From the outset, the Nationals have been hostile to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
In 2017, then party leader Barnaby Joyce falsely claimed after the Uluru Statement from the Heart that it would constitute a third chamber: “It just won’t fly.”
In 2019, while on the backbench, he admitted he was wrong on the third chamber claim.
In October Joyce was back at it, disgustingly comparing a Voice to Parliament to Nazi Germany.
The official line from the Nationals is no longer an outright lie, or sordid invocations of Nazism, but that a Voice will do nothing for Indigenous peoples.
In August, Nationals Leader David Littleproud insisted that a Voice would be “another speech with no actual outcome” and wouldn’t “shift the dial” on Indigenous welfare.
In formally opposing a Voice yesterday, Littleproud went further. It would be “another layer of bureaucracy here in Canberra”, said it wouldn’t be “a Voice for regional, rural and remote Australians. This is one for those who live in Redfern.” It wouldn’t “shift the dial”, he repeated.
This argument that a Voice would have no practical benefit for Indigenous peoples is likely to become the polite, politically correct excuse to oppose it. It echoes Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s justification for walking out on the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples in 2008 — that it wouldn’t have any real impact.
Its deeper antecedent is John Howard’s opposition to doing pretty much anything at all in cooperation with Indigenous peoples, on the basis he was only interested in “practical”, not “symbolic”, reconciliation.
As Howard showed, emphasising “practical” reconciliation led to no reconciliation of any kind — which was the point. It’s exactly the point for the Nationals and, very likely, the Dutton-led Liberals. Dutton was peddling the “third chamber” lie even as Joyce was admitting it was false.
The “practical”/”symbolic” juxtaposition is one of those clever right-wing framings used to short-circuit pursuing rational, evidence-based policy. It’s similar to the framing of climate action — or any environmental action — as being all about “environment” v “jobs”. It always sounds reasonable — who could oppose practical action for Indigenous peoples, any more than oppose more jobs? But it’s always a cloak for inaction that serves the interests of the powerful.
The evidence base for years of Indigenous policy across health, education and economic engagement is that what works — i.e. the precious practical benefits — is what is co-designed and co-implemented with and by Indigenous communities.
One of the few positives of the Morrison government on any policy front was a commitment to building more and more capacity within Indigenous communities to participate in policy co-design and implementation, which takes institutional structures and expertise to help shape policy from its very inception through to delivery.
An Indigenous Voice to Parliament is the clearest expression of that commitment to the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the very foundations of policy design when it is legislated.
Littleproud portrays this as “another layer of bureaucracy” (never mind his more sinister contrasting of regional and “Redfern” Indigenous peoples) when it is the embodiment of a fundamentally altered approach, one that even the densest minds of the Morrison government recognised must be the way to “shift” a dial that remained stubbornly unshifted throughout nearly a decade of Coalition government.
But the Nationals hope that voters will be too lazy and disengaged to bother seeing through that lie.
As Geoffrey Scott, Wiradjuri man and spokesman for the Uluru Dialogues, said today, the Voice “will make practical improvements to the lives of First Nations Australians across the country, including in Nationals electorates. We know that because it is what First Nations have asked for.
“Given their record of failure in government to close the gap, we will not be lectured by the Nationals on the best ways to improve outcomes for First Nations people.”
Indeed.
Barnaby and David. The best way to stabilise the climate is to mine more coal, the best way to handle the Murray/Darling is to build more dams, and the best way to give Aboriginal Australians a voice is to shut them up.
Sounds accurate.
When they came out as a group to make their big announcement, they looked like a bunch of angry squatters taking offence at a corroboree being held on one of their back paddocks.
Fair go mate! Some of those farmers have been working that land for more than a hundred years.
One hundred versus sixty thousand obviously sounds more than fair to you…
Working is different to wandering through it.
Have you considered that “wandering through it” was part of Indigenous peoples’ work?
Check out the recently announced ‘mining village’ – in the Overflow region of the Corner Country.
Probably the cattle knew it well, certainly but than the cockies.
My parents and grandparents were cane farmers and part of the original white settlers in the area, in FNQ.
As a child I knew that when the wind came from the north (November/ early December), the tribe would arrive to take over their camping area at the end of the creek, on the high ground. They stayed until the floods had finished in April or so.
The tribe received their bags of mill sugar, as did all the shareholders of the sugar mill and were hired on standing rates (double the basic wage) to help with the cane planting.
The tribe remained mobile in the district until King Ranch bought into the valley and fenced them off their ancestral lands. My relatives and their friends pleaded for stiles, as we had done. They wouldn’t!
King Ranch broke up the tribe by their practices.
I am ashamed by our inaction.
Two very different uses for the land do not have to be mutually exclusive. King Ranch went broke.
Yeah, working for the man, enriching filth and destroying the ecosystem. Good on ya.
It’s OK, I get the irony…
Stolen land is still stolen, a hundred years on.
When do the Nats do anything other than lobby for their donors and pork barrel to win seats?
When they block sensible ideas, like an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
It is despairing to have to listen to the Libs and Nats speaking about any Indigenous subject. I am an 81 y-o first generation Australian born of two Scots immigrant parents. I support The Voice and hope that I will still be around to vote for it.
It’s extraordinarily hard to expect anything at all from Littlepride and the country party.
After his/our electorate of Timbuctwo in the far west of Queensland became one of only two in the entire country to vote no for marriage equality, it is hardly surprising that the only voice Littlepride hears, is his own and those of almost dead six fingered banjo players from the bush around his home Billabong.
It’s important that this is seen for what it is. His last attempt at maintaining relevance in the face of a madly developing electorate, outside of his own, which exists for no other purpose than to kill things, including hope.
The rest of the country will move forward. Littlepride will stand under a pepperina tree wondering who voted for him this time. His backers are all on their last legs.
The “Nationals” seem firmly rooted in the 1950s (or quite possibly the 1850s)……
The squattocracy lives proudly on in the minds of the Nationals and those who vote for them.