The path to Australia’s future passes through its past, represented by the arrow. The Aboriginal people as the original inhabitants of Australia hold a central place in Australian identity.

The symbol itself, people sitting around a fire talking over the matters affecting the community, represents a culture where all points of view are considered and consensus reached only after considering all those points of view. This is a powerful challenge to contemporary adversarial political culture, where success is measured by how well you can score points against ‘the opposition’.

The seats in the logo represent the six states and two territories of Australia, meeting as equals, the original intention for the Senate.

Current adversarial political culture with its focus on the election cycle cannot give the vision or clarity to deal meaningfully with the challenges facing our global village. Only by sitting around the table, locally, nationally and globally, will adequate answers be found for the future.

An Indigenous Example

The Governing system of the Yolngu people of East Arnhem is one of many sovereign bodies standing together. They are individually autonomous in their activity as clans and yet they are part of a block of people aligned, by age old kinship, Law, and alliance relationships.

Their kinship aligns them together individually, there Law spiritually and legally, and their alliances socially.

These alliances, however, are not an absolute for agreement on action in every situation, but are always a commitment to work together based on foundational history (creation stories), espousing common principles and values. (Often an animal or object associated with a foundational history represents/binds an alliance between clans, which in turn espouses particular characters to be exemplified.)

As such when democratically elected Yolngu political representatives (called Djirrkay and Dalkarra who are delegated by consensus from within each clan) meet in a traditional parliament, gathered to make decisions affecting multiple clan nations, they are acting for the best outcome for their own clan amongst the greater clans of the Yolngu people.

This means, effectively, that they meet in a house of parliament made up of wholly representative independents. Consequently the catalyst for decision making by consensus, in Yolngu parliament, is a keen awareness of each others interdependence braced by a common goal to achieve certain values and principles.