I'm not gay. However, I have many beautiful friends from the LBGTQIA+ community. In fact, I would say some of my best friends are from that community.

During the campaign leading up to the vote on same-sex marriage, I saw the vile discrimination directed towards anyone in favour of supporting the YES campaign. I saw my LBGT friends hurt by this. I saw people turn their backs on progress.

You see, I am married. But at the time my dearest friends couldn't enjoy and have a ceremony that joined two people who loved each other and wanted to get married, to simply enjoy the same rights as me.

Voting YES for marriage equality wasn't about me, it had NO effect on how I lived day to day. In fact, I could go about my life as per usual and it not have an effect on me either way.

But I voted YES, because it was about humanity. It was about allowing people to express their love in ceremony. My YES to marriage equality was about me saying to the LBGTIQIA+ community:

I see you.

I value you.

I want you to live in a modern world where you're not discriminated against and have equality. I wanted them to be able to walk down the street and know that the people around the accepted them in society and valued their strive for equality.

It was very easy to vote yes for you. Thankfully, and rightfully, 61 per cent of Australians – a majority – felt the same way as I did on marriage equality.

Now, I'm asking those same 61% of Australian voters (7,817,247 million) to vote Yes for us. For our community. To bring about the same equality for us as First Nations peoples; peoples who have lived under the same laws as everyone else, yet who still – STILL – don't enjoy an equal say in how we as an Australian society should function and collaborate.

It is fact that we have lived on this continent for 60,000-plus years. For literally thousands of generations. We have survived and endured longer than any other Indigenous culture on earth.

It is a fact that Arthur Phillip, on 26th January on the beaches of Botany Bay, planted the Union Jack declaring this continent Terra Nullius.

That act was a mammoth act of discrimination. It was a lie. It wasn't no-man's land belonging to no one. I believe this was intentional. Instead of admitting that it was invading land that belonged to Aboriginal people, Britain acted as if it were settling on an empty land.

We as Aboriginal people continue to live. We have survived the brutal Acts of State parliaments, where laws harshly were made towards us and have greatly impacted us. The Aborigines Protection Acts, for example.

In 1967, that referendum gave the Commonwealth Government the ability to make law for 'whom it deems necessary for', known as Section 51 (xxvi), and it also enabled the Commonwealth Government the ability to 'count us in the census'; in other words, the people of Australia overwhelmingly supported Yes to 'counting Aboriginal Natives in the census'. An almost unanimous 96.5 per cent voted yes to counting us. To seeing us as human beings.

In 1992, the High Court, the Common Law of this country, dismantled the Terra Nullius notion. The famous Mabo Case was successful in overturning the myth that at the time of colonisation Australia was 'terra nullius' or land belonging to no one. The Mabo decision was very much a turning point for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rights, because it acknowledged our unique connection with the land.

Now, I believe in the Australian people. I believe you see us; most of you know the history of this country. Right now, the power is in the Australian people's hands. Just like marriage equality, we want to see ourselves in this country's 'rule book'. We want to be recognised in this rule book as the first peoples of this continent.

They say if it ain't broke, then don't fix it.

The constitution has never been right, never been fair, because it never recognised our existence.

We have never been lost, and it's now time in 2023 to vote for our equality, our existence. And by doing so through a voice to the Australian parliament. A voice that will ensure that proposed legislation or policies that affect us can be agreed upon or questioned and, importantly, will include vital advice from us. You see, the ability to give advice to government, will absolutely help make better decisions and ultimately lead to better outcomes for everyone.

On June 21, 2007, Liberal Prime Minister John Howard launched the Northern Territory Intervention. The Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) was suspended to allow this control of an explicitly racist and grossly regime over my people's lives and NT Aboriginal communities. The army was sent into Aboriginal lands which sent a clear message that the Commonwealth was in complete control. It was the only time that the Australian Army mobilised for law and order was towards Aboriginal people for the NT intervention.

If we had a voice to parliament, we could have absolutely questioned and rightly so disagreed about that legislation that damaged Aboriginal people then and continues to do so now with its continuation and the aftermath of it. That intervention happened to Aboriginal people, it scarred Aboriginal people and now many of those people have gone on to have children, with that trauma passed on to the next generation. This is evident in some of the issues we are seeing today with some of the youth anti-social problems in the NT.

We need continuity of good legislation, good policies to have positive impact on our lives and communities. Successive governments keep changing policies every time they come into power, meaning all continuity in Aboriginal Affairs is crushed. This is the point of enshrining this advisory into the constitution. Australia does not lose anything, it only gains!

In 2017, Australians voted in favour of marriage equality. The victory for the Yes led to the Marriage Act of 1961 being updated. I am calling upon everyone who voted for equality then to vote for equality now! Our country, its people, deserve it. For does not the Australian National Anthem decry: 'For we are ONE and free'?

I represented 23 million Australians so proudly for 13 years in the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. I won gold for you and our country. I'm now respectively asking you to represent me and write YES in the referendum vote this Saturday.

Nova Peris OAM OLY is a former Senator, dual Australian Olympian and gold medallist and recently inducted into the Sports Australia Hall of Fame. Nova is proud Aboriginal woman of the Gija, Yawuru and Bunitj Gagudju peoples.