Tanya Joan Plibersek is an Australian politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labor Party and Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 2013 to 2019. She has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sydney since 1998. A member of the Labor Party, Plibersek served as a Cabinet Minister in the Rudd, Gillard and Albanese governments. She is currently the Minister for the Environment and Water in the Albanese ministry since 2022, having previously served as the Shadow Minister for Education and Shadow Minister for Women between 2019 and 2022.
Russell Evan Broadbent is an Australian politician who is a member of the House of Representatives, representing the Division of Monash. He is one of the longest-serving current members of parliament, having been in parliament from 1990 to 1993, from 1996 to 1998, and since 2004. In November 2023, he stood down from the Liberal Party and its parliamentary party room and joined the crossbench in response to losing his party endorsement ahead of a federal election due by September 2025.
Human rights in Australia have largely been developed by the democratically elected Australian Parliament through laws in specific contexts and safeguarded by such institutions as the independent judiciary and the High Court, which implement common law, the Australian Constitution, and various other laws of Australia and its states and territories. Australia also has an independent statutory human rights body, the Australian Human Rights Commission, which investigates and conciliates complaints, and more generally promotes human rights through education, discussion and reporting.
Patrick Lionel Djargun Dodson is an Australian indigenous rights activist and former politician. He was a Senator for Western Australia from 2016 to 2024, representing the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Nyunggai Warren Stephen Mundine is an Australian businessman, political strategist, advocate for Indigenous affairs, and former politician. Starting his political career in 1995, Mundine became the first Indigenous person to serve on the City Council of Dubbo in New South Wales. He was the national president of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 2006 to 2007 but quit the party in 2012. In 2013, Mundine was appointed chairman of the Coalition government's Indigenous Advisory Council by then-prime minister, Tony Abbott. Mundine was the Liberal Party's unsuccessful candidate for the marginal seat of Gilmore on the south coast of New South Wales in the 2019 Australian federal election.
Indigenous Australian self-determination, also known as Aboriginal Australian self-determination, is the power relating to self-governance by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. It is the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to determine their own political status and pursue their own economic, social and cultural interests. Self-determination asserts that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should direct and implement Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy formulation and provision of services. Self-determination encompasses both Aboriginal land rights and self-governance, and may also be supported by a treaty between a government and an Indigenous group in Australia.
Kenneth George Wyatt is an Australian former politician. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 2010 to 2022, representing the Division of Hasluck for the Liberal Party. He is the first Indigenous Australian elected to the House of Representatives, the first to serve as a government minister, and the first appointed to cabinet.
Lidia Alma Thorpe is an Aboriginal Australian independent politician. She has been a senator for Victoria since 2020 and is the first Aboriginal senator from that state. She was a member of the Australian Greens until February 2023, when she quit the party over disagreements concerning the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, and became a "key" figure in the "progressive No" campaign for the Voice referendum in October 2023. Thorpe served as the Greens' deputy leader in the Senate from June to October 2022.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a 2017 petition to the people of Australia, written and endorsed by the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders selected as delegates to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. The document calls for substantive constitutional change and structural reform through the creation of two new institutions; a constitutionally protected First Nations Voice and a Makarrata Commission, to oversee agreement-making and truth-telling between governments and First Nations. Such reforms should be implemented, it is argued, both in recognition of the continuing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and to address structural power differences that has led to severe disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These reforms can be summarised as Voice, Treaty and Truth.
Andrew James Bragg is an Australian politician who was elected as a Senator for New South Wales at the 2019 federal election. He is a member of the Liberal Party. A member of several committees related to finance and technology, Bragg advocates changes to the Australian retirement system and supports the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Indigenous treaties in Australia are proposed binding legal agreements between Australian governments and Australian First Nations. A treaty could recognise First Nations as distinct political communities, acknowledge Indigenous Sovereignty, set out mutually recognised rights and responsibilities or provide for some degree of self-government. As of 2024, no such treaties are in force, however the Commonwealth and all states except Western Australia have expressed support previously for a treaty process. However, the defeat of the Voice referendum in 2023 has led to a reversal by several state branches of the Liberal and National parties in their support for treaty and a much more ambiguous expressed position by state branches of the Labor Party as well as Labor governments.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, also known as the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the First Nations Voice or simply the Voice, was a proposed Australian federal advisory body to comprise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to represent the views of Indigenous communities.
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians refers to various proposals for changes to the Australian Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians in the document. Various proposals have been suggested to symbolically recognise the special place Indigenous Australians have as the first peoples of Australia, along with substantial changes, such as prohibitions on racial discrimination, the protection of languages and the addition of new institutions. In 2017, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was released by Indigenous leaders, which called for the establishment of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament as their preferred form of recognition. When submitted to a national referendum in 2023 by the Albanese government, the proposal was heavily defeated.
Jacinta Yangapi Nampijinpa Price is an Australian politician from the Northern Territory. She has been a senator for the Northern Territory since the 2022 federal election. She is a member of the Country Liberal Party, a politically conservative party operating in the Northern Territory affiliated with the national Coalition. She sits with the National Party in federal parliament. She has been the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs since April 2023.
Gordon James Reid is an Australian medical practitioner and politician. He has been the Labor MP for Robertson, New South Wales since the 2022 Australian federal election.
The 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum was a constitutional referendum held on 14 October 2023 in which the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice was rejected. Voters were asked to approve an alteration to the Australian Constitution that would recognise Indigenous Australians in the document through prescribing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that would have been able to make representations to Federal Parliament and the executive government on "matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples". The proposal was rejected nationally and by a majority in every state, thus failing to secure the double majority required for amendment by section 128 of the constitution. The Australian Capital Territory was the only state or territory with a majority of "yes" votes. Analysis of surveys following the referendum identified the main reasons why the majority of Australians voted no was a scepticism of rights for some Australians that are not held by others and a fear of constitutional change.
Opinion polling on whether to change the Australian Constitution to establish an Indigenous Voice has been conducted since 2017, when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders petitioned for such an amendment as part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The number of these polls conducted grew substantially following Labor's victory in the 2022 federal election; the party had committed to holding the referendum required for this constitutional change in its first term of government.
Thomas Mayo is an Australian human rights advocate and author who is an Indigenous Australian ancestry. He is a signatory of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and advocate for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, an author and a trade union organiser.
Australian Indigenous advisory bodies are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory bodies established or proposed to be established by the Commonwealth and state and territory governments. Calls for such bodies, especially for a Commonwealth level Voice to Parliament, became prominent following the release of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, however similar bodies of various levels of independence have existed since the official end of assimilationist policies in the 1970s and the promotion of self-determination and reconciliation. Such bodies generally advise governments on policies and programmes that affect Indigenous Australians, and represent Indigenous interests in public debate. Other advisory bodies have been established in the context of state treaty process, to advise governments and Indigenous groups to prepare for upcoming negotiations.
