Campaign to recognise what?

What does Recognition, with a capital R, refer to?

If you know, you're part of the 50 per cent of Australians who are aware of the push for constitutional recognition for indigenous people.

But awareness doesn't automatically mean a yes vote when a referendum is finally called.

This week, a parliamentary committee recommended that a referendum on including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Australian Constitution should be held no later than the 2016 federal election, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott seemed to rule that out while visiting Arnhem Land, suggesting 2017 would be better.

"It's going to be difficult to run a bipartisan referendum campaign in conjunction with a highly partisan election campaign," he told reporters.

But what are Australians being asked to consider, and can they separate it from politics?

The federally-funded Recognise movement has travelled almost 25,000km around the country for the past 18 months or so to remind people that indigenous people are not mentioned in the constitution.

Recognise is seeking the insertion of a new section in the founding legal document to preserve the government's ability to pass laws for the benefit of indigenous people, along with a new section banning racial discrimination.

But winning a referendum - which requires a majority of votes in a majority of states - has been notoriously difficult in Australia, with only eight of 44 in the nation's history ever succeeding.

Recognise has vocal high-profile support: Labor, the Coalition and the Greens back it, as do former prime minister Bob Hawke, Australian of the Year Adam Goodes, Cape York Institute's Noel Pearson, academic Marcia Langton, and business heavy-hitters including Telstra boss David Thodey and Westpac CEO Gail Kelly.

But indigenous people themselves are divided on the issue.

Some, like Senator Nova Peris, think it's long overdue.

She called the constitution a "whitefella rulebook".

"(We must) truly shift the mindset of white Australians and make them realise you've all benefited from 200 years of systemic injustices that have occurred in this country," she said tearfully at Garma Festival in early August.

But others, like Northern Territory elder Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, think constitutional recognition is worthless without a treaty, and she criticised indigenous leaders who back the movement.

"You have the elite blacks that have been almost handpicked to be the voices for First Nation Australians: Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton, Adam Goodes; I don't want him in there, he's such a wonderful young ambassador but he better come and listen to us mob, too, and get what it is that makes us a First Nations person," she told AAP.

She said she was "gutted" when the Prime Minister said last month that the arrival of the First Fleet "was the defining moment in the history of this continent".

Ms Kunoth-Monks said Mr Abbott had delivered a double insult, since he purports to be a prime minister for indigenous affairs.

She sees constitutional recognition as another form of assimilation, and at a referendum "I hope those that have got a heart and a grasp on reality will also vote no".

Aboriginal commentator Celeste Liddle has called the Recognise campaign "a government-sponsored ad campaign removed from grassroots indigenous opinion" and has asked where the funding is for the opposing view.

She has found herself aligned with conservative commentator Andrew Bolt, who opposes constitutional recognition on the grounds that allowing for race-specific legislation, laws, and programs "won't help a single person out bush".

He has called the Recognise campaign racist and said he derided Qantas painting a plane with the Recognise logo, saying he did not want to buy into an argument about racial politics.

But calling the campaign racist is a distortion of the principle of the movement, said its campaign director Tanya Hosch.

"A key (reason) is to create a unifying moment for the nation where the first people of the country become included in our national founding document where they've previously been excluded," she told AAP.

"That's going to be a moment for all of us as Australians to celebrate together."

She said legal experts had confirmed that voting yes for constitutional recognition does not pose any legal impediment for those seeking a treaty or sovereignly.

But despite the message of unification, the campaign is not promising change after the vote, Ms Hosch said.

"We're very clear that we don't want to over-promise or try to guarantee any specific result for the daily lives of anybody after this, but what we know is this is an opportunity for us to do something about ending that exclusion," she said.

"It can represent a fundamental shift in the way we go forward as indigenous and non-indigenous Australians together."

PROPOSED CHANGES FOR AUSTRALIA'S CONSTITUTION:

An Expert Panel, which included indigenous and community leaders, constitutional experts and parliamentarians, consulted across Australia and reported to the Prime Minister in January 2012, recommending that Australians should vote in a referendum to:

• remove Section 25, which says the states can ban people from voting based on their race

• remove section 51(xxvi), which can be used to pass laws that discriminate against people based on their race

• insert a new section 51A to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and to preserve the Australian government's ability to pass laws for the benefit (not detriment) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

• insert a new section 116A, banning racial discrimination by government

• insert a new section 127A, recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages were this country's first tongues, while confirming that English is Australia's national language.

(SOURCE: Recognise, www.recognise.org.au)