Dr Shireen Morris had no plans to enter politics.
Born in Australia to Indian and Fijian-Indian migrant parents, she was first inclined to become an actor and a singer while growing up in the outer Melbourne suburb of North Ringwood.
But life had different plans for her.
At the age of 28, Ms Morris decided to study law and went onto earn a PhD in constitutional law.
While pursuing law, she travelled to Queensland to do an internship at the Cape York Institute in Cairns, which changed her life.
“I ended up going to Cape York Institute which is run by Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson. So I went up to Cairns, I was about 30 years old then and spent my summer holidays working on things like native title and environmental protection law controversies,” Ms Morris tells SBS Hindi.
“And very unexpectedly, Noel Pearson offered me a job on working on Indigenous constitutional recognition.
“So I spent the next seven-eight years in the organisation trying to think about what kind of policy, what kind of law reform, the indigenous constitutional recognition achieve and ended up becoming an advocate alongside Noel,” she says.
Mr Pearson has called her “one of the most passionate and courageous advocates for Indigenous people”.
“I was always interested in human rights, Indigenous rights and ideas of social justice and it is probably because coming from a migrant background, I grew up with a sense of awareness that not everyone in Australia necessarily gets a fair go,” Ms Morris says about what drew her to becoming an advocate for Indigenous people.
“While growing up, I realised, we as Indian-Australians are luckier and have been treated more fairly. So for me, that’s what attracted me to this area,” Ms Morris says.
However, the dismissal of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017 by then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made her take a plunge into politics.
“At Cape York Institute, we had been working on this for years. So it was a huge disappointment particularly for the Indigenous people but also for me and my work personally.
“So it was the frustration with the lack of progress in that area and there was frustration across the board in politics that inspired me to put my hand up for the Labor in the last election,” she says.
Morris contested the 2019 Federal elections from the seat of Deakin in Melbourne but lost to Liberal MP Michael Sukkar.
Morris’ is currently a Mckenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne and is hopeful things will change as Australia has its first Indigenous Minister, Ken Wyatt.
“In his first address to the press club, he said he would like to see a referendum on the constitutional recognition in the next three years and the government is committed to working with Indigenous people on a co-design process to progress the Uluru Statement. So I think it is a really positive thing,” she says.
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