We need more voices like Julian Leeser for The Voice

The Jewish parliamentarian who quit shadow cabinet to campaign for the Yes case is an example more Liberals should follow.

One of the many virtues of welcoming migrants to Australia is the diverse understanding they bring to our society.

Julian Leeser’s paternal grandparents were Jewish refugees from Nazism, his mother’s family were Anglo-Jews who made him a sixth-generation Australian.

Such family history delivers a visceral understanding of the importance of history and the compulsion to address its injustices.

Many Australian Jews felt proud this week when Leeser, the only Jew on the Liberal side in parliament, chose to relinquish his role as Shadow Attorney-General and Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians so that he could campaign for a Yes vote to The Voice.

It was an ethical choice that should serve as an example to his party colleagues. 

The proposed Voice to Parliament for Indigenous Australians, which every Australian should support, will enshrine recognition of First Peoples in our constitution.

It will ensure overdue recognition of the original sin with which Australia was settled, the violent conquest of Aboriginal peoples. Even more importantly, it will provide a practical mechanism to address the subsequent injustices Indigenous people continue to suffer: the loss of culture, the legacy of the stolen generations, and the shameful gap in social, economic and educational levels.

By ensuring the voices of Indigenous Australians are listened to – for the first time in Australian history – it offers hope of rebuilding the people whom the settlement of Australia by the rest of us almost destroyed.