Emma Griffiths

ABC News

The debate about formally recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution is set to flare following the release of recommendations from the expert panel advising the Government on the issue.

The panel, chaired by former head of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Patrick Dodson, has set out major changes to the Constitution that would recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people "as the first peoples of Australia".

The changes would need to be passed by referendum and the panel has advised that a single question be put to Australians in relation to all of the proposals.

Speaking at the launch of the panel's report, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has urged Australians to embrace the recommendations.

"As a nation we are big enough and it is the right time to say yes to an understanding of our past, to say yes to constitutional change, and to say yes to a future more united and more reconciled than we have ever been before," Ms Gillard said.

The Prime Minister says enacting the changes will "take the deepest and strongest sort of bipartisanship".

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