INTRODUCTION: Proposals for the establishment of an Indigenous advisory body within the Australian Constitution are genuinely innovative and exciting. Designing such a body is a challenge. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have long sought better political representation. Indigenous Australians constitute approximately 3 per cent of the population, therefore—even with proportionate reserved seats—such a micro-minority will struggle to assert itself in the Federal Parliament. For this and other reasons, the Cape York Institute rejected proposals for reserved seats in the Federal Parliament as unworkable. Noel Pearson expressed the dilemma well:

There’s no way that we’re going to regularly have members to speak on our behalf in the parliament, and yet parliament is regularly making laws about us. So a provision which makes us part of the formal process of parliament, I think that has got to be part of the discussion.

A constitutional Indigenous advisory body is one way of resolving that dilemma.