Australia is beginning to tear itself apart at the behest of the clumsy and ham-fisted approach of the government and its determination to shoehorn the Indigenous Voice to Parliament (the Voice) into the Australian Constitution.
What is being promoted as healing and reconciling is in practice dividing and alienating.
The Voice is a proposal to insert a clause into the Constitution giving Aboriginal Australians a dedicated advisory body to the government separate from Parliament itself.
In principle, one would hope that all Australians are to be treated equally. In Australia’s democracy, all are in fact free to run for office subject to being a citizen and over 18 years of age.
To treat or prioritise one group over another is discriminatory and inequitable.
Sure, the aged, youth, veterans, and indeed the Indigenous are appropriately catered for with special ministries and outside representative bodies representing those demographics to those ministers and members of the parliament. They are the hallmarks of a truly representative democracy.
However, to institutionalise a separate Voice to the Parliament in the Constitution takes this approach to a level that leads to resentment and “special pleading” which, in turn, will lead to a legal/judicial mess that only the High Court can resolve. A lawyer’s dream and a nation’s nightmare.
“Special pleadings”—an exception that cannot always be justified—can be advocated for any group in society: the aged built the country and sacrificed for it, veterans had their mates die for the preservation of our country, while the youth are the future and will live with the legacy of the current leadership.
Any half imaginative mind could make a special pleading for any demographic and, in particular, for those whose ancestors have been in Australia the longest.
Indigenous Australia More Diverse Than We Think
The difficulty is that not only is the Voice fundamentally wrong in principle, but the proposal also lacks any coherent detail. It hasn’t been thought through.Questions as to how it might actually work in practice are dismissed with glib superficialities such as “it is the right thing to do” or “it will be a step to reconciliation.”
Any half discerning voter would rightly demand the detail. Who would give a blank cheque to anyone, let alone to a power hungry centralist government.
Not surprisingly, a committee to help co-ordinate an opposition campaign to the Voice has recently been formed. Comprising of Indigenous leaders and former parliamentarians from both sides of Australian politics, the NO campaign committee has serious grunt to offer in the contest of ideas.
Most devastatingly and tellingly is the fact that so many Indigenous leaders are signing up to the NO campaign highlighting to the world that there is no such thing as The Voice.
The Indigenous community is being portrayed in a most patronising way as being homogenous by the purveyors of the YES campaign.
Surprise, but our Indigenous community can and does actually think for themselves as individuals. There are conservatives and progressives. There are Christians and atheists.
There is no such thing as a single, monolithic Indigenous voice.
The Australian Senate showcases this fact in stark and dramatic fashion by doing a quick compare and contrast between Senators Jacinta Price (conservative Country Liberal Party) and Lidia Thorpe (extreme left-wing Greens).
And while on senators, there is already a disproportionate percentage of Indigenous senators in the Senate. Yet again highlighting there is ample capacity for the demographic representing the community to be heard loud and clear.
Goes Against the Aussie Spirit
The wokeism and political correctness dripping from the YES case is intermingled with a strong dose of vacuous virtue signalling.But don’t ask how it will stop assaults, domestic violence, rape, lawlessness, and lack of educational achievement. Don’t ask for the actual benefits to be derived from the proposed constitutional change.
The inner-city, well-paid, and educated in the Indigenous community advocate for constitutional change whereas those living in remote communities, like Alice Springs, are desperate for the lawlessness to stop, the abuse to end, and an educational future for their children.
The NO campaign has principle and practicality on its side to run a demolition derby against the woke virtue signalling YES campaign.
Not one life will be improved by the proposed change. But if the funds wasted in pursuit of the Voice were spent on law enforcement and school attendance, a rapid increase in the wellbeing of our Indigenous communities would be there for all to witness.
The new NO committee styles itself as offering a better way which includes the recognition of the Indigenous and migrant in the preamble to the Australian Constitution.
As a migrant himself, the writer was the first leader of a major political party in either house from a non-English speaking background. The writer’s cohort has already been recognised by being in the Parliament and rising to significant positions as have our Indigenous Australians.
Dividing Australians on race or any other predetermined factor undermines the unity which we celebrate in our national anthem when we sing “we are one and free.” Dividing Australians on any basis is divisive and corrosive of the national spirit.
The NO campaign has volumes of devastating fodder to provide the electorate without potentially going down a similar albeit less dangerous path.
Australia needs to recommit to its basic ethos of genuine equality and shun those promoting disunity under the seductive guise of reconciliation.
