WE ACKNOWLEDGE OURSELVES.
AND SHALL BE ACKNOWLEDGED.
THE AUSTRALISH RIGHTS COUNCIL seeks formal recognition of Australia’s historic ethnocultural founding people — a distinct people decended from the early British-descended settlers, who meet the recognised definition of a people in international doctrine: a shared origin, a culture grown in a specific territory, and a common civic inheritance. Such recognition allows a people to be politically represented and for their continued existence to be secured.
Through legal and policy advocacy, we trace Australia’s constitutional development, identify systemic obstacles, and make a rights-based case for recognition and self-determination within the Commonwealth.
Our case is simple: extend political representation to the historic ethnocultural community that founded Australia — who are on track to become a minority in their own homeland before the end of this decade — within the constitutional framework of the Commonwealth.
Join the mailing list and enter your name into the Witness Roll — a permanent public record of those who stood for recognition.
Under Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the Commonwealth of Australia is a signatory, all peoples possess the right to self-determination. This right does not originate from the state but from peoplehood itself. The Australish, being a historic ethnocultural people formed on this soil, therefore assert their right to representation and cultural continuity under this principle.
Australia may have one citizenship, but it does not follow that it has only one people. As seen in Canada, South Africa, or the United Kingdom, a single state can lawfully contain multiple historic peoples, all sharing citizenship while maintaining distinct inherited identities. “Australian” is a civic category — a multicultural legal status open to any person granted citizenship, regardless of ancestry or culture. A person may hold Australian citizenship while possessing only the language, customs, and identity of their ethnic people, and this does not affect how "Australian" they are. By contrast, “Australish” is not a civic status but an ethnocultural one, inherited through descent from the founding settler population. If every Australish citizen were removed from Australia, and the population that remained still held Australian citizenship, the country would be just as Australian as it ever was. This illustrates how “Australian” is a civic identity, while “Australish” names an ethnocultural people — one whose existence is not guaranteed simply by the maintenance of the state.
The Australish people — as with any people — cannot be represented until they are recognised in law. If no formal body exists, then legally the Australish people do not exist — and what does not exist cannot be represented. Without legal recognition, their interests cannot be heard, and without representation, their decline proceeds without objection or record until culminating in erasure. Recognition grants standing — the status required to be considered in law, to enter public record, to petition formally, and to secure priority in decisions that distribute power and resources. Without standing, a people will be excluded entirely from consideration in every institutional decision — which is the current state of affairs.
To gain that standing, a people must first speak through an institution that can be recognised in law. For that reason, we have prepared the Australish Declaration, a founding charter of intent to begin the establishment of the Australish Rights Council — a civic body grounded in treasury, ledger, and defined milestones, so that representation for the native founding population of Australia begins not as sentiment but as structure.
The Eureka Rebellion — when Australish men first raised a flag in rebellion against rule without representation. Today, unauthorised public use of that same flag is prohibited under Federal Court order, while no such prohibition applies to the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander flags.
Contributions from members and supporters funds the necessary steps to establish the Council, so that representation begins with legal standing and public record, owned and funded by the people themselves. These are recorded in an open ledger. Funds are applied solely to the staged milestones set out in the Roadmap: website, legal incorporation of a Company Limited by Guarantee, and the first publications of the Council.
The Council will be declared when the Treasury goal is met.
All patrons are recorded, with thanks.
Launch site, publish Declaration, open Witness Roll.
Add names and encourage community support for the cause.
Founding Membership Roll; symbolic pledges $10–$30.
Secure essential resources.
Register CLG; ACNC subtype ‘Promoting or Protecting Human Rights’.
Secure final resources required to establish the Council.
White Paper, petitions, legal submissions; local & youth chapters.
Sustain the institution; speak as a people.
THE AUSTRALISH DECLARATION marks the moment a people organises itself and hereby founds the Australish Rights Council — first as a civic body grounded in treasury, ledger, and witness, and in time to be established as a statutory body in Commonwealth law. This Charter of Intent sets the ordered path by which a people passes from sentiment to structure, from private conviction to representation, from scattered voices to a recognised Council able to stand in law and in public record. Power in the Commonwealth is exercised according to established norms. mechanisms. Sentiment, protest, activism, and even a voting majority, without institutional form, do not enter those mechanisms. Only through deliberate navigation of recognised structures can a people take part in the processes by which representation and authority are allocated. Put simply: the system has rules, and only those who organise according to them are heard by it.
In issuing this Declaration, the Australish people form their Council in principle. Even before any law is passed, such a Council carries real authority — because a people who organise, keep a ledger, and hold a treasury are already exercising representation. The long-term objective is statutory recognition: that a future Act to Constitute the Australish Rights Council would recognise it in Commonwealth law as a permanent representative institution empowered to speak in public record and authority on behalf of the Australish people.
The Australish people stand today without recognition in the Commonwealth they founded. A people unrecognised is a people already being erased.
Those who stand now will be remembered. Their names shall be written in the record of a people who chose to endure.
Formal written submissions relating to the Australish Declaration, Witness Roll, or Council preparation may be entered below.
Entries may be archived as part of the institutional record.