Philippe Foubert Research & Writing
AUSTRALIAN WRITINGS

Megan Davis and the Demands of Structural Justice

By Philippe Foubert, PhD

Professor Megan Davis’s work offers a demanding account of justice: one that respects truth-telling and relationship, but refuses to let either stand in for First Nations political authority. For allies, it changes the question from how to express goodwill to how to support work that shifts power.

Professor Megan Davis is a constitutional lawyer and public-law scholar whose work has helped shape Australia’s debate about First Nations recognition. She is Pro Vice-Chancellor Society at UNSW Sydney, a Scientia Professor and Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law, and co-chair of the Uluru Dialogue. Advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and a long engagement with constitutional reform ground her work. (UNSW; Uluru Dialogue profile)

Her 2023 Quarterly Essay, Voice of Reason: On Recognition and Renewal, presents the Voice as a practical response to the policy failures that the publisher associates with “the torment of powerlessness.” That phrase comes from the collective Uluru Statement from the Heart, not from Davis alone: it describes the structural character of the crisis facing First Nations peoples and calls for constitutional reform that would enable them to take a rightful place in their own country. (Black Inc.; Uluru Statement from the Heart)

That distinction—between a politics of feeling and a politics of power—runs through Davis’s public contribution. It is also the most useful place to begin when considering what her work asks of non-Indigenous allies.

Beyond symbolic reconciliation

Davis’s critique is not an argument against respectful relationships, historical learning or reconciliation as a moral aspiration. It is a warning about what happens when people separate reconciliation from rights, justice and institutional change. In a speech at the launch of the Towards Truth database, Davis said: “The problem with the past 20 years of reconciliation is that truth hasn’t been a part of that reconciliation framework.” She said that the Uluru process brought rights and the pursuit of justice back into the conversation. (Uluru Dialogue)

Her earlier work makes the concern still plainer. Writing on her appointment to the Referendum Council, Davis distinguished weak acknowledgement from “strong” recognition through structural reform. She warned that many Aboriginal people feared that merely symbolic or minimalist changes would lack the durability to compel meaningful change or make government listen. (UNSW Newsroom) In a 2018 oration, she described truth and justice as “the twin pillars of reconciliation,” while arguing that people could not simply bypass unfinished questions of sovereignty and dispossession. (Parkes Foundation)

The point is not that every Reconciliation Action Plan, commemorative event or educational program is empty. It is that none can substitute for the transfer of authority or for an enforceable political settlement. Davis’s critique of the reconciliation framework was especially sharp: she said it had required little of the state while relying heavily on private action by corporations, charities, universities, sporting clubs and individuals. (Uluru Dialogue) The question that follows is therefore institutional: what obligations bind governments, and who has a durable capacity to influence decisions that governments make about First Nations peoples?

Voice, Treaty and Truth: an architecture, not a slogan

The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls on Australia to enshrine a First Nations Voice in the Constitution and for a Makarrata Commission to supervise agreement-making between governments and First Nations, as well as truth-telling about Australia’s history. (Uluru Statement from the Heart) UNSW’s account of the process describes the 2017 Statement as the culmination of thirteen regional dialogues and identifies Voice, Treaty and Truth as sequenced reforms rather than interchangeable public-relations themes. (UNSW Indigenous Law Centre)

Davis’s interventions caution against treating the final element, truth, as an easy substitute for the rest. In the Towards Truth speech, she said that, after the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, “a truth commission is not what our people asked for.” Her point was not that historical truth is unimportant. It was that participants in the Uluru process had not asked for a nationally imposed commission to become the primary answer to First Nations political exclusion. (Uluru Dialogue)

Davis has made the qualification explicit. In a later post, she wrote that she supports truth-telling but that “a top-down, state supervised transitional justice ‘truth’ process is not the right approach” at this juncture; “political strategy matters as much as righteous aspirations.” (Megan Davis, What I Am Reading!) The issue is authorisation and consequence: who determines the form of a process, who speaks for whom, and whether the process leaves First Nations peoples with greater influence over law and policy.

This is why Davis’s account placed the Voice at its centre. The Voice’s designers conceived a representative body as a way of changing the conditions under which governments hear First Nations perspectives, not simply as a national symbol of respect. The 2023 referendum did not succeed; the Australian Electoral Commission records the official result of that federal referendum. (Australian Electoral Commission) Yet Davis has continued to argue that the practical problem remains. In a 2024 interview, she said governments would find it “more difficult and complicated” to work in Indigenous affairs without a body of representatives whom voters had legitimately elected and whom they could consult. (The Guardian)

That is a claim about democratic infrastructure. It does not promise that one institution would solve every injustice. It does insist that better sentiment alone cannot adequately answer policy failure.

What this asks of allies

For allies, Davis’s framework is an invitation to raise the standard of usefulness. Listening, reading, attending local events and learning history can be necessary; they are not, by themselves, evidence that power has shifted. The practical test is whether an activity advances priorities that First Nations people and organisations define, or primarily improves the ally’s sense of awareness and decency.

Several disciplines follow.

  • Follow First Nations leadership rather than converting it into an ally program. Before launching a campaign, ask who has defined the objective, who has authority to revise it, and whether those launching it have invited the group to play a role. Support may mean resourcing, amplifying or doing unglamorous work rather than hosting or interpreting.
  • Connect education to accountable action. Allies should not dismiss a forum or reading group, but it should have a stated next step: support for a First Nations-led organisation, a submission on a defined issue, a request to an institution, or a public commitment that others can later check.
  • Learn the institutional terrain. The substantive questions are not only cultural. They concern decision-making, land and heritage, child and family policy, justice, housing, funding and the rules that govern consultation. Allies can use their access to universities, professional bodies, unions, councils, media organisations and elected representatives to press for commitments that First Nations leadership shapes.
  • Measure leverage, not atmosphere. Attendance, warm feedback and visibility may matter, but they are incomplete measures. More demanding questions are whether resources moved, whether a decision-maker became accountable, whether those involved respected First Nations authority, and whether an institution changed a rule or practice.
  • Make room for disagreement and limits. “First Nations voices” are not a single homogeneous constituency, and allies should not manufacture consensus or claim to certify it. Davis’s caution about national representation and top-down processes is a reason for greater humility, not a licence for non-Indigenous people to decide what Indigenous communities need.

This approach has an ethical as well as political value. It moves allies away from performance and towards responsibility: less emphasis on displaying care, more emphasis on accepting direction, sharing resources and sustaining pressure where it is useful. It also avoids a false choice between truth and structure. Truth-telling can deepen public understanding; relationship can build the conditions for solidarity. But people should use neither to postpone questions of representation, agreement-making and justice.

Davis’s contribution is thus not a rejection of reconciliation’s best aspirations. It is a refusal of reconciliation without consequences. Her work asks Australia to judge progress not only by its language of recognition, but by whether First Nations peoples have a meaningful, enduring place in the decisions that shape their lives.

Source list

This essay was researched and fact-checked against primary and authoritative sources, listed above. If you notice an error or have a correction, please get in touch.

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