Irish For The Voice

Looking forward to this
Yes23 supporter thank you and online information session - options of Monday 12noon or 6pm AEDT

Yes23 Supporter thank you and information session | Humanitix Get tickets on Humanitix - Yes23 Supporter thank you and information session. Online. Dates from Sunday 5th November 2023. Find event information.

Image via https://twitter.com/TonyIKnow

The Voice: A letter to the 39 per cent | Footyology The Voice: A letter to the 39 per cent Posted by Martin Flanagan | Oct 16, 2023 | Other Stuff, Society | 0 | Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo hugs Yes23 director Dean Parkin after the referendum was defeated. Photo: GETTY IMAGES 1. There Was No ‘NO’ case. I spent two weeks with my head inside the NO c...

'Lowering our flags to half mast..'

A week of silence of the Voice 💔

From Dom Beckett - A Sydney based lawyer with 20 years experience in Native Title negotiations. -
It is just days before referendum weekend. I will be voting "yes" and am encouraging others to do likewise. Why? Because I think it is right to formally acknowledge the special place of Australia's First Nations in our Constitution. Because the Voice proposal is the culmination of a long consultative process about how best to do this, and is over-whelmingly supported by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves. Because Commonwealth laws and government policy affecting Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders can only be improved by them having a representative and advisory Voice. Because contrary to some of the silly things being said, the Voice proposal is clearly about national reconciliation - it is simply not about division. I have worked in Aboriginal land rights, native title and related areas for more than two decades. There is room for disagreement about how best to get things done. But it deeply troubles me that so much of what I am hearing from the "no" side is whipped up fear-laden rubbish.

❤️

SOUL POWER! Watch our rally on YouTube or Facebook. This will put hope in your heart. Watch our incredible rally with top-class speakers & musicians incl legendary figures. Not to be missed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-MZ1i_zd7c

UP: Uprising of the People Ltd Wesley Mission Senator Malarndirri McCarthy - Northern Territory Mary Doyle MP Áine Tyrrell Rachel Perkins SHANE HOWARD - GOANNA Steo Wall Anne Casey

Watch! Inspiring Irish-Australia Rally for Indigenous Voice Referendum Host Ruairí McKiernan joined by poet Anne Casey (03:26), Aunty Kathy Donnelly (06:00) (Wesley Mission/Baabayn Aboriginal leaders group) with Aunty Elaine and...

Thank you Senator Senator Malarndirri McCarthy - Northern Territory for your support for Irish For The Voice and for sharing a bit about your Irish heritage and wisdom about why the Voice is needed. We will keep working for justice, for as long as this takes.

Malarndirri’s message to ‘Irish for Yes’ � ��❤️ This is "Malarndirri’s message to ‘Irish for Yes’ � ��❤️" by jamal ben haddou on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people…

We'll be livestreaming our big online Rally For The Voice from 8pm AEDT on Facebook Live or you can join on Zoom. Great line-up of speakers and performers, join us! www.facebook.com/irishforthevoice.com

www.facebook.com

Our big online rally will be streamed here on Facebook from 8pm AEDT. Or join on Zoom. Spread the word!

Delighted renowned humanitarian Rev Tim Costello is joining us tonight for our big virtual rally! 8pm AEDT with amazing line-up of speakers and performers. Going to be huge! On http://facebook.com/irishforthevoice live or Zoom http://irishforthevoice.com/virtual.html

Come hear the amazing filmmaker & campaigner Rachel Perkins at our online rally tomorrow/Thurs 8pm AEDT alongside amazing line-up of speakers and performers. It's going to be huge!
https://irishforthevoice.com/virtual.html #/

Great Irish for the Voice gathering in Naarm / Melbourne! Next step our big online rally Thursday 8pm AEDT with amazing line-up of speakers and musicians. Register https://www.irishforthevoice.com/virtual

Join us Thursday October 12th 8pm-9.30pm AEDT for the Irish For The Voice online rally for yes. With lots of guests including filmmaker Rachel Perkins, Mililma May (Uprising of the People), legendary novelist Thomas Keneally, musician Shane Howard (Goanna), musician Áine Tyrrell, Mary Doyle MP, poet Anne Casey, author and journalist Martin Flanagan, musician Steo Wall (live from Ireland), Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, Professor Pat McGorry, Alex Greenwich MP and lots more. Register online, get Zoom link in your email (check spam if you don't get it) and please spread the word.

https://www.irishforthevoice.com/virtual.html #/

Delighted Mililma May, Cofounder UP: Uprising of the People Ltd
will join our online rally Thurs 8pm AEDT.Also Rachel Perkins, novelist Thomas Keneally, musician Áine Tyrrell, poet Anne Casey, author Martin Flanagan, Alex Greenwich MP, Prof Pat McGorry, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy - Northern Territory and more. http://irishforthevoice.com/virtual.html

Great to see lots of Irish folks campaigning for the Yes vote in Victoria! Andy White Mary Doyle MP

If you haven't already, make sure you RSVP to our photo call tomorrow, 6pm at the State Library ☘️

https://www.irishforthevoice.com/melbourne-event.html

IRISH AUSTRALIA SAYS YES! Thanks to all who gathered in Sydney today. Next stop Melbourne Tuesday 6pm and online Thurs 8pm. Register www.irishforthevoice.com and spread the word!

See you in Sydney tomorrow/Sunday 11am! Meet Man O'War steps near the Opera House. Bring flags etc. Please register in advance www.irishforthevoice.com
# VoiceReferendum

Authorised by Ruairi McKiernan, Sydney St, Sydney, NSW

"Let me tell you a story about two Australian families, and a house. One of the families is mine.".....My mother’s side of the family originates from County Kerry, and the west coast of Ireland. They were Catholic, they were poor, they spoke Irish, not English - and because of centuries of British colonialism that had at one point stripped Irish Catholics of the right to own land, they had no property." --- Read in full below.

Let me tell you a story about two Australian families, and a house. One of the families is mine.

Get comfortable, it’s a twisty tale - and I’ll tell it as truthfully as I know it, as all the people I talk about in my own story are dead and, alas, can’t interrupt to correct me.

My mother’s side of the family originates from County Kerry, and the west coast of Ireland. They were Catholic, they were poor, they spoke Irish, not English - and because of centuries of British colonialism that had at one point stripped Irish Catholics of the right to own land, they had no property.

With so few prospects in the old country, my mother’s grandfather sought opportunity in a new one; he emigrated to Australia in 1908.

He got work as a sheep-shearer, which was hard and dirty and brutal. His young wife travelled with him, and my grandmother and her four siblings were all born in different places as the family travelled with him from sheep station to sheep station.

It was an unsustainable life, and the family of seven eventually moved back to Sydney, where there was an established Irish community in the inner city suburbs of Surry Hills, Newtown and Erskineville. These places are fancy now, but they used to be poor and rough. As far as I know, my grandmother and all her siblings were out of school and all working by the age of 14.

My grandmother found work as a retail assistant in a department store in Newtown, which is where she met my grandfather - another Irish Catholic boy from the community (and reputedly great fun at a party) who was also a retail assistant there.

The Depression hit, and retail work was suddenly unstable. My grandmother’s brothers went “on the wallaby” (although my family never used that term), going out to the Riverina to live as cheaply as possible off the land and take whatever work was on offer. My grandfather did whatever he had to do and took whatever work he could.

Australia hadn’t quite recovered from the Depression when World War II broke out. My grandfather deployed in the infantry and was gone for years. He never talked to the family about what he saw in active service, but late in life he did one day make a pile in the backyard of his old uniform, medals and war stuff, set it on fire and burn it to ash, which says much.

But what my grandfather and family did receive from his war service was a life-changing act of government policy.

The “War Service Homes” scheme provided veterans with the opportunity of low-cost government home loans with low insurance costs - which enabled my scrappy little working-class Catholic family to finally - finally - own property.

The house they built was barely more than a fibro shack on the grey sand of what was then an outer suburb of Sydney, but it transformed our fortunes. The whole family worked to pay off that loan - my mother left school at 15 - but the permanence of that house meant there was now always a roof over people’s heads whether they were in work or out of it, a place for them to go if their relationships went bad and they needed to get out of them, somewhere to rest if they got sick. Somewhere to be cared for and die when they got old.

All of this took financial strains off our family and enabled other opportunities. As my cousins and I got older, we pursued further education. One of my cousins moved in with our Nanna and studied, from that house, for her university degree.

With the help of that single housing asset, our family went from immigrant, itinerant shearers to University educated in three generations.

Many immigrant Australian families have similar stories of opportunity and transformation…

… But many Aboriginal Australian families don’t.

I told the story of the little fibro house and its role in our family’s class transition on a panel a few years ago. One of the other panellists was a Murri woman from Queensland.

Her family were also working class, and had also weathered the Depression at the rough end. Her grandfather had also served in WW2, and was a veteran like my own, bearing the same, unspoken witness to those unimaginable events.

But her grandfather wasn’t offered a loan for a “War Service Home” - because he was Aboriginal Australian, and Aboriginal Australian veterans were excluded from the scheme. And from the 1940s on - while my family were slowly building some intergenerational wealth with a cheap house subsidised by the government - her family couldn’t even get access to a commercial bank loan. Many families were not even able to open bank accounts, merely because they were Aboriginal Australians.

Remember - the referendum to confer full Australian citizenship rights on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians may have passed in 1967… but it took until 1975 for the Racial Discrimination Act to make discrimination illegal.

It’s mind-boggling: in 1974, the year I was born, racial discrimination was still LEGAL in Australia.

So, consider - before you even take in the dispossession of Aboriginal Australians from their land, the stealing of children, the racism, violence and abuse - at the key point in the economic and social trajectory of two Australian families, one single policy decision to discriminate against her family and benefit mine structuralised an ongoing inequality.

Yep, this woman and I sit on the same panels in a society that finally acknowledges our equality through the law… but her family has not had equal opportunities to mine. Her parents died far younger than mine did. Her entire community lives in the legacy of chaos and trauma and hardship provoked by those unequal conditions. She has had a harder fight than I did to get to the same place. And Aboriginal Australian children born today still have that harder fight ahead of them because those old, structural inequalities still - still - have not been redressed.

Material reality doesn’t go away just because our social attitudes change.

No one should be obliged to live life on a higher difficulty setting because they are born an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian. It is morally nonsensical and it actively weakens us as a nation. We should ALL be thriving.

It’s been really hard this week seeing the amount of “no” comments from people who insist that they are opposed to the “Voice” claiming they believe in “equality”.

Politely, if you decide to ignore the existence of unequal experiences, unequal opportunities and unequal material realities in front of you, you are helping to perpetuate all of them.

All that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians are asking for is the capacity to “make representations” to government, so that we as a whole Australia can have a meaningful conversation about how our shared trajectories as a people can finally be made fair.

That is what the Voice to parliament is, and that is why I am voting for it.

If you believe that Australia should be a nation of opportunity for all its citizens, I hope that you do, too.

Vote YES.

Goanna: a band formed in 1977 in Geelong, Victoria, with mainstay Shane Howard as singer-songwriter-guitarist.

‘Somewhere, someone lied’

Shane Howard and Band

Great to have Irish-Australian music legend Shane Howard SHANE HOWARD - GOANNA supporting Irish For The Voice! "“As a descendant of survivors of An Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger), I know what it's like when your people lose their voice to colonisation. All of us, of Irish descent, should understand implicitly how important it is to support First Nations people and stand with them in solidarity and empathy”. - Shane Howard, Australian music legend, founding member Goanna --- hope to see you all at Sydney event on Sunday, Melbourne Tuesday, online next Thursday evening. Register www.irishforthevoice.com ---

Comhchairdeas Tomás de Bhaldraithe!
Tomás is one of Australia's foremost Irish scholars and certainly one of the leading Irish speakers in the country. Tomás was speaking at the Gaelic Club in Sydney at an event for the Voice featuring Thomas Mayo.

29th Sept. Tomás de Bhaldraithe

As Irish Australians, we are mindful of Ireland's history as a colonised land & the role some Irish played in injustices here. offers hope for a better future for all. www.irishforthevoice.com/