In the end John didn’t deliver his language recognition section—ever the perfectionist, he got too caught up with preliminary philosophical conundrums. So I wrote it. And Noel didn’t deliver his introduction section, either—he got too caught up with all the other more urgent policy and political matters he was also trying to manage: education, welfare reform, alcohol management and land rights. So I wrote the introduction too. And I wrote my equality argument bit, of course. So, as it turned out, I wrote the whole thing.
Noel was always too pressed for time, overworked and distracted. He was so spread thin across so many areas that I couldn’t get him to read the draft in development. Not for the entire first ten months.
The panel members reacted to me with caution. I was an observer at their meetings, instructed to attend by Noel, but was kicked out more than once by motion or vote. This would be a recurring theme in my job—getting evicted from meetings by blackfellas and whitefellas alike, sometimes both together in a united approach. It felt how I imagined getting kicked out of Big Brother or Australian Idol must feel. The public walk of shame, as if I’d been caught sneaking in and butting into their business. My dark skin was handy in this role: no one could ever see me blushing.
The deadline for submissions came and went. I was still struggling for feedback on my written work from Noel. CYI asked for an extension.
But Noel still hadn’t read the draft policy paper. Eventually, our CEO, a tall and jovial Icelandic man called Gummi, told me to put the submission in to the panel anyway. Noel grudgingly gave his blessing, I submitted it (from memory at one of those public computers at the airport, on the way to a panel meeting—I had no smartphone back then) and it was distributed to the panel members, who were to read it overnight. Noel was to discuss it the next morning. At 11 p.m. I took him through the document he still hadn’t read and he asked me to prepare slides for him to present to the panel the next day. I did them, exhausted and a bundle of nerves, fearful of humiliation the next day.
At breakfast, however, Noel was perky. ‘I sat in the bath this morning and read your submission, Shireen,’ he said. Weird, but okay. ‘I knew if I left you to your own devices you’d do a good job! It’s excellent. And well written.’
Noel didn’t use the slides. He spoke off the cuff to the panel on the proposed reforms. In his arresting, solemn way, he urged them to raise their ambitions. Do not settle for a mere preamble, he urged, putting to bed any previous suggestion that minimalism may be the best option because it was what government wanted.
From memory, no one else on the panel actively argued for an equality guarantee in the Constitution. Though an equality guarantee was called for in several submissions, it was Noel’s advocacy and CYI’s submission that put a racial non-discrimination clause firmly on the Expert Panel’s agenda, where it was accepted and embraced, then collectively advocated.
The reforms proposed were ambitious, but ambition was Noel’s natural position. He would only aim high, never low. Constitutional reform was no different, despite the onerous test of a double majority referendum.
Noel knew the political difficulty. He believed real change was necessary and, with the right political strategy, possible. His words inspired everyone.
It was an exciting time, and we were full of hope. CYI’s submission was significantly influential on the panel’s work.
Crucially, Dodson responded positively. He referred to Noel affectionately as ‘Noely’ that day, and commended our work with a tear sinking down into his beard. Though he disliked some of the CYI rhetoric, he said, the submission inspired him.
Dodson’s support was important. It was the first step to a united Indigenous position. Indigenous solidarity on the desired reform proposals would make negotiation with government more effective, and would likely lead to a better outcome for Indigenous people. The Expert Panel report needed to be unanimous, but more importantly, the Indigenous leaders on the panel needed to be unanimous.
The three most politically crucial leaders in this regard were Noel Pearson, Patrick Dodson and Marcia Langton.
Dodson carried power as the Indigenous elder co-chair and the father of reconciliation. Where Noel was the intellectual bright spark, Dodson was the moral patriarch—just as Langton was the moral matriarch, with a fierce intellectualism all her own.
The three together were a kind of holy trinity of Indigenous politics. Dodson was on the left, preaching rights, and Marcia was further to the right, championing responsibility (Noel explained that she began further left, but was pushed to the right largely by the failure of the left to properly grapple with Indigenous social disadvantage). Noel, being slightly younger, was like their talented love child, drawing from divergent political parentage to pursue the radical centre—the ‘right to take responsibility’.
Noel would remind me that it would take a smart political strategy for the 3 per cent Indigenous minority to round up the support of the 97 per cent non-Indigenous majority. Working together, however, the three leaders could span almost the entire political spectrum, rounding up left, right and in between. Together, they could muster the 97 per cent of non-Indigenous Australians who would need to vote yes at a referendum for the reforms to succeed. Noel and Marcia were already a team. Working constructively with Dodson too would forge a formidable—and cross-partisan—alliance, if they could manage it.
Langton seemed critically wary of the ‘black men in the black hats’, however: the brand of Indigenous male leadership that wore a black akubra. Dodson sported one with a hatband in iconic Aboriginal colours, and in later years Noel would don a black hat too. But back then, for Langton, the black hat seemed to represent everything repugnant about the ‘boys’ club’ style of black politics that for too long had dominated Aboriginal leadership—the style that too often denigrates women and empowers the ‘big men’. As I came to understand, Langton’s critique of this sexist leadership culture was frequently warranted.
I’ll never forget the sumptuous dinner party hosted by mining magnate Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest at a Sydney restaurant. I have no idea why I was there, mingling with the high-flyers like an imposter. Langton gave an impromptu speech and riffed about the black men in their black hats, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly at the ‘noble savage’ nostalgia propagated by those sporting the outdated outback costume. All image, no substance, seemed the message. Fluff and nonsense. Boomerangs and bullshit. ‘Brolgas in the wetlands … blah, blah, BLAH!’ Langton drawled in her throaty twang, the world-weary dismissal of a woman who’d seen it all and wasn’t impressed. Noel and I roared. There was so much diversity of thought and opinion among the Indigenous leadership. A united position would be hard to achieve.
Twiggy Forrest was at my table that night, and for some reason I decided to test out on him my equal Indigenous property rights argument, which he didn’t seem to like. I don’t know why, but I pressed the point—perhaps feeling cheeky. Forrest, having heard my job description, took the opportunity to let me know that constitutional reform was not the answer. Aboriginal disadvantage will be solved by jobs and education, he advised sternly but kindly across the table of miners and businessmen. It won’t be solved by ‘constitutional land rights lawyers’, he said—which is what he thought I was. I imagined Twiggy’s ancestor Sir John Forrest, the first premier of Western Australia, who, according to the constitutional convention debates, urged the inclusion of racist clauses because he was concerned to exclude ‘Asiatic or African alien[s]’ from the goldfields. His descendant seated at dinner didn’t seem like a bad guy. He seemed good-willed and I noted his genuine respect for Noel and Marcia. Twiggy would come around on constitutional reform. Just not yet.
Noel and I left that dinner in mirthful spirits. Not only because of the brolgas, but also because of Twiggy. ‘Did you know who that was?’ Noel asked, as we walked down the steep hill from Rockpool. ‘Yes!’ I said. Noel didn’t tell me off. He seemed pleased I’d given Twiggy a gentle prod.
If Noel had an ambitious re
form vision, he wasn’t the only one. Ambition was catching.
Liberal pollster Mark Textor’s comments at another panel dinner also encouraged ambition. Make a big target rather than a small one, he advised. Be bold. The panel seemed buoyed. An equality guarantee was the way to go.
Another pollster drifted in and out during those weeks: Tim Gartrell, a campaign expert on the Labor side. He got hold of the CYI submission and made a point of congratulating me. ‘This is a real feather in your cap,’ Gartrell said, echoing the sentiments of some panel members, including Gooda and Chaney. The mood was optimistic.
Many were still cautious of me, however. Noel wanted me to work on refining the drafting of the constitutional amendments, and this annoyed some people. One of the most senior male lawyers on the panel grumbled: ‘Shireen is not a real lawyer.’ It was true: I wasn’t. I was still a law student. I’d flown to Melbourne twice from Cairns to sit exams for my last two subjects—copyright and equity—having missed every class. I was yet to graduate.
Back in Cairns, I was called to a Saturday-night dinner with Alan Tudge, a member of parliament from the Liberal Party with a seat in Melbourne, together with Gummi and others from the staff. Tudge was a former deputy director of CYI. Gummi asked me to print the CYI submission for Tudge, who was to be on a plane to Cape York with Tony Abbott, then Opposition leader, the next day. Tudge said he’d talk to Abbott about the submission and wanted Abbott to read it on the plane.
When I gave him the submission, Tudge responded with barely concealed disdain. He said he’d wanted it earlier, and barked reprimands at me across the restaurant table. I was baffled. I barely knew him and tried not to react. Gummi dropped me home afterwards and apologised on Tudge’s behalf. The next day in the office I was told the problem was probably my gender. It wouldn’t be our last tense interaction.
I told Noel about Tudge’s unexpected venom, as I did after any odd exchange. Such intel on the quirks of a politician’s mind was useful, and we’d add it to our accumulating bank of knowledge on the political landscape and its players. Noel was alive to the subtlest of personal power plays, and strategy considerations infused the most mundane of his decisions.
For example, he didn’t want CYI to do a boring submission to the panel. ‘We don’t submit,’ he’d said, pointedly. ‘We develop a policy. A full policy argument.’ I understood the point. This was all about power, after all. Obtaining and using it. Practically speaking, however, we had to submit to get our ideas considered. Contrary to popular belief, Noel became practised in strategic submission. So did I.
We’d tell ourselves it was for the end goal, for it’s not the bully who truly holds power: the bully betrays his own insecurity. The Zen-like submitter, compliant and calm, grasps her power and calculates her moves, aware of the brute force of those above. She bides her time, a patient persuader, knowing she can outsmart, or hopefully convert, the bullies in the long run. Or maybe, more simply, win their love and friendship. Their empathy.
But I thought of Langton, and the fire and fightback I so admired, and wondered about my mild-mannered patience in the face of unwarranted male aggression. When Noel couldn’t attend a panel meeting one day, he instructed me to present to them our constitutional drafting in development. Some of the men were grumpy about it and delivered a barrage of interruptions and interjections. ‘Let her speak, will you!’ Langton demanded, and they piped down. I was grateful.
A few years later, a well-known Aboriginal man occupying a position of public prominence lost his temper at me for simply asking a question in a group discussion. A switch seemed to flip and his calm demeanour turned instantly to rage: he stood and stepped forward, raising his voice. Noel was not there, but Langton immediately stood in between us, her hands raised, keeping him at bay. She told me later the man was known for domestic violence, and she’d been worried he might punch me. I went to the toilets and cried: I’d given up my weekend to fly to Sydney, on the invitation of Indigenous leaders. I wished I hadn’t bothered. (That same weekend I ended up debating constitutional lawyer Frank Brennan, however, so it turned out to be worthwhile.)
I’ll never forget Marcia’s protective intervention. It was far from the last time I was yelled at by powerful men, whether black or white. But of the many who would put me in my place in years to come, Noel was never among them. He’d criticise my work if he didn’t like it, or chastise a bad decision. But there was no sexism, nor a hint of racism. It didn’t matter that I was an Indian-Australian, non-Indigenous and a woman. It didn’t matter that I was relatively young. Noel encouraged me to rise up and grasp my power. To reach higher and not submit. He was the only one, aside from my family, who did this.
Yet submit we did. We had to. Submitting was part of persuasion.
Noel argued that for constitutional reform to happen, Nixon needed to go to China—a political metaphor referring to President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic, conveying the idea that you need a reputable, hardline conservative leader to undertake ambitious reform or progressive diplomacy. We needed right-wing leaders to champion recognition and reconciliation in Australia. We needed to plant a stake in the ground at 5 p.m. on the right end of the political clock-face spectrum. Everyone to the left would be easier.
Constitutional reform, Noel explained, is a 90 per cent game. It wasn’t enough just to have progressives on board. We needed both sides. Substantive change had to be championed by a conservative leader, to get both left and right. It needed a right-winger with genuine goodwill towards Indigenous people.
Noel was hoping it would be Tony Abbott, then Opposition leader.
Accordingly, Noel nurtured a ‘bromance’ with Abbott, the ‘Mad Monk’. It was a sustained wooing. Dates to his traditional country up on the Cape. Coffees and lunches. Well-timed texts. Building the relationship. Doing the groundwork and preparing to persuade. Watching on, I couldn’t figure out if it was genuine friendship or pure strategy. ‘Are you actually friends?’ I asked Noel one day.
‘Don’t be silly. He’s a redneck,’ Noel replied, as if that fact should be obvious. ‘But,’ he added after a moment, ‘he’s got this Catholic, paternalistic compassion for blackfellas. There is goodwill, as condescending as it tends to be. He supports recognition. So we gotta persuade him.’
When Noel recollects the relationship now, he describes it differently. They were real friends, he says. There was mutual respect. And it seemed that Abbott was genuinely concerned about Indigenous peoples. That was a good thing.
Back in 2011, after reading the CYI submission on that plane ride to Cape York, Abbott emailed Lew Griffiths, Noel’s dedicated and passionate media adviser. Abbott told Lew he wasn’t supportive of a racial non-discrimination clause, our key proposed reform. He just wanted to remove references to ‘race’ from the Constitution and replace the race power, and he supported a symbolic mention in a new preamble. A minimalist model. ‘There’s goodwill in the Coalition party room, but no one should underestimate the potential for resistance to extensive change,’ Abbott warned.
Noel was not about to give up. We gotta get the drafting of the amendments right, he instructed. Then we gotta persuade these bastards.
In refining the draft amendments, I took advice mainly from Professor George Williams, the prominent constitutional and human rights lawyer. Noel wanted the racial non-discrimination clause to be framed more like equality before the law—he thought this might work better for the conservative right. I was too naive to question the wisdom of receiving advice only from left-leaning human rights lawyers, but these were the experts we knew, and to whom we had access. George emailed helpful feedback and I forwarded his positive comments to Noel.
‘But you’re not a real lawyer,’ was Noel’s one-line reply.
I grinned idiotically at my desk. Noel had taken to offering positive reinforcement, and it was working. ‘Almost there!’ he’d email in response to another drafting version, then ‘Very close!’ to the next. He had evidently figu
red out that ‘close to perfect’–type encouragement would elicit the best efforts from this Indian nerd. He was right. (I’d been trained well—one time when I got 99 per cent on a maths test, Mum sat me down to discuss where the 1 per cent had gone.) I duly became like Pavlov’s dog, hungry for praise. Eventually Noel was happy, and we submitted our updated draft clauses to the panel.
Late in 2011, Expert Panel polling confirmed that a racial non-discrimination guarantee was the most popular amendment among Australians from across the political spectrum.4 Left and right. I was sitting up the back of the meeting, as usual. Noel turned and raised his eyebrows at me. Support from 80–90 per cent of the public! Across the spectrum! That was a referendum winner. It made sense: who could argue with the idea that all Australians should be equal before the law? The poll bolstered our efforts. Our instincts were right. Equality was the answer.
In the end, the panel largely adopted the reforms CYI advocated. Megan Davis and Henry Burmester were in charge of the panel’s constitutional drafting, with the advice of external lawyers. The panel’s proposed reforms were:
• Remove section 25 (a dead-letter constitutional provision contemplating barring races from voting)
• Remove the race power (a power supporting laws for Indigenous affairs but also enabling discrimination)
• Replace the race power with the new section 51A (power to make laws for Indigenous people, incorporating a built-in preamble with statements of recognition)
Radical Heart Page 7