“We’d invited the Prime Minister and the opposition leader to accept the Uluru Statement as a bark painting, like politicians always have. But our old people said, ‘No, they're going to take it and put it on the wall in Parliament House and they're not going to implement what's in there. We have to go out on the red dirt, stare down the camera and invite Australians to walk with us, like they did in 1967, in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.'"

https://ulurustatement.org/professor-megan-davis-explains-why-uluru-statement-was-issued-to-aussies-and-not-politicians/