Emma Garlett: Being and ally to Indigenous people takes more than a t

The Australian conversation about reconciliation often feels like a broken record.

We read the reports and watch the performative gestures that ultimately leave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people standing on the outside looking in.

The Voice referendum result laid bare the painful truth: the “tick a box exercise” version of reconciliation is dead. But in this vacuum of failure, a new, genuine, and global movement is being forged, led by a powerful team at the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth and Justice: Professor Emma-Jaye Gavin, a proud Indigenous woman, and Professor Andrew Gunstone.

Andrew is the ally we need. He’s been called the “non-Indigenous ally of the decade”.

It’s a title he earned not by just wearing a t-shirt, but putting in the hard yards. As the Centr