Publication Date: Sep 2023
RRP: $19.95
ISBN: 9781922979124
Format: Paperback
Size: 111mm x 175mm
Pages: 96
Category: Australian History, In the National Interest, Indigenous Studies, Politics

Time to Listen

An Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Melissa Castan and Lynette Russell

Also available as an ebook from your favourite retailer.


In 2023, debate about an Indigenous Voice to Parliament swirls around us as Australia heads towards a referendum on amending the Constitution to make this Voice a reality. The idea of a ‘First Nations Voice’ was famously raised in 2017, when Indigenous leaders drafted the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It was envisioned as a representative body, enshrined in the Constitution, that would advise federal parliament and the executive government on laws and policies of significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But while Indigenous people may finally get their Voice, will it be heard?

Time to Listen, Melissa Castan and Lynette Russell explore how the need for a Voice has its roots in what anthropologist WEH Stanner in the late 1960s called the ‘Great Australian Silence’, whereby the history and culture of Indigenous Australians have been largely ignored by the wider society. This ‘forgetting’ has not been incidental but rather an intentional, initially colonial policy of erasement. So have times now changed? Is the tragedy of that national silence—a refusal to acknowledge Indigenous agency and cultural achievements—finally coming to an end?

The Voice to Parliament can be a transformational legal and political institutional reform, but only if we really listen to Indigenous people, and they are clearly heard when they speak.


See more for Monash University’s institutional stance on The Indigenous Voice to Parliament


Melissa Castan

Melissa Castan is a Professor at the Monash Law Faculty and the Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. Her family were ‘new Australians’, refugees from persecution in Eastern Europe who came to Australia seeking safety and the...
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Lynette Russell

Lynette Russell AM is an ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Professor at Monash University’s Indigenous Studies Centre. Her Aboriginal ancestors were born on the lands of the Wotjobaluk people, and she is descended from convicts on the other side of her...
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