The Indigenous community spoke as one at the recent Uluru constitutional convention. “It was decisive and left no doubt about what people wanted,” writes Megan Davis in this month’s issue. It also brought “clarity and coherence to a discursive process that has rambled on for ten years”.

There were some scurrilous and misleading responses to the resulting Uluru Statement, attempting to paint it as just another set of contested ideas thrown into a big confusing pot, but it was nothing of the sort.

The Indigenous community laid a clear path forward via a rigorously democratic representative process, issuing an uncompromised call for a few practical, achievable actions to redress past wrongs. No mean feat, given the history.

“The one thing my people have never given up on, despite forensically documenting in our collective memory the capacity of law to oppress, is the capacity of law to redeem.”

Are politicians and the rest of Australia’s population ready to listen? Are they willing to take any responsibility for bringing justice?

The nation has reached a critical moment, and Davis’ account of the Uluru convention is essential reading.

In other news, the media is having a critical moment of its own. The business model supporting news journalism is mid-collapse as advertising revenue migrates online. (Don’t worry, we’re not begging for money.) Facebook and Google are amassing corporate power like the world’s never seen before, and don’t have many scruples about how they use it. In this issue I have written about the dominance of the tech giants, and explore some bold new proposals to save our media.

Nick Feik

Nick Feik is the editor of the Monthly.