LEADING indigenous Australian activist Noel Pearson said today he felt “hope and terror” ahead of an October 14 referendum on the rights of First Nations peoples.

Opinion surveys indicated a majority of voters would vote “no” to the proposal to recognise First Nations people in the constitution for the first time.

The so-called “Indigenous Voice to Parliament” would also give them the right to be consulted on laws that affect their communities as they battle poorer health, lower incomes and higher barriers to education.

“We would be untruthful if we didn’t say we have a mixture of hope and terror about the answer to this referendum,” said Noel Pearson, a lawyer and land rights campaigner who supports the “yes” case for the “Voice”.

“No one wants the invitation of friendship and love to be unrequited.”

Pearson said the “Voice” would help address issues such as the “lifelong damage” caused by rheumatic heart disease in indigenous children of Cape York Peninsula in Australia’s far north.

“But it’s the lifelong damage to the ears of our nation’s decision-makers that has allowed this disease to prowl around Cape York decades after it has been eradicated everywhere else in mainstream Australia and around the world,” he told the National Press Club in Canberra.

“It is a disease of the unlistened to. It is a disease of a people who have spoken but not been heard. ‘No’ gets us nowhere when it comes to confronting rheumatic heart disease. ‘Yes’ makes it possible.”

Acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, both preventable, particularly affect indigenous children aged five to 14 in regional and remote areas, said a government agency, with nearly 10,000 cases diagnosed by the end of 2021.

Recent surveys show about 60% of voters are against the “Voice” reform to the constitution versus 40% in support – a near reversal from a year ago.

More than 200 years since British colonisation, indigenous people -– whose ancestors have lived on the continent for about 60,000 years – had shorter lives than other Australians, poorer education and were far more likely to die in police custody. – AFP, September 27, 2023.