Statement through to where we are now, on the cusp of a national Referendum vote to, I sincerely hope, enshrine a Voice in the Constitution of Australia, is very much in sync with the work that Paul and Kaiela and Indigenous communities around Australia, and their partners of recent years like the University that I lead (and I know, the University at which you work, Megan) have been supporting for some years now too.
The Voice to Parliament is not a huge ask on the nation. It is a mechanism, albeit a very important one, for hearing from Indigenous people themselves, in a public forum and with the ear of government, about matters of importance to Aboriginal people.
This seems a no-brainer to me. The Voice should be enshrined in the Constitution of Australia. But we know that it is not automatic that it will happen.
Accordingly, speaking tonight as the leader of one of the country’s significant cultural and education institutions, it is clear that we also, at the University of Melbourne, need to be present in the public discussion that leads into the Referendum vote.
Big universities, I have to admit, can be a bit unruly, and hard to unite and make agree on many things. (It could be a bit like trying to get everyone in Shepparton to vote the same way in an election: I don’t know how that would go.)
But I am pleased, and it is significant that all the leadership groups at the University of Melbourne have come together firmly behind the Voice.
The University’s Executive, which is the leadership group that includes all the Deans and Deputy Vice-Chancellors along with myself, the University of Melbourne’s governing Council, and its main academic body, the Academic Board, have all come out publicly in favour of a ‘yes’ vote.
We have all opted to make this a publicindication of our leadership support because we believe this to be a matter of public principle, not private opinion.
The fact that we have done this is, in a significant way, is because of the direct influence of our guest speaker, Megan Davis.
My experience of hearing Megan speak at the Universities Australia Conference in March this year struck home with me. I want to quote some of what you said, Megan, on that occasion at the universities’ conference:
‘I don’t really stomach that we [universities] are mere facilitators of … debate ….
Universities say that they don’t want to be political, but the decision not to take a stance for Uluru and for the Voice to parliament is a political decision.
Silence is political. …’1
I came straight back home from that conference with those words – ‘silence is political’ – ringing in my ears. Straight away I started to speak with my colleagues at the University of Melbourne about how we can make a public statement or statements on the Voice.
It is never straightforward to get everyone agreeing on anything in a university (as I’ve said), but we made considerable efforts to talk it through, and in the end, I was able to secure the clear leadership support for the Voice that we did.
I finally want to add that this is also personal, for me. My wife Sarah and I recently became Australian citizens – just last month – and this will be the first matter that we vote on in Australia. I'm very pleased and proud of the fact that the Voice will be the first thing that I will vote on, because it is so important.
For me – and here I may go slightly beyond what some people think, but it’s a personal view – the fact is that we have to give Indigenous people a Voice to parliament because throughout the history of this nation in the past 250 years, Indigenous people have been appallingly treated.
Also, the Constitution of Australia still has problems with it. I am not a Constitutional expert like Megan, but I do not think that most Constitutions in the world have references to ‘race’, as ours still does.
And yes, 1967 was a step forward by removing an egregiously racist component of the original Constitution, and let’s remember what that original part which was removed in 1967 stated. It stated that ‘In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.’
It was a wise and moral thing for Australians to remove that clearly racist and unjustified component of the Constitution, as they did in 1967.
Now though, there is another decisive step to be taken, in the words of Uluru statement, and that is not just to ‘count’ Indigenous people but to let them be ‘heard’.
It is an honour to join with Paul in welcoming you, Megan, to speak with us at the Dungala Kaiela Oration tonight. Thank you, and thank you everyone for being here.
1. Opening Keynote Address | Professor Dr Megan Davis. Published to YouTube by Universities Australia, 28 February 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhQrsAKf6co