BFD readers will have seen a slew of posts from me regarding the upcoming “Indigenous Voice”. As many of us do, when it comes to our local politics, perhaps I have taken too much background knowledge for granted, on behalf of my readers. As became painfully obvious when a commenter asked if there was “Any chance for a summary article for what this whole voice vote is about for uninformed Kiwis like me. Even a link to an article that isn’t written by a wokoid or wet conservative.”
Well, you’re in luck: “wokoid” or even “wet conservative” are neither things I have ever been called.
The one-sentence summary is that the referendum is Australia’s answer to He Puapua, in that it would firmly cement a race-based, co-governance agenda.
The longer story requires a brief comparative history lesson: the roots of the Voice, like co-governance in New Zealand, go right back to the British settlement of each nation.
Although the British arrived in Australia and New Zealand near-simultaneously, with Cook’s first voyage, the settlement of each nation proceeded very differently. The biggest and most critical difference was in social organisation. Where the Maori were organised into large enough tribes that Hobson could feasibly gather enough chiefs to hear the treaty read in a language they could understand and sign it, the settlers at Sydney Cove had no such hope.
Australia, in 1788 and well after, was divided into a patchwork of at least 150 major language groups, each of which consisted of smaller tribal and family bands of hunter-gatherers. Notwithstanding the Crown’s instructions to Governor Philip to “endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them”, and Philip’s humanitarian, Enlightenment sympathies, the idea of signing a treaty that would meaningfully apply to even the lands around what is today greater Sydney was simply wishful thinking.
Even so, the notion of a “Treaty” with Aboriginal Australians was revived in the modern era and the rise of the Aboriginal land rights movement. Notwithstanding the contradiction of a government signing a treaty with its own citizens, the “Aboriginal Sovereignty” continues to propound the idea.
(Much mythology, by the way, persists about the 1967 referendum in Australia. Even in Australia, it is commonly asserted that 1967 “granted Aborigines citizenship” or “allowed Aborigines to vote”. Neither is true. 1967 was about two, related questions, the first of which struck out the exclusion of Aborigines from the “Race Powers” clause of Section 51, the second to include Aborigines in population counts for constitutional purposes.
It is also grossly untrue that, prior to 1967, Aborigines were “counted as flora and fauna”.)
Alongside “treaty” claims, a parallel campaign over the last few decades has been “Constitutional recognition”. While some argue (as I do) that Aboriginal Australians are already recognised, on a level with everyone else, in the words, “the people of every State and of every part of the Commonwealth”, others argue that more is due the first inhabitants of the land. As part of the 1999 Republic referendum, then-PM John Howard and poet Les Murray proposed a preamble to the Constitution, including the words, “Since time immemorial our land has been inhabited by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are honoured for their ancient and continuing cultures”. That preamble was voted down along with the Republican question.
In 2015, PM Malcolm Turnbull and opposition leader Bill Shorten agreed to establish a 16-member Referendum Council, to revisit the question of Constitutional recognition. (Tellingly, not one member of the Council could conceivably be described as “right-of-centre”.) The outcome was, two years later, the so-called “Uluru Statement from the Heart”. Despite its cuddly-sounding name, the Statement is in fact a radical document: a literal blueprint for an Aboriginal ethnostate.
A key phrase in the Statement (used no less than four times in its brief, ten paragraphs) is sovereignty.
This is no mere buzzword or accidental phrase. Sovereignty has a specific and far-reaching meaning, in international law. It is the supreme, sole, and indivisible, law-making power over a geographically-defined territory. Lest anyone be fooled, the text of the Statement clearly states that it concerns “the ownership of the soil” and, furthermore, that it “has never been ceded or extinguished”.
The big lie of the Statement is that this Aboriginal sovereignty “co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown”. This is an impossibility. Sovereignty is exclusive and indivisible. There cannot be two sovereign powers of the same territory.
Understood in this way, the Statement is a clear and radical declaration: the Commonwealth of Australia is an illegal occupation (as it must be if Aboriginal sovereignty was never extinguished), and it must be replaced with an Aboriginal ethnostate. Given that the draftees of the Statement included several lawyers, including a former Minister for Justice, there cannot have been any error or meaningless speechifyin’ in this choice of words.
Small wonder then, that even Turnbull, the wet teal, rejected the Statement in 2017: “The government does not believe such a radical change to our Constitution’s representative institutions has any realistic prospect of being supported by a majority of Australians in a majority of states.”
The Statement also called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”.
(Note, too, the shifting language: “Aboriginal” had become “Indigenous”; finally, the American term “First Nations” was imported. A ludicrous imposition on the historical reality of pre-1788 Australia, where nothing even remotely qualifying as a nation ever existed among the 150 major language groups and thousands of tribal bands. But the Australian left, for all their sneering at American culture, is nothing if not slavishly imitative of the American left.)
Although it quickly became an article of faith among the chattering classes, the Statement as an election issue lay semi-dormant for the next five years. In 2019, the Morrison government proposed an “Indigenous voice to government” – which would be legislated, rather than enshrined in the Constitution. But Scott Morrison went to a losing election before draft legislation for such a body was prepared or tabled.
Interestingly, Anthony Albanese never mentioned an “Indigenous Voice” – legislated or Constitutionally-mandated – once during the 2022 election campaign. Yet, the very day after the election result was confirmed, Albanese trumpeted that he wanted a referendum in this term of government to change the constitution to create a permanent Indigenous advisory body to the federal parliament.
And so it began.
So, what is this “Voice”? That’s a good question – but there was no point asking Anthony Albanese, his Indigenous Affairs minister Linda Burney, nor anyone concerned with the Yes campaign for details because they were notoriously reticent to produce anything other than broad motherhood statements. Even the actual referendum question was not finalised until nearly a year after Albanese’s announcement.
Albanese and supporters of the referendum insist that it is a “modest” Constitutional change, solely about “fairness”, and supposedly the only way to “close the gap” between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
Even so, the question is decidedly slippery:
The longer story requires a brief comparative history lesson: the roots of the Voice, like co-governance in New Zealand, go right back to the British settlement of each nation.
Although the British arrived in Australia and New Zealand near-simultaneously, with Cook’s first voyage, the settlement of each nation proceeded very differently. The biggest and most critical difference was in social organisation. Where the Maori were organised into large enough tribes that Hobson could feasibly gather enough chiefs to hear the treaty read in a language they could understand and sign it, the settlers at Sydney Cove had no such hope.
Australia, in 1788 and well after, was divided into a patchwork of at least 150 major language groups, each of which consisted of smaller tribal and family bands of hunter-gatherers. Notwithstanding the Crown’s instructions to Governor Philip to “endeavour by every possible means to open an Intercourse with the Natives and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all Our Subjects to live in amity and kindness with them”, and Philip’s humanitarian, Enlightenment sympathies, the idea of signing a treaty that would meaningfully apply to even the lands around what is today greater Sydney was simply wishful thinking.
Even so, the notion of a “Treaty” with Aboriginal Australians was revived in the modern era and the rise of the Aboriginal land rights movement. Notwithstanding the contradiction of a government signing a treaty with its own citizens, the “Aboriginal Sovereignty” continues to propound the idea.
(Much mythology, by the way, persists about the 1967 referendum in Australia. Even in Australia, it is commonly asserted that 1967 “granted Aborigines citizenship” or “allowed Aborigines to vote”. Neither is true. 1967 was about two, related questions, the first of which struck out the exclusion of Aborigines from the “Race Powers” clause of Section 51, the second to include Aborigines in population counts for constitutional purposes.
It is also grossly untrue that, prior to 1967, Aborigines were “counted as flora and fauna”.)
Alongside “treaty” claims, a parallel campaign over the last few decades has been “Constitutional recognition”. While some argue (as I do) that Aboriginal Australians are already recognised, on a level with everyone else, in the words, “the people of every State and of every part of the Commonwealth”, others argue that more is due the first inhabitants of the land. As part of the 1999 Republic referendum, then-PM John Howard and poet Les Murray proposed a preamble to the Constitution, including the words, “Since time immemorial our land has been inhabited by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are honoured for their ancient and continuing cultures”. That preamble was voted down along with the Republican question.
In 2015, PM Malcolm Turnbull and opposition leader Bill Shorten agreed to establish a 16-member Referendum Council, to revisit the question of Constitutional recognition. (Tellingly, not one member of the Council could conceivably be described as “right-of-centre”.) The outcome was, two years later, the so-called “Uluru Statement from the Heart”. Despite its cuddly-sounding name, the Statement is in fact a radical document: a literal blueprint for an Aboriginal ethnostate.
A key phrase in the Statement (used no less than four times in its brief, ten paragraphs) is sovereignty.
This is no mere buzzword or accidental phrase. Sovereignty has a specific and far-reaching meaning, in international law. It is the supreme, sole, and indivisible, law-making power over a geographically-defined territory. Lest anyone be fooled, the text of the Statement clearly states that it concerns “the ownership of the soil” and, furthermore, that it “has never been ceded or extinguished”.
The big lie of the Statement is that this Aboriginal sovereignty “co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown”. This is an impossibility. Sovereignty is exclusive and indivisible. There cannot be two sovereign powers of the same territory.
Understood in this way, the Statement is a clear and radical declaration: the Commonwealth of Australia is an illegal occupation (as it must be if Aboriginal sovereignty was never extinguished), and it must be replaced with an Aboriginal ethnostate. Given that the draftees of the Statement included several lawyers, including a former Minister for Justice, there cannot have been any error or meaningless speechifyin’ in this choice of words.
Small wonder then, that even Turnbull, the wet teal, rejected the Statement in 2017: “The government does not believe such a radical change to our Constitution’s representative institutions has any realistic prospect of being supported by a majority of Australians in a majority of states.”
The Statement also called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”.
(Note, too, the shifting language: “Aboriginal” had become “Indigenous”; finally, the American term “First Nations” was imported. A ludicrous imposition on the historical reality of pre-1788 Australia, where nothing even remotely qualifying as a nation ever existed among the 150 major language groups and thousands of tribal bands. But the Australian left, for all their sneering at American culture, is nothing if not slavishly imitative of the American left.)
Although it quickly became an article of faith among the chattering classes, the Statement as an election issue lay semi-dormant for the next five years. In 2019, the Morrison government proposed an “Indigenous voice to government” – which would be legislated, rather than enshrined in the Constitution. But Scott Morrison went to a losing election before draft legislation for such a body was prepared or tabled.
Interestingly, Anthony Albanese never mentioned an “Indigenous Voice” – legislated or Constitutionally-mandated – once during the 2022 election campaign. Yet, the very day after the election result was confirmed, Albanese trumpeted that he wanted a referendum in this term of government to change the constitution to create a permanent Indigenous advisory body to the federal parliament.
And so it began.
So, what is this “Voice”? That’s a good question – but there was no point asking Anthony Albanese, his Indigenous Affairs minister Linda Burney, nor anyone concerned with the Yes campaign for details because they were notoriously reticent to produce anything other than broad motherhood statements. Even the actual referendum question was not finalised until nearly a year after Albanese’s announcement.
Albanese and supporters of the referendum insist that it is a “modest” Constitutional change, solely about “fairness”, and supposedly the only way to “close the gap” between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
Even so, the question is decidedly slippery:
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
- There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
- The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
- The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
On everything else, confusion, mendacity and contradiction have reigned.
Will the “Voice” be justiciable? That is, if the government of the day chooses to ignore its recommendations, will it be able to take the government to court and possibly force it to comply? Good question, but don’t expect a definitive answer. Even the Solicitor-General merely claims that the “majority of instances in which the Voice may make representations” will not be justiciable. This means, logically, that at least some of them will be. If some, then why not others?
That, coupled with the words on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, would in principle give the Voice near-unlimited reach.
Would it be able, for instance, to rule on matters of national security? Anything from the location of military bases to the procurement of defence supplies? Tellingly, in Parliament, Linda Burney dodged this question, prattling on instead that the Voice wouldn’t be able to lobby to change the date of Australia’s national day.
Except that “Yes23” campaign director, communist union leader Thomas Mayo, insisted repeatedly, between 2018 and 2021, that it will do exactly that. Mayo later backflipped, but he and other leading members of the Voice campaign are vocally adamant that the Voice referendum is just the start. “Reparations, land back, abolishing harmful colonial institutions… integration of our laws…” are just some of the demands Mayo has in mind, once a Voice is established.
Mayo also wants non-Aboriginal Australians to “Pay the Rent”: that is, for homeowners to voluntarily pay a percentage of their income to “Aboriginal elders without any government oversight or intervention”. To which Australians are entitled to ask: should they decline to do so voluntarily, would a Voice demand that Parliament make it mandatory? Clearly, as a “matter relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders”, such would be its remit.
Another Voice adviser, Teela Reid, is seeking “reparations and land” for Indigenous Australians – and declared in January that every Aboriginal elder in NSW should be living “rent-free”. Charmingly, Reid also states, “F**k reconciliation”. Reid is also adamant that the Uluru Statement be “enacted in full”.
Which, as we have seen, would inevitably result in part or all of the Australian continent being ruled as an Aboriginal ethnostate.
Even without it, No campaigners argue, a Constitutionally-mandated Voice by the very fact of its existence re-inserts racial separatism into the Australian Constitution in a way that hasn’t existed since 1967. The blunt message of the No campaign is: we are all one people, with equal rights regardless of our ethnicity. Every Australian already has a mandated voice to parliament: their vote. “One person, one vote.”
Will Australians vote for such a clearly radical, racially divisive proposal?
The road to success for any referendum in Australia is a rocky one, by decision. Australian referendums are not passed by simple national majority. They must achieve a super majority: a majority of voters nationwide, and a majority of voters in a majority of states. That is, a majority of voters in at least four states must vote Yes, as well as a majority of the whole nation.
This is notoriously hard to achieve. Of 44 referendums put to the Australian people since the Federation, just eight have passed. No referendum has ever passed without bipartisan support (and many have failed, even with it – such as the Republic referendum in 1999), so on the face of it, the Coalition’s decision to formally oppose the referendum was a death knell.
Subsequent polling has borne that likelihood: from a high point of a bare national majority when the referendum was announced, support has consistently fallen. In the last few weeks, the No vote has achieved a clear ascendancy. Even among groups most likely to back “The Voice” – women, younger voters and university graduates – support has fallen dramatically. For the first time, women are not only majority “No” voters – but even more adamantly opposed than men. Support among younger voters has fallen 10% in just a few weeks.
As it happens, the Albanese government is yet to actually announce a date for the referendum – at which point it would be legally required to hold the vote, no matter what. So it remains conceivable that Albanese could yet abandon the referendum altogether.
Whether or not Albanese ploughs ahead with a referendum that already looks dead in the water, one thing is clear: when co-governance is put to the people, rather than the elite, to decide, the result is rejection. No matter what the elite want, the people seem pretty firmly decided: one person, one vote, one nation. Democracy, not tribalism and racial division.
Lushington describes himself as Punk rock philosopher. Liberalist contrarian. Grumpy old bastard. This article was first published HERE
1 comment:
The Aborigines did not cede sovereignty because there was no sovereignty to cede. Sovereignty implies the existence of a nation, which means meeting criteria set in international law about definable areas and effective systems of governance. The American Indian did have such nations - the Apache nation, the Iroquois nation, etc, were tribal nations that met the criteria of nationhood. With the exception of Torres Strait Islanders (who are Melanesians, not Aborigines), indigenous Australians had no nations in any sense of the word.
BTW the term First Nations is of Canadian origin. Canada, already a sovereign nation, signed a series of treaties with Indian 'nations' between 1871 and 1921. Howard was right when he said that a country cannot forge a treaty with itself, but I for one am prepared to make an exception for a First Nation treaty on the understanding that this would not come under the 1969 Vienna Convention on treaties which are under international law.
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