Daily Advertiser letters: Oppenheimer a chance to reflect on Australian history

I share with her the hope that the lives of disadvantaged Aboriginal people can be improved in the future but at this stage I have to say that for several reasons the Voice is still unlikely to get my vote.

Primarily I am not at ease with inserting into our Constitution a clause advantaging one race of people over others, even if the intention is argued to simply be to 'close the gap' for the disadvantaged proportion of that community.

Secondly, I don't believe that the Voice will be efficient and effective in achieving that particular goal, and thirdly depending upon the militancy of the persons appointed to fill the positions within this new bureaucracy, I worry that their actions and proposals may in fact increase racial tension.

There are a myriad of reasons which could and should be argued out in public both in support of and against each of these three generally held concerns. Perhaps for simplicity these should be addressed one by one.

Let me start by asking if the Voice is intended to liaise down to grass roots level with the 500 or so First Nations it is presumably going to need a significant number of representatives and support staff to establish lines of communication and amicably resolve, consolidate and pass on the likely differing recommendations coming from each.

Therefore after having been written into our Constitution, are supporters of the Voice concerned that a future government could reduce the size and composition of the Voice's bureaucracy down from whatever scale it is initially set at to a level where they feel it would be unable to carry out this task?

What then is the advantage of the "permanency" of the Voice if the possibility exists that it could become tokenistic?

The film Oppenheimer provides an opportunity to reflect on some history and look to the future. However, an important Australian aspect was omitted.

A year before the Manhattan Project was established two physicists, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, revealed to the eminent Australian physicist Mark Oliphant in London that an airborne atomic bomb, previously thought too heavy, was in fact possible.

It was not until Oliphant flew to America and met with Oppenheimer that the London work was taken seriously, and bomb construction was undertaken.

From 1946 to 1996, the US, UK and France detonated 318 nuclear devices in the Pacific region, including Maralinga in South Australia.

The Maralinga tests failed to adequately consider the presence of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara people.

A delegation of Maralinga survivors and relatives recently visited Canberra urging the government to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The treaty was adopted in 2017 with the backing of 122 countries.

Six years later, the treaty has been signed by 95 state parties and ratified by 68.

While Australia is not one of these, in 2018, the Australian Labor Party adopted a resolution committing it to ratify the TPNW in government. It was moved by Anthony Albanese.

For the sake of young Australians already concerned about climate change, ratifying the treaty is one way the government can send a signal of hope for the future. It must be done.

I can't help but feel relief for Bob and June Meredith on hearing the news re Mailes' death.

What they went through when their beautiful daughter Kim was so terribly taken from them. I knew Bob and June well.

I know this will never bring Kim back, but there has to be some satisfaction that some justice has finally been served.