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While Albanese calls ‘conspiracy’ to claims the Uluru Statement is more than one page, a new “authorised” and “official” book says just that.

A new twist in the Uluru Statement length saga has emerged.

For several years, the length of this document was not an issue. The official Referendum Council report and Uluru Statement authors casually, and without a hint of controversy, referenced its length as around 18 pages.

That changed dramatically when the length of the Statement became a political hot potato in August and its supporters made an astonishing turn of face.

The Government, the NIAA and Voice campaigners quickly changed their official tune. Now all reports that the Uluru Statement is more than one page are simply deemed ‘misinformation’ or – as even more strongly worded by the Prime Minister – a ‘conspiracy theory’.

What the Prime Minister didn’t need was new statements by Uluru and Voice architects contradicting the ‘conspiracy theory’ smears.

But that’s exactly what the PM got.

New ‘Authorised’ and ‘Official’ Book

Megan Davis and Pat Anderson – co-chairs of the Uluru Dialogue and architects of the Uluru Statement – published their new book on 30 August 2023.

Titled Our Voices From The Heart, it could not have a more pointed subtitle: The Authorised Story of the Community Campaign that Changed Australia.

The book establishes itself as “the official celebration” of the events that have led up to next month’s referendum.

As first highlighted in The Daily Telegraph, the newly “authorised” and “official” work casually claims – and again without the slightest hint of controversy – that the Uluru Statement is more than one page.

Evidently, the book was sent to the printers in China before the whole issue blew up in August.

The relevant section on page 146 reads:

“The Statement was drafted and overwhelmingly endorsed by the Convention’s delegates. It is 15 pages long and includes three elements: the one-page pitch to the Australian people; ‘Our Story’ of First Nations history of Australia; and the explanation of the legal reform.”

This three-part breakdown is precisely what ‘Document 14’ – labelled in a NIAA email as “The Uluru Statement – Long” contains:

1. Page 1: The one-page pitch.
2. Pages 2–7: Our Story (also published on the Uluru Statement website here).
3. Pages 8–26: legal reform. (In Document 14 there is the ‘Guiding Principles’ section which outlines the reform processes from pages 8–20. Then there is the ‘Roadmap’ section on pages 21–26 which lays out the staged implementation of these reforms from the 2017 Uluru convention to Treaty).

If you’re wondering why Davis has reported that the Uluru Statement is “18 pages”, “18–20 pages”, or here “15 pages”, an answer is readily apparent.

The publicly available Referendum Council report records 18 pages from the Uluru Statement. That’s why, in her speeches and now in her newly released book, Megan Davis has continually referred people to read that number of pages in the report.

But without going through the Referendum Council report and counting the exact number of pages, ‘close enough was good enough’.

Albanese’s Avoidance

It was astonishing to see the Prime Minister’s admission that he hadn’t read the full statement, despite committing to it “in full”. And he still hasn’t read it. This is why he continues to make claims about ‘Document 14’ that are not true.

Albanese was asked in question time about the new book by Davis and Anderson. To paraphrase the words of the Prime Minister, he ‘didn’t want to talk about that, but instead talked about everything else’.

The PM mentioned the claim that the Uluru Statement is 200 pages. But no one ever made such a ridiculous suggestion. (For the record, Documents 1–14 contain 112 pages.)

He repeated the same line that Document 14 is simply a record of ‘meeting minutes’. This is absurd.

It is true that Documents 1–13 are meeting minutes. Documents 1–12 are the minutes and records of the 12 Regional Dialogues held by the Referendum Council. Curious to know what time the Hobart Dialogue finished on 9 December 2016? No problem – you’ll find that on page 1 of Document 1. Good meeting minutes record those kinds of details.

Document 13 is simply a record of the meeting held in Canberra at the conclusion of the Regional Dialogues. The Referendum Council simply and helpfully numbered their documents 1–14 in the order the meetings occurred.

The 13th meeting in Canberra was also preparation for the 14^th and final one: the Uluru Convention. The convention was held in May 2017 at Voyages Resort, Yulara about 25 km north of Uluru. The offical report from this meeting – Document 14 – is titled ‘The Uluru Statement from the Heart’.

Document 14 is a carefully crafted, unashamed and sincere call to action to implement a treaty through a Voice to Parliament. It’s a clear example of a heartfelt ‘statement’, if you will.

A Proper Consultative Process?

In question time, Albanese claimed that in the lead-up to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, “there were hundreds of meetings involving thousands of Indigenous people.” If he’s referring to the 12 Regional Dialogues, this is simply not true.

As previously reported by the Daily Declaration,

Megan Davis, Noel Pearson, Rachael Perkins and Thomas Mayor (union representative), together with others involved behind the scenes such as Marcia Langton and Bruce Pascoe (an unverified Aboriginal person), organised the Uluru Statement convention…

In May 2017, twelve meetings were held across Australia and 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were chosen from 1200 possible candidates to participate at the gathering.

The Referendum Council has this on record:

The Dialogues are a series of meetings of Indigenous Australians, which were held around the country between December 2016 and May 2017. The purpose was to reach broad agreement…

Attendance to the Dialogues was by invitation only. This ensured each Dialogue was deliberative and reached consensus on the relevant issues. Meetings were capped at 100 participants: 60% of places were reserved for First Nations/traditional owner groups, 20% for community organisations and 20% for key individuals.

In other words, the organisers carefully handpicked who they wanted at the Regional Dialogues so that their pre-determined conclusion would be backed. The event organisers ‘stacked it so they’d back it’. Warren Mundine put it this way on X:

As for the Uluru Convention, the traditional owners weren’t invited and neither did they know about it. The 14^th meeting was strategically located at Uluru, but it advantageously avoided local elders who may have voiced disapproval.

Our Nation Needs Wisdom from Above

Albanese is clearly speaking without knowledge and uttering untruths. Proverbs 12:18–19 declares:

“There is one who speaks rashly, like a piercing sword;

but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Truthful lips endure forever,

but a lying tongue, only a moment.”

Proverbs record how life works most of the time. If you promote falsehoods, most of the time, the truth will find you out. This appears to be what’s happening, with a recent poll published on Monday by The Guardian showing these trends:

Polls can be wrong, of course, and many people remain undecided on how they will vote on October 14.

What is certain is that our nation, including our Prime Minister, needs to seek the wisdom that God gives from above. Such wisdom “is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits” (James 3:17).

Anything less, James tells us, is “earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15).

Let’s pray our nation chooses to listen to wise tongues that “bring healing” (Proverbs 12:18).

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Image: Screenshot of Sky News.