Whatever you think of the question of the Voice it was fascinating to hear Noel Pearson, that most formidable and perhaps most difficult indigenous leader, deliver his Boyer Lecture the other night. And what was remarkable about it was not that Pearson supported the Voice but the way in which he emphasised the greatness of the gift of the common law which white settlement brought to this land and the way what was perceived as invasion was at the same time something which betokened the creation of one of the world’s great liberal democracies.