The Voice
The case for the Voice
The strongest practical case for the Voice has come from a study commissioned by Josh Frydenberg, Treasurer in the Morrison Government. It’s the draft report of the Productivity Commission’s Review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
Those who have been following the Commission’s regular progress reports on Closing the Gap will realize that in only a very few areas is there significant progress in closing the gap.
This report is not about specific outcomes: they’re covered in the Commission’s regular updates. Rather it’s about organizational and institutional reasons the gap between the well-being of indigenous and other Australians is not closing. To quote from the report:
Progress in implementing the Agreement’s Priority Reforms has, for the most part, been weak and reflects a business-as-usual approach to implementing policies and programs that affect the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Current implementation raises questions about whether governments have fully grasped the scale of change required to their systems, operations and ways of working to deliver the unprecedented shift they have committed to.
It is too easy to find examples of government decisions that contradict commitments in the Agreement, that do not reflect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s priorities and perspectives and that exacerbate, rather than remedy, disadvantage and discrimination.
It notes the positive role played by the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in South Australia, the legislated Treaty and Truth-telling processes in Victoria and Queensland, and the coming Commonwealth referendum to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. It states that:
These initiatives may result in new decision-making and accountability structures that could provide a further catalyst for changes to the way governments work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Michelle Grattan summarizes key aspects of the Commission’s report. The headline of her Conversation article Governments are failing to share decision-making with Indigenous people captures the practical case for the Voice.
In a session on Late Night Live – Why the Voice is the right change for the Australian Constitution – constitutional experts Megan Davis and George Williams explain why it’s important to enshrine the Voice in the Constitution. They explain the history of the relationship between Aboriginal Australians and the government, which into the twentieth century was based on the paternalistic idea that as a “dying race” Aboriginal Australians were entitled to palliative care.
The 1967 referendum marked a distinct change in community attitudes and in government policy.
Unfortunately, however, the momentum established around 1967 has been lost. Arrangements put in place for indigenous Australians have been characterized by excess bureaucracy, waste, and fragility. That is one reason why Davis and Williams consider the security of constitutional enshrinement to be important.
Many people believe that the 1967 referendum was simply symbolic, doing no more than inserting a few items in the Constitution about census counts. Davis and Williams explain that it was immensely consequential – in fact more adventurous and consequential than the Voice will be. Its successful passage (91 percent support) rested on support from all political parties, and the fact that the din of social media was not to make an appearance for many decades. (The Liberal Party at the time was led by Prime Minister Harold Holt, who would not find himself at home in today’s party.)
Davis and Williams are authors of Everything you need to know about the Voice.
The constitutional integrity of the Voice is confirmed in a letter written by a group of retired judges, dismissing any notion that it would give indigenous Australians some undeserved privileged consideration. To quote:
If successful, the referendum on the Voice will not diminish the influence of anyone. But it will help to correct an historic wrong. It will give recognition, and a voice, to those who for thousands of years owned and lived in balance with this land, only to have their rights to it disregarded during the centuries which have followed settlement from other lands.
No consideration was given to the deep connections with country which the original inhabitants have incorporated into their very being; and the newcomers who now occupy their land listened, if they listened at all, with none of the empathy to which everyone should be entitled.
Indigenous Australians’ support for the Voice
There is argument about whether indigenous Australians really support the Voice. Some suggest that the Uluru Statement is the product of Aboriginal people who have become part of the Canberra establishment, and who have lost touch with those whose priorities are immediate concerns to do with education, housing and health care. Those who hold such a view seem to be unaware of the processes that led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and to the Voice.
Because of the geographical dispersion of indigenous Australians it is hard for pollsters to survey their opinion, but a carefully-conducted and well-explained exercise by the RMIT-ABC Fact Check team confirms the Prime Minister’s statement that between 80 and 90 percent of indigenous Australians support the Voice. The Fact Check team explains clearly what is involved in opinion polling, how sampling techniques deal with possible biases, and how to interpret poll results.
There is a major task for all who are concerned with the Voice to ensure that indigenous Australians, in particular, understand what is at stake in the referendum. That work is explained in a post by ABC journalists Zara Margolis and Larissa Waterson in North West Queensland: Calls for non-Indigenous Australians to research Voice to Parliament amid voter apathy fears. In a sign that there is growing awareness they note that the proportion of indigenous Australians enrolled to vote has risen from 84.5 percent at the end of last year to 94.1 percent at the end of July, a record.
If Aboriginal support for the Vouce is at 90 percent, there are still 70 000 who probably don’t support it. That means there are plenty of indigenous Australians the ABC can draw on to speak for the “No” case to satisfy its postmodernist obsession with “balance”.
Julie Bishop on the Voice: “We’ve got to give it a chance”
A convenient myth perpetrated by the “No” campaign is that the Liberal Party opposes the Voice.
That’s false.
The reality is that the Opposition Leader in the Federal Parliament has directed shadow cabinet members not to support the Voice. The Voice has supporters among Liberal members of Parliament, including Bridget Archer and Julian Leeser, who have been quite vocal in their support. There is a great deal of support for the Voice among state politicians and prominent retired Liberal federal politicians including former Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt.
Former Liberal deputy parliamentary leader Julie Bishop, has expressed her support for the Voice. The Guardian has a short video clip – “we’ve got to give it a chance” – from an address she gave at the Press Club.
Her support for the Voice has resulted in a calumnious reaction from the outfit calling itself “SkyNews”. The troika of advocates in that panel seem to be determined to discredit not only Julie Bishop, but also Malcolm Turnbull and anyone in the Liberal Party who does not line up behind Peter Dutton’s Trumpist political approach.
SkyNews has launched a 24/7 channel dedicated to an attack on the Voice. It’s a subscription service, but is broadcast free-to-air on WIN TV in non-metropolitan regions, and the most inflammatory clips are on YouTube. One effect must be to worsen already significant divisions between rural and urban Australia.
Turnbull is alarmed by the influence of Murdoch media, not only in relation to the Voice, but also on Australian public life more generally. He sounds his warning in a 9-minute interview on ABC Breakfast.
He refers to Murdoch’s empire as “a media organization, so-called, that operates as propaganda”. Its approach, which he calls “angertainment”, is “all about riling people up” and “promoting lies, creating anxiety and terrifying people”. Murdoch’s people warn that if the Voice is implemented Australia will become an apartheid state and people’s property rights will be threatened. Even if the Voice succeeds, the Murdoch media’s campaign will cause damage on our path to reconciliation.
Who are “Advance” and “Fair Australia” and why do they oppose the Voice?
They appear to be front organizations for the Liberal Party, or at least the far-right faction of the party.
The ANU’s Mark Kenny in a Conversation contribution uncovers the forces behind “Advance” and “Fair Australia”, and explains how they are spearheading the “No” campaign. He writes that:
Formed in 2018 in the wake of the marriage equality reform, Advance Australia was tasked with mobilising a hitherto disparate conservative citizenry whose adherents blame “wokeism” for everything from the declining authority of the Christian church to gender fluidity, environmentalism, and the Voice to Parliament.
It has subsequently dropped “Australia”. (Maybe that’s because the “No” campaign is aligning itself with monarchists, opposed to our having an Australian head of state. Monarchist Alexander Voltz is prominent on SkyNews as an opponent of the Voice, an opposition based in part on his fear that it would weaken the constitutional authority of the King of England.)
As far as Kenny can make out, “Advance” and “Fair Australia” are the same organization, funded by very rich but anonymous donors. He writes:
For all its Australiana atmospherics, Advance’s language, methods, and even its pre-occupations seem more at home in the heated grievance invective of Trumpist America than the more temperate vernacular of Australian political exchange.