23rd June 2021
Parliaments around the world have recognised the need to actively engage with the people they represent and many parliaments are experimenting with new techniques designed to reach a more diverse range of communities and publics. But how can parliaments facilitate self-determined participation by different groups, including groups that have been historically excluded or ignored by public institutions, or whose rights and interests have been abrogated by parliamentary processes or political power structures?
The recent leadership shown by Australia’s First Nations People to initiate and articulate the Uluru Statement from the Heart – which includes a set of principles designed to shape the future relationship between First Nations Peoples and the Australian Parliament – provides a world-leading example of self-determined parliamentary engagement in action. This Seminar aims to provide a brief overview of the origins and aims of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and highlight the relevance of this experience for practitioner and researchers interested in improving the self-determined quality of parliamentary public engagement in other jurisdictions.
Dr Gabrielle Appleby is a Professor at the Law Faculty of University of New South Wales (Sydney). She is the Director of The Judiciary Project at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, the constitutional consultant to the Clerk of the Australian House of Representatives and a member of the Indigenous Law Centre. In 2016-2017, Gabrielle worked as a pro bono constitutional adviser to the Regional Dialogues and the First Nations Constitutional Convention that led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
Professor Megan Davis is a Cobble Cobble woman from the Barrungam nation in south-west Queensland. She is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous and the Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law at UNSW. She was elected by the UN Human Rights Council to UNEMRIP in 2017 and currently serves as a UN expert with the UN Human Rights Council’s Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous peoples. Megan was a member of the Referendum Council and the Expert Panel on the Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Peoples in the Constitution; was an expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2011-2016); and she served as the Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW from 2006-2016.
Dr Dani Larkin is a Bundjalung, Kungarykany woman from Grafton, New South Wales and a public lawyer and representative of the Senior Dialogue Leadership group for the Uluru Statement From The Heart. She has also been newly appointed as a Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW. As a legal academic and advocate for constitutional reform and political empowerment of First Nations, her research interests include: Indigenous self-determination and cultural identity, electoral law and policy reform, Indigenous political participation, comparative constitutional law and international human rights.