by WARREN MUNDINE – WHILE Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his minister for Indigenous affairs frolic together with NBA basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, the proposal for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, devolves into a bully pulpit for elitists, Aboriginal academic activists, media, and the rich and powerful.
Racial abuse, threats, insults, and fear have driven the so-called “debate” so far.
- No national body can speak for all 300 traditional “First Nations”.
- Australia and its Constitution are not racist. There are a few racist individuals, like every country in the world.
- There’s no convincing argument why the Voice needs to be in the Constitution.
On social media and in conversation, anyone who questions the referendum has been singled out for abuse and threats.
Senior legal people, including the Silks at the Bar who will run and, in time, preside over legal cases on the proposed constitutional provisions have been driven into silence.
FEAR
They’re unwilling to state publicly how they believe the Voice will impact public law, and parliamentary and government decision-making for fear of losing briefs.
Except for a few media outlets, the bias in favour of the Voice has drowned out all opposing views.
We are to believe that all Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are united in their support for the Voice.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Let’s go back to 2017 when the Uluru Statement from the Heart was signed off by some 250 Aboriginal delegates who gathered in central Australia at the First Nations National Constitutional Convention.
The Statement had three basic demands: an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, a treaty with First Nations People and a Makarrata Commission.
The prime minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull, stated that the convention went beyond its brief with the concept of a Voice to Parliament and did not consider it as a representative position – demonstrated by the number of walkouts from the process.
In a joint statement by the Turnbull government’s then-Attorney-General George Brandis and Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion the proposal to amend the Constitution was rejected.
They said it was neither desirable nor capable of winning acceptance in a referendum and would inevitably be seen as a “third chamber” of Parliament.
It would also be inconsistent with the fundamental principle on which Australia’s democracy is built, that all citizens have equal civic rights.
PRESSURE
The Morrison government had second thoughts following relentless pressure and campaigning by Voice proponents, particularly from big business and the media.
It set up the Calma/Langton Inquiry to come up with a co-design of what the Voice would look like. The report from the inquiry has been completed and made public, with no government yet to respond to its detail.
From the beginning, I have never been convinced to support the Voice, a position I share with many other Aboriginals from across the political spectrum. The reason for this is three-fold:
- The Voice is not Aboriginal culture. In our cultures, only countrymen and women can speak for country. No national body can speak for the circa 300 traditional owner groups, Australia’s “First Nations,” it would be a huge bureaucratic structure drowning out Aboriginal voices, not enabling them to be heard;
- I am a believer in liberal democracy and all the freedoms and opportunities it creates; and
- I don’t believe Australia and its Constitution is racist. There are racist individuals in our country, like every country in the world, but that does not make our country nor the laws that govern us racist.
The Parliament already has the power under the Constitution to set up a Voice to Parliament today or at any time of its choosing.
So, why does it have to go in the Constitution at an enormous cost of some $180 to $200 million, not including the money spent already?
How about Parliament legislate the Voice and do something better with that money by spending it on the ground in ways that could produce practical results right now?
I have not heard a convincing argument as to why the Voice needs to be in the Constitution. People have said it avoids the vagaries of changing governments and policies changing.
Well, Paragraph 3 of the current proposed Voice amendment states quite clearly that the Parliament will have the power to determine the Voice’s powers, functions, structure and composition. The same powers the Parliament has now.
People have also said they want Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be “in the Constitution”.
You could do that with a preamble or statement that has words recognising the people and cultures who have been living on the Australian continent for millennia.
You could enshrine Indigenous treaty rights like they do in Canada or give the Commonwealth the power to make laws on native title and/or agreements between traditional owner groups and governments on matters relating to their native title.
None of those things would be based on race but rather on historical facts and/or cultural rights that come from descent (not race).
After Prime Minister Albanese’s visit to Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, the people signed The Masig Statement – Malungu Yangu Wakay (Voice from the Deep).
It calls for self-determination, the right to freely determine political status and pursue economic, social and cultural development, autonomy or self-government in matters relating to internal and local affairs, and partnerships with regional stakeholders, the Queensland government, and the federal governments to achieve its goals.
The people believe it will eventually provide a place for a Torres Strait Islander Voice.
SURPRISE
This didn’t surprise me. They’ve always been subsumed with the larger Aboriginal cohort rather than as their own independent group. And Torres Strait Islander people are different from Aboriginal peoples in descent, culture, and lore.
If the Voice makes a representation to Parliament that doesn’t have the support of Torres Strait Islander people, then it won’t be their voice.
In Aboriginal cultures, no Aboriginal person can speak for another country, only their own. That is our lore. How are individual First Nations represented in this Voice? Where is the seat at the table for the Bundjalung (my country on my father’s side) or the Gumbaynggirr or Yuin (my country on my mother’s side)?
From a legal perspective, I’m concerned with the words “voice” and “matters” in the first and second paragraphs of the proposed amendment, which could expose them to potential legal action or lawfare.
Indigenous Australians are Australian citizens. There is no law, regulation or policy, and no act or decision of the federal government or parliament that doesn’t relate to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Are we going to have long, drawn-out debates on all laws before parliament and all policies of the government that need to be checked beforehand by the Voice? Budgets? Defence? Education? Health? Infrastructure? Commerce and Trade? The list goes on.
This would make the Voice a massive inhibitor of legislation, policy, and government decision-making. Leaving its legacy as one characterised by delay at the very least.
The Voice is not a new thing. We’ve had many Indigenous Voices before, and the Joint Council on Closing the Gap among others, now.
There is no detail on how this Voice will be any different to the others, except it will be expensive, arbitrary, permanent, and entrenched as a concept in a document that otherwise has no definition or guidance of what it is supposed to be.
SURVIVE
There have been four elected bodies since 1973, all of which failed. One of them, the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (later the National Aboriginal Conference), was set up as an advisory body but soon developed a new constitution giving itself autonomy, policy-making, and administrative powers. It didn’t survive.
Query if the Hawke government in the 1980s, who abolished it, could have done so if a “National Aboriginal Conference” had been embedded in the Constitution.
We have tried Indigenous representative bodies, Indigenous advisory bodies, and Indigenous consulting bodies multiple times over the decades. None have lifted Indigenous people out of poverty. None have “Closed the Gap”.
Why would a repeat of the same old, same old be different?
In the words credited to Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” PC
Regardless of all the legal and philosophical arguments, and regardless if a Voice is put in the Constitution or just legislated, in the long run a Voice will be an expensive, bureaucratic, unworkable, mess and nightmare. And anybody involved in advancing it is guilty of promoting serious damage on Australia’s economic and social cohesion.
My wife and I are very concerned about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’ proposal to change the Australian Constitution to create a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice {looks like another chamber of parliament, but one that you can only vote for if you are Indigenous}. We have presented our concerns below and hope that you will consider them before you make any decisions.
We feel that the proposed Indigenous ‘Voice to Parliament’ is totally un-Australian, extremely racist and utterly divisive. Any pretention of ‘inclusiveness’ is a completely delusional agenda of mindless ideologues. It is nothing but an exercise in virtue signalling of the worst kind!!
Mr Albanese has finally revealed the sentences he would like to see written into the constitution, including:
1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
3. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Mr Albanese says the ‘Voice to Parliament’ won’t have any real power. He says it would only ‘make representations’ to Parliament. He says our politicians would still have the power to say ‘no’ to ‘the Voice’. But we all know that many of our politicians haven’t displayed the guts necessary to stand up against most of the woke/leftist/teal/Labor/media nonsense we have seen over recent years. Mr Albanese himself also said it would be a ‘very brave government’ that would ignore or contradict ‘the Voice’. ‘The Voice’ would also come with the full political backing of these ‘progressive’ politicians as well as the woke media.
Despite Mr Albanese’s protestations, he clearly states in item #(3) that the Government would have open slather to make any changes they like to ‘the composition, functions, powers and procedures’ of ‘the Voice’. That sounds a lot like buying ‘a pig in a poke’.
Indicative of the intentions of the lefties, the ABC’s Indigenous Affairs editor Bridget Brennan said:
• ‘I think it does need to have teeth, it does need to be feared and revered.’
• ‘It needs to be a building, it needs to be an institution that has much more than a voice. It has [to have] some control and some autonomy.’
That’s the vision of the woke elites: a new race-based Australian parliament with ‘much more than an advisory role’. Ultimately our national parliament would have a massive new bureaucracy foisted upon it, which will ride roughshod over your elected representatives. It could give any insane proposal from ‘the Voice’ the seal of identity politics approval.
Our nation will be divided by race. A revised Constitution would create two classes of citizens ie. Indigenous and Everyone else!! This proposal will not bring Australians together; it promotes resentment and conflict! There is no argument that Mr Albanese and his virtue signalling mates can think up that will make dividing our nation along racial lines a good idea.
Even worse, the PM says the referendum to change the Constitution must be kept ‘simple’ to guarantee success. He expects us to vote for ‘the Voice’ based on the skimpy outline above, and then trust Labor and the greens/teals to deliver the details later when it’s too late for us to actually have any say in the matter.
Sounds familiar! Remember before the elections Mr Albanese’s answer to everything was ‘We have a ‘Plan’ for that’. In just about every case this turned out to be a lie; either they had no plans or at best an outrageously stupid plan, some of which they have already pushed through and some of which were not even mentioned pre-election.
With regard to the first provision, the entrenchment of the Voice in the Constitution, it may be noted that over the years, there have been countless, and sometimes corrupt, Aboriginal quangos, like the ATSI Commission, that have wasted millions, if not billions, of dollars.
By any standard, the Indigenous industry has spawned the creation of huge, bloated bureaucracies and administrative behemoths, that have created and administered doomed policies the maintenance of which is expensive.
They have demonstrated that they have no idea about the real indigenous issues when they endorsed the Northern Territory cancellation of alcohol bans and cash cards. This has already lead to an enormous increase in drunkenness, domestic violence, child abuse and five murders in just the first three weeks.
The concept of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is inherently racist. Those advocating for a system that preferences one racial group over another are doing the work of racists. This ignores the fact that Torres Strait Islanders are not from the same indigenous background anyway! On this basis we should be including a ‘Voice’ for all the British, European, US, Canadian, New Zealand, Asian and Pacific Island naturalised Australians et al. and of course there are all the more recent immigrants from SE Asia, Sri Lanka, India, Africa and Sth America!
As it stands, our democracy allows for all people, regardless of their race, sexual preference and gender to participate equally in the democratic process. It is nobly and rightly blind to all these things; we are all Australians and every Australian has one vote!
Australia’s Indigenous population is estimated to constitute 3.2 per cent of the total population; it is the only racial group that has its own federal minister, and every State and territory has a Ministry for Indigenous Affairs.
Indigenous Australians have had a right to vote since 1967 and they already have a voice to parliament; there are 11 Indigenous Members of Parliament who are able to table bills addressing critical issues. They do not have to only focus on their own electorates. They have more than equitable ‘representation’ in Parliament and they have been provided with very significant amounts of funding. The MPs, high paid bureaucrats and people in authority just need to work together to achieve real beneficial outcomes instead of a lot of flag waving and money wasting. There are numerous organisations established to benefit indigenous people; the fact that most of them are ineffective will not be rectified by adding anything to the Constitution. A proper focused and committed bi-partisan approach could achieve a lot!
Foremost among Senators who are truly committed to indigenous issues is Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. And what does she say?
‘This government has yet to demonstrate how this proposed Voice will deliver practical outcomes and unite rather than drive a wedge further between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.’
Mr Albanese knows an Indigenous Voice to Parliament will make no difference to the lives of Aboriginal people living outside of the ‘elite’ circles of our major cities ie. those people who most need support. His limp offerings of ‘Just good manners’ and ‘it will unite the nation’ just don’t hack it!!
Already we are seeing the relentlessly growing trend of including “Welcome to Country” as purely a virtue signalling tool across all aspects of our lives; this doesn’t necessarily signify actual acceptance or even acknowledgement, just the perception. Current versions of this “welcome” now include words to effect “our land, always was, always will”.
We will not vote to enshrine in the Constitution something that we believe amounts to nothing more than a giant expensive exercise in virtue signalling that will not achieve any real benefits for indigenous people.
Please do not make your decision until you feel confident that you are fully informed about the impact and consequences of establishing a Voice to Parliament.
I acknowledge content from Advance Australia and FamilyVoice Australia.
In May 1967, after 10 years of campaigning, a referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Australian constitution was held.
The lead-up to the poll focused public attention on the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were treated as second-class citizens.
Nearly 91 per cent of the electorate voted to amend the constitution. This change meant that Aboriginal people would be counted as part of the population and acknowledged as equal citizens, and that the Commonwealth would be able to make laws on their behalf. This was seen to reflect public recognition of Aboriginal people as full Australian citizens.
Gordon Bryant, 1967:
Never let the politicians make any changes to the Constitution unless they provide complete details of what they would do if we voted yes at a referendum. And think hard about the ramifications.
Same applied to the referendum on a republic that the vast majority rejected, obviously the main objective was permission to remove sections from the Constitution that are inconveniently in the politicians’ way.
PRIME Minister Anthony Albanese is planning a re-education program in an attempt to condition voters to ditch what his government calls a “ridiculous and archaic” constitution.”
Above comment relates to republic politics.
I lived for a short while in South Africa during the apartheid years and did my best to oppose their abhorrent racist policy that separated people based on their colour. Now our federal Labor government wants to enact legislation that will racially divide Australians in similar fashion. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong and must be opposed by all who despise racism.
Its not the Constitution that needs changing its the numerous Indigenous Bureaucracies that have been set up for years, soaking up Funding while not making the changes the keep saying need to be done now under The Voice. ASK THIS :
What proof is there that The Voice will not become just another bloated Bureaucracy with functions, staff and resources that change nothing.
It’ll be more than that; because it will alter the constitution it will be a lawyers’ picnic with every 2 bit activist declaring they have standing in any government issue because they are aboriginal and their culture is mentioned in the constitution.