The pair arrived and we made a show of greetings for the cameras. Burney was for team ‘Yes’, coming from the left. Bolt, of course, was for team ‘No’, coming from the hard right. I was on team ‘Yes’, certainly, but was coming from the ‘radical centre’. This meant I’d sometimes agree with Burney, and other times I wouldn’t. Half the time I’d agree with Bolt, and the rest of the time I wouldn’t.
The conversation was so long and intense that I missed my 5 p.m. flight. The debate was essentially between Bolt and me, with Burney interjecting intermittently. It wore on for hours, and as I became more exhausted, my impatience started coming through.
Bolt had one anti-recognition line that he repeated ad nauseam. ‘Indigenous recognition will divide us by race. It will create apartheid,’ he argued, like a broken record of the IPA. My response: the Constitution already divides us by race. There are already racist clauses in there. It has presided over decades of discrimination against Indigenous peoples. That’s what constitutional recognition seeks to fix. We need to implement fairer constitutional rules. So what will the new rule be? An equality guarantee? Or the Indigenous right to have a say in their affairs?
I have a tendency to count off lists with my fingers when I argue. When the show went on air my mates put the segment into slow motion, highlighting my gawky gesticulation. First point: index to index. Second point: finger completely slips off other finger (was I having a stroke, they asked?) Third point: two witch-like claw hands appear either side of my face, as if I’m screeching ‘Fly, my pretties! FLY!’ and my eyebrows arch in villainous refutation. It was hilarious to watch back. Especially in slow motion.
The highlight came when Bolt said, ‘I’m Indigenous’, and I chortled involuntarily. Excellent, I thought—I’d prepared well for this moment. After explaining to Bolt why he was not Indigenous under Australian law (which imposes a three-part definition requiring ancestry, community acceptance and self-identification—Bolt only had one out of the three), I tried to get him back on topic. ‘We are trying to have a conversation about the Constitution! And that means this practical matter of the law … I really, really want you to grapple with the technical problem, okay?’ I implored, trying to get him to understand the need to replace the race power.
‘I have been, all along,’ Bolt interjected forlornly—the tired student, genuinely trying to understand. After two hours of intense conversation, I didn’t blame him for being exhausted. I was too.
Perhaps my erratic, witchy hand movements mesmerised him, but Bolt and I developed a rapport after that. As soon as the cameras were off, he became a gracious gentleman. The meanness was mostly an act, I realised. He, Burney and I had a drink after the filming and he congratulated me generously on my advocacy, saying my PhD study was evidently paying off, because I knew a lot about the topic. ‘You were very well prepared,’ he said. ‘It makes all the difference.’ The producer rang Jimi the next day to tell him Bolt had been full of compliments on their drive back to Sydney. Queen of Sheba strikes again, I bragged to Damien later, and we laughed. Might the terrible Bolt possibly be turned from foe to friend, we mused?
Noel instructed me to continue to work on Bolt, so I arranged a further meeting. We had a docile chat at his home, I gave him our book and was baffled as I left. Here was a nice man, with a good life. Bolt led a comfortable existence in Melbourne’s well-off eastern suburbs. Like me, he enjoyed all the benefits of his Australian citizenship—a citizenship many people around the world only dream of holding. We were two lucky Australians, in the luckiest of countries, both descended from immigrant parents and privileged to reap all the benefits and opportunities this nation has to offer. So why wasn’t being Australian enough for Bolt? Why did he feel the need to claim to be Indigenous Australian, too? I wondered at the many losses Indigenous people had suffered so people like Bolt and me—whose ancestors were newcomers to the country—could prosper. They’d lost their land, often their freedom. Many lost their lives. Did Bolt really need to try to take their Indigenous identity as well? It seemed rather gluttonous.
Bolt took to inviting me on his show regularly, and seemed to enjoy our altercations. The first time, however, he spoke over me incessantly while claiming he was Indigenous. I couldn’t refute him properly, so in May 2016 I wrote a piece for The Australian explaining exactly why he wasn’t. Bolt was furious and attacked me in his blog, calling me ‘rude, wrong and deceptive’. My parents freaked out. So did I. So did Noel. I was never the type to get into private fights with people, let alone public ones. I felt nauseated with worry for a few days, but then got over it. I survived and felt stronger for it, for surely I could handle whatever anyone threw at me now. I was no snowflake, I discovered.
Bolt’s blog is still the first thing that comes up when you google my name. Shireen Morris: ‘rude, wrong and deceptive’. At least he spelled my name right. The commenters under the video segments seemed to agree with Bolt’s assessment. They called me ‘arrogant’, ‘lecturing’ and loud. ‘Shireen Morris is such a fishwife,’ said one comment. I had to google what that meant: a loud, unpleasant woman, often with poor hygiene.
Oh well, I reasoned.
I kept going on Bolt’s show. As always, he was aggressive on camera and charming off—full of compliments and friendly advice. Off air, I even began to get the impression he was not really that opposed to our proposals. I got the sense he’d shifted, ever so slightly. It was his business model that kept his opposition going. This was his livelihood: he couldn’t very well stop. But the fervour of his opposition decreased.
Three weird things happened after my ‘rude, wrong and deceptive’ row with Bolt in 2016. The first was that Lyle Shelton, who was usually on Bolt’s side but who had contributed to The Forgotten People in support of Indigenous recognition, took to Twitter to defend me. Bolt usually has sensible things to say, Shelton’s tweet noted, but on this issue ‘Morris has his measure’. Later Shelton privately reiterated his support for our proposals to David and me. After Uluru, I urged him to advocate publicly. ‘We need your support,’ I said. But even when Uluru was rejected by the prime minister, Shelton said nothing. He was probably consumed by his advocacy in opposition to same-sex marriage, which was unfolding at the same time. Still, that he backed me over Bolt when it counted stuck with me.
The second weird thing was that after one such Bolt TV altercation around the time of the Uluru Statement in 2017, I got a kind phone call from Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian, who took the time to congratulate me on my performance. It was a generous gesture from a stalwart of politics who could just as easily have said nothing. On a separate call I’d explained our proposals, and at that stage Kelly had seemed amenable (though he later seemed to agree with Turnbull’s rejection of the Uluru Statement). Former editor of The Australian Chris Mitchell also wrote an opinion piece describing that debate with Bolt as ‘riveting’, and Chris Merritt, the paper’s Legal Affairs editor, texted Noel to express his excitement about what he’d seen. The Oz was usually on Bolt’s side, but the key players seemed to be enjoying watching these fights unfold. I was enjoying it too: it was helping to sort the right-wing wheat from the chaff.
The third thing was that Tim Gartrell of Recognise called me and commended my courage. I’d now earned my stripes, he said. Gartrell hadn’t been in touch for what seemed like a long time, and the relationship was mostly cold by now. But by fighting Bolt, it seemed I’d proved I was not one of the bad guys. We rekindled our engagement and he even indicated that he found me easier to work with than Noel, who was evidently too intimidating. At this point I decided to talk openly with Gartrell about our unproductive relationship. I did, and we resolved to try to work more constructively in future. It seemed like a change in attitude. Some respect had been fostered.
I persuaded Gartrell to provide some minimal funding for Uphold & Recognise. Recognise did so—albeit far too late. Still, I suppose we have Andrew Bolt to thank for that. It’s funny how a common enemy can unite.
/> Strange events were unfolding in the lead-up to the Referendum Council’s consultations.
Turnbull and Shorten had asked the council to consult on all options: the Expert Panel recommendations, the joint select committee recommendations, and Cape York Institute’s proposed constitutional body and extra-constitutional Declaration proposals.
But the prime minister let slip the minimalist outcome he wanted before the Referendum Council’s consultations even began. Like the kings of the past, Turnbull issued secret instructions to his subjects—only these had nothing to do with amity and kindness. Turnbull’s instructions were pure deception and deceit.
In a meeting at Parliament House in November 2016, Turnbull revealed to the Referendum Council that only minimalism would be acceptable. He indicated that a racial non-discrimination clause was not going to work, and said the Indigenous body proposal had a ‘snowflake’s chance in hell’. ‘It’s just my personal view,’ he qualified—the omniscient wisdom of the guy who had led the losing team in the republic referendum.
Turnbull realised his mistake, however, when Noel challenged him to tell the Australian people his view on the reform options about to be discussed in First Nations regional dialogues around the country. Noel suggested it would be disingenuous for the government not to tell Australians, and Indigenous people particularly, if they’d already ruled the substantive options out: that would make them nothing more than sham consultations. Turnbull bristled at the word ‘disingenuous’. But that’s what it was. In 2015, he had told Noel and me that the body proposal was ‘sensible’ and offered to help promote it. Now, right before the dialogues were to kick off, he was saying it had no chance—essentially taking the substantive models off the table.
Noel tried to remind Turnbull of his expression of support at our 2015 meeting, but Turnbull denied it. Noel subsequently told me to find the email I’d sent to Turnbull after that meeting. Noel found it before I did (I’d forwarded it to Noel the same day) and I cringed when I read it. ‘Dear Malcolm and Richard,’ I’d opened with temerity (he’d told me to call him Malcolm, hadn’t he?). ‘It was great to meet you both this afternoon.’ I went on to give Turnbull links to Anne Twomey’s constitutional drafting and our committee submissions for their further reading. Then I confirmed our positivity about the discussed promotional event: ‘It would be great to work towards an event in Wentworth.’ I also saw fit, in my unrestrained enthusiasm, to invite them both to the constitutional law symposium we were organising at Sydney Uni on 12 June—as if that’s what you did, invite ministers to attend law workshops just for their own mental stimulation and scholarly understanding. ‘It would be great if you or someone from your office is able to attend,’ I enthused. Reading back, I wince at how many times I used the word ‘great’. They must have thought I was a complete pain in the arse.
Nonetheless, the email confirmed it: the meeting had happened and Turnbull had expressed support. Yet now he was saying the proposal had a snowflake’s chance in hell. From the prime minister, this amounted to a death warrant.
It was an attempt to covertly bully the Referendum Council into toeing his minimalist line. Turnbull’s coercion even went so far as to articulate exactly what his preferred constitutional reform model was: remove section 25 (a dead-letter provision), and remove the race power and replace it with a new section 51A, with symbolic statements incorporated. No body. No racial non-discrimination clause either. Minimalism. A model that Indigenous people had reiterated time and again they did not want, and that constitutional conservatives (such as Julian Leeser, Greg Craven and others) had vowed to oppose—because they didn’t want unelected judges to wreak havoc with ambiguous symbolic words. A merely symbolic model had failed in 1999. Why would this time be any different, given the added factors of Indigenous and ‘con con’ opposition?
But Turnbull noted it was not just him who held this view. Bill Shorten agreed, Turnbull said. And so did the four Indigenous MPs: Patrick Dodson, Linda Burney and Malarndirri McCarthy of Labor, and Ken Wyatt of the Liberal Party were all present in the room and seemed to indicate their assent.
Labor had evidently abandoned its previous position supporting a racial non-discrimination clause. Now it supported constitutional minimalism. It was a bipartisan deal for a minimalist model and the Referendum Council was being told, essentially, what to recommend. They were being told to undertake pretend consultation.
I saw the council members’ stricken faces after that November meeting. The Indigenous leaders congregated at the airport to compare notes and mull the path forward—Noel, Megan Davis, Dalassa Yorkston and Pat Anderson. (Anderson, the inspiringly dedicated Indigenous activist and co-author of the seminal Little Children Are Sacred report, which had so moved me back in 2011, by now had replaced Dodson as co-chair.) I sat with them, watching their lost expressions. Betrayal. Hurt. Anger. That was the first time Turnbull kicked Indigenous people in the guts.
After talking it through the leaders, to their credit, decided to fight on. Perhaps the power of a forged Indigenous consensus would sway things. Perhaps the politics would shift. Perhaps they could rally public support. They chose to fight back, because what other choice did they have? Their people were dying, languishing in jail, committing suicide at unprecedented rates, still subject to top-down policies that wasted money and didn’t work. To give up would be to adopt a position of hopelessness, and they could not. They had to continue to push for a good outcome for their people. They had to keep fighting for substantive change.
The council members wrote to government for clarification that they were indeed to consult on all options, as previously instructed. In a letter response jointly written with Shorten, Turnbull in effect withdrew his private comments and said they indeed expected all options to be put to the forthcoming dialogues.
But now Turnbull’s pre-determined minimalist position was clear, as was the minimalist position to which Labor had descended. The Indigenous leaders had to pull expectations back up. They resolved to do so, using the First Nations dialogues as a tool to garner a united Indigenous position and build political momentum. They vowed to fight on, as they always had.
Their perseverance and strength, in the face of bipartisan opposition to substantive recognition, was staggering. I had never seen such determination. They demonstrated radical hope. Those Indigenous leaders are my heroes.
News of the government’s ‘done deal’ for minimalism trickled out. When they heard about it, Indigenous people made it even clearer they would not support feel-good fluff. It was a stand-off. Nolan Hunter confronted the Labor caucus directly, asking them straight: ‘Do you have a predetermined position on constitutional recognition?’ Burney in particular passionately denied it. The Indigenous MPs then each publicly denied any pre-done deal for minimalism. They said they’d wait for the Referendum Council’s report with open minds.1
Meanwhile, the force of Turnbull’s secret instructions was threatening to unravel the pockets of support we had built in Parliament.
On 23 February 2017, while the First Nations regional dialogues were underway and Indigenous support for a First Nations voice in the Constitution was consistently being declared, we held our book launch of The Forgotten People in Perth. We’d waited all these months to secure a date that worked for Christian Porter.
In the lead-up, Porter told us he no longer wanted to be the key launcher. Instead, he would join the panel discussion. He had been elevated by Turnbull to the Social Services ministry, and that new position was constraining, he said. We accepted the explanation. If we had misunderstood his support for the proposals, as expressed by him in our previous meetings, this was his chance to correct the record, to tell Damien and me he had changed his mind, or at least to politely withdraw from the event. He didn’t. Instead, Porter turned up at our book launch and publicly opposed the Indigenous body proposal he’d previously described as ‘elegant’. He denigrated it in front of the audience, at the launch of the book he had endorsed. He expressed a p
reference instead for a purely symbolic model, which was Turnbull’s preference too. ‘There are more mentions of lighthouses in the Constitution than our First People,’ he said, as his defence for supporting minimalism—that word again, ‘mention’. The lighthouses line was another that Recognise often used.
Previously, as a constitutional conservative, Porter had indicated he was opposed to the insertion of symbolic statements into what is fundamentally a rulebook. He had agreed with Julian and Damien. Now, his whole attitude had changed. It seemed he’d abandoned his constitutionally conservative principles and his support for the Indigenous advisory body proposal in favour of advancing his career.
I went head to head with him in defence of the proposal. He raised readily answerable technical concerns that he’d never raised with us before. That evening I said, ‘Let’s work together to refine it, Minister. Don’t just reject it. Let’s work together to make it work.’ The audience were good-willed and applauded the suggestion, but Porter didn’t budge.
Noel subsequently asked me to draft a letter for him to send to Porter, which was delivered in March 2017. The letter pulled Porter up on his change of mind, which he had not alerted us to, and his dishonourable behaviour at the Perth launch. ‘Our people do not seek a mere “mention” in the Constitution, in the same way inanimate objects like lighthouses are mentioned,’ Noel wrote. ‘We seek fairer constitutional rules in relation to our people, to improve the way the nation does business in Indigenous affairs. This is not an ambitious objective, but a completely sensible one. Any constitutional reform should improve the systems governing our nation—otherwise why contemplate constitutional reform at all?’ Noel urged Porter to work constructively with us to refine the technical concerns he had raised. Porter never replied.
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