'Vote with your feet' on May 28
BY BARRY HEALY
SYDNEY — Supporters of Aboriginal rights should make a statement against government attitudes to reconciliation by marching across the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation-organised Corroboree 2000 on May 28, NSW Reconciliation Committee chairperson Linda Burney told a public meeting at the Penrith Bowling Club on May 7.
Seventy people at the "Politics of the Heart" meeting, one of a series organised to promote reconciliation, heard Burney and fellow committee member Sean Flood urge attendance at the event. Burney said that originally the march was intended to be a quiet event without signs or militancy; now she is inviting people to bring their own banners stating what they think of the government.
Flood said that he had heard PM John Howard on the radio expressing heartfelt sorrow at cricket's match-fixing scandals but, "Unfortunately, he does not have the same real warmth and love for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their culture, their hurt and their inequality".
Flood believes that Howard is playing the race card in order to attract One Nation voters back to the Coalition.
"At the heart of reconciliation", he said, "is restitution of land, of respect, of justice, of cultural practice in accordance with self-determination, of dignity and of the true place of indigenous Australians in their own country.
"We can demonstrate our personal and individual commitment to reconciliation on Sunday, May 28, by turning out as part of a vast throng to vote with our feet."