What you ask for and what you present to the people are two very different things though. The Uluru Statement may well be what is requested, but when you put it to the people to vote, you need to remove as much ambiguity as possible and flesh out the practicalities in much more detail. That doesn't mean diverging from the Uluru Statement, it just means providing more detail on how those requests are actually going to be met.
For me, it's the difference between describing your dream home to a friend vs getting the blueprints back from a qualified engineer. If you build off the high-level description you're probably going to be disappointed, but if you sign off on the blueprints before construction starts you'll know exactly what you're going to get - no surprises.
All the government had to do was flesh out the processes and procedures in more detail and instead of us now arguing Yes vs No, we'd instead be assuming Yes and arguing about the various implementation details instead. Such a lost opportunity.
It really boils down to will Australia recognise them and listen to them?
I would suggest avoiding statements like this, because it makes people in the No group more certain they should vote No. It's because the majority of No voters want to recognise First Nations people but they disagree with the way the current proposal has been put forward. It's exactly the same as the referendum on Australian's independence - even people who wanted independence had to vote against it because they weren't happy with the way it was going to be implemented.
Telling No voters they don't want to recognise First Nations people when they actually do, makes them feel like the Yes crowd doesn't understand their concerns, and doesn't see the problems that might arise. So it makes No voters even more certain that they need to vote No, in order to save everyone from problems they think the Yes crowd hasn't seen. Maybe that's untrue, but I feel it necessary to point out that in order to convince people to alter their opinion, you need to understand where they're coming from so you can provide reassurance about whatever it is that worries them. If you don't understand what your opponent's concerns are, you will end up putting forward arguments that are not persuasive and you will have no hope of changing their minds.
To answer your final question, yes I want to recognise First Nations individuals, yes I want to listen to them, but no I don't want it made permanent in the constitution until I have seen it making a difference in the real world first. I don't care what changes anyone wants to make to the constitution - it could be free money for all white males like me - it should not be changed until we have tried it first and are 100% sure that it is going to work and isn't going to introduce any unforeseen problems.
Show me the Voice working for two years and all the positive differences it's making in everyday people's lives and I will gladly vote Yes to make it part of the constitution. Until then I'm afraid it's a No - nothing to do with First Nations people, and everything to do with being given an incomplete picture of what's going to happen.
Well at the moment most landlords I have spoken to (the ones with loans) are losing more money by renting out the property than they ever have before. You only leave money on the table if house prices increase, and despite what you see in the media, many house prices have not risen that much. My own have only recently returned to what they were worth back in 2008 before the GFC, but in that time I have spent many thousands on interest payments to the bank so if I sell today I won't break even and will make an overall loss, as compared to leaving the money in a normal bank account the whole time. I am hoping that by next year when the leases expire the house prices will have gone up enough that I can at least break even and recover the extra money I paid to the bank. So I'm not sure what you mean by all the money left on the table, unless I am missing something?
The property sale is unlikely to be going to another investor given current market conditions, so it will be removed from the rental pool. Yes you're right that it will go to another person, but this is likely to be someone moving out from their parents' home, or someone coming in from interstate. It's unlikely to be a renter purchasing the home because if a renter was going to buy a home they would have done so already, or they're still saving for a deposit and the price increases have set them back so they have to keep saving for longer now.
It's odd to say that landlords aren't providing housing, when a new investor in the market will provide an additional rental that was not available before. Yes it might be an existing house instead of building a new one, but we're talking about rentals not about buying. When we need more rentals available it doesn't matter whether they are existing houses or new ones. We only need new houses when we're talking about lowering the price of buying a house.
The fact is that landlords aren't increasing rents faster than interest rates, it's misleading the way it's calculated. The interest rates have been increasing every month or two for a while now, but due to most leases being a fixed length, the rent can't be changed. So of course once the lease gets renewed there is a correction and six months or even a year of interest rate increases suddenly get included in a single new lease, and so of course that looks like the rent is being increased at a much higher rate because of the sudden jump. But if you look at it percentage wise over the whole time period, you'll find that the majority of rents (at least outside major cities) are increasing at or under the interest rate. In my own case I have increased my rents way under the interest rate which is why I'm now stuck for the next six months having to dig into my savings to make my loan repayments. But hey at least my tenants are keeping VERY quiet about maintenance issues as I think they realise they're getting a pretty good deal, so at least they are helping me save some money there.
At any rate, time will tell which one of us is right. I am sure rents are going to continue to rise as the number of landlords decreases, but if that does not happen I am more than willing to admit I was wrong. We'll see!