The Indigenous voice to parliament is so important to Tanya Hosch that she left hospital after a leg amputation to be at Wednesday’s launch of the referendum campaign.
“A little over two weeks ago I had my lower right leg amputated,” said Hosch, a Torres Strait Islander woman and a director of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition.
“Having left hospital only yesterday, I’m standing here on one leg today.”
Hosch, a business leader who has been campaigning for constitutional recognition for more than a decade, felt she had to find the strength to attend the Adelaide event given what the issue means.
“That’s how important this is,” she told Guardian Australia. “Not just to me but to many other people in my circumstances and worse circumstances.
“They never get to have their voice heard. I just feel like I need to do this.
“This is just such an important moment for our country and I don’t want us to squander this moment.”
Hosch was born to a white Welsh mother and a Torres Strait Islander father, and was adopted by a white mother and Aboriginal father.
She got her start in activism in the 1990s before working in policy and the public sector. By 2013 she was the face of the Recognise campaign.
“Getting our constitution to tell the truth about who we are as a nation is the least my daughter deserves,” she said back then.
At the referendum launch, she used a wheelchair to get on stage before standing up, strong. “Go, sis!” someone yelled from the crowd.
Hosch briefly mentioned the operation, which was a result of an issue related to type 2 diabetes. Later, she said she felt “pretty good” physically.
“I feel quite strong,” she said. “I have some nervous anxiety right now because this moment is finally here, but I’m so excited that I will get to write ‘yes’ and that the Australian people get to be heard on this issue.
“It’s beyond anything that I could imagine that we’re going to have that day and it’s just so important.”
As the AFL’s manager of inclusion and social policy, Hosch picks a sporting metaphor for how she will campaign for the voice in the lead-up to the 14 October referendum date.
“I need to … leave everything on the field. So that’s what I’m going to do.”
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, stood alongside the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, in Elizabeth in Adelaide’s north to confirm Australia’s first referendum day since 1999.
“The idea for a voice came from the people and it will be decided by the people. Today I announce that referendum day will be 14 October,” Albanese told a packed theatre of yes campaign supporters.
“You are not being asked to vote for a political party, or for a person. You’re being asked to vote for an idea. To say yes to an idea whose time has come.”
• This article was amended on 30 August 2023. Tanya Hosch’s birth father was a Torres Strait Islander man and not Aboriginal as an earlier version said.
