The honeymoon is over, baby
It’s never going to be that way again
— The Cruel Sea’s “The Honeymoon is Over”
Politics being what it is, it’s very possible that Anthony Albanese might be a little grateful for the crime wave sweeping Alice Springs, because it has given him the chance to act decisively, and be seen to be doing so.
It will make a welcome change from the shellacking the government is getting on the Voice, which itself disappeared from the front pages in an instant.
In the fortnight leading up to this crisis, the Voice has probably suffered more damage than it has in the two years previous. A few more weeks like this and the Yes campaign will be marching towards a high chance of defeat, as already wary voters in Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania turn into decisive No voters.
The Albanese government hoped it could do the whole thing as a sideshow. But it has given Peter Dutton a chance to get the Coalition back into the game, about half a year earlier than might have been the case. Heck of a job, folks!
The Voice’s Yes campaign was going to be a disaster, it was clear right from the start. There is no single leader, no face and voice of Yes, and no single body driving it. The failure to have a more concrete model of what it would be, even as an aspiration, is starting to show.
What it is and how it would work
Yet all it needed to be was something on the order of this:
“The Voice to Parliament will be an assembly of Australian First Nations peoples, of between 24-48 members, chosen by their communities, convening around three times a year for a total of nine to 12 weeks to debate matters crucial to First Nations peoples, make specific proposals, and respond to government policies. It will be advisory only, have no legislative powers, and no delegated administrative powers. The referendum question we are putting to the people enables Parliament to make the law that will put the Voice into the constitution. Parliamentary laws will then give the Voice this specific form.”
Now, how difficult would that have been? It gives millions of voters a clear idea of what the Voice would be, how it will work, gives them a mental picture of it actually sitting in the Old Parliament House, etc. So what if it is then 60 members, or meets six times a year. No one is going to feel they were lied to. When people say they want “detail”, they don’t actually mean “detail”. They mean they want to know the concrete form of the thing they’re being asked to vote for. Even here, there remains confusion. I take the Langton-Calma report to say that the Voice delegates will be chosen by communities, rather than by an all-nation election of First Nations peoples. The PM says it will be elected. Which is it?
But there’s a greater problem. Because there’s no real doubt that a double game is being played by both Yes supporters and the government. They want to reserve the capacity to eventually start delegating administrative tasks to the Voice, or public servants attached to it, so that it does acquire the capacity to play a role in First Nations’ community administration. It would never have legislative powers. But all sorts of bodies and tribunals have delegated powers and laws and regulations to make that possible.
It would also of course be a nightmare to suggest this possibility in the public debate in any way, because then the debate is around ATSIC II. The smart thing would have been to explicitly rule out any such delegation of powers, as per my little paragraph above, and stick to it for five or 10 years, before revisiting the question as an entirely separate fight on its own terms.
But the smart thing isn’t much in evidence from the Yes side. Instead of responding to what is a widespread request, from both non-First Nations and First Nations peoples for more concrete form, the leaders of the Yes campaign, and some of their supporters, are doing a one-two self-knockout punch: insisting that voting up the Voice is a historic moment that if we fail will be a historical denial of our blah blah blah, and also that the Voice is not actually a political question per se.
This take basically argues that the only opposition to the Voice is either confused, ignorant, mean-spirited or mendacious. The job of the Yes campaign and the government is therefore not to argue the case for the Voice against well-formed counterarguments, and win the debate, but to impose a self-evident truth on the fools and schemers who are trying to frustrate it. The internal logic of this argument is soft totalitarian: it suggests that the Yes case has no genuine other. Every time this attitude is displayed, a few more waverers peel off from maybe to no.
The latest trumpeting of the “history will ever forgive us” argument was made by Noel Pearson yesterday on Patricia Karvelas’ RN Breakfast. Marcia Langton had a similarly counterproductive appearance there last year, banging on about biological and cultural definitions of “race” while going the fang on Jacinta Price; the program is becoming a bit of a one-stop disaster shop for the Yes case. Thank god no one can hear them.
The Yes case’s lack of organisation and basic politics — stuff it had years to get together — is now dragging the Albanese government down. It presumably hoped that the Yes case would have a concrete proposal to which the government could say “maybe/no” to — after all, that’s how the Voice is going to work in perpetuity, as Indigenous peoples petitioning a white government for permission to exist. They could then facilitate the referendum while standing apart from the result, not get identified with it.
Instead, the Voice shambles has characterised Albanese as confused and indecisive.
The onslaught begins
Now comes the full onslaught. The immediate winner from this is Peter Dutton. Dutts is back in the game, and he didn’t have to do anything to get there. He just asked a few questions, the questions that a lot of people are asking, and wisely didn’t lean into the “one nation/we brought civilisation” argument too much. Tony Abbott would have banged on about Western civilisation, Malcolm Turnbull would have– well, he would have done an Albo, and ScoMo would have said: “Well, beyond the Voice, there is also the Word… Have you heard about the Word…” But Dutton has made the Coalition the representative of a sceptical middle, who feel no particular emotional attachment to this cause.
Progressives have, in general, been hopeless at pushing the Yes vote forward. They’ve attached to the Voice cause without much inquiry as to how much support it has among First Nations people. Tomorrow many will march in Invasion Day rallies organised by Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, who are scathing about the way in which a “Voice first” politics was stitched up by selective invitations to the Uluru discussions, and the degree to which an absence of truth and treaty processes renders the Voice as a white object. The petulant whining regarding detail, “There’s a 200-page report”, is the cry of people who read reports for a living.
Well, the Voice may still stumble across the line, but time is running out. The government and the Yes case are now caught in a vice. A referendum early — winter? May? — might be a coup, before support has leached away further. But the Yes case does not appear to be even slightly ready to go out there with a clear message and a doorknock army, to fight the right’s lies — and there will be lies — house to house.
But if they go later, the right’s attacks, and the failures of the Yes case and progressives, may have leached away so much support that the referendum simply cannot be won. And the Albanese government will lose political capital all the way through. Having tried to avoid being identified with the actual cause, it has become identified with the absence of a case for the cause. For a government that surely has big things to do on governance, economy, foreign policy and defence, this is a disaster.
There is no upside for the Yes case or the government to keep banging on about what a historic act this would be. The logic is circular, recursive. You make history by making history by making history? No. You make history by acting in the present, for a first-order cause, that is either in your own collective interests or for what you believe to be “the good”.
The Yes case would be well advised to name a single head, draft a concrete case on what the Voice is, print it on a card, and start training an army of doorknockers to recite it. Otherwise we’re gonna get our tattoo changed to another girl’s name, the girl being progressive causes, the tattoo being the Voice Yes case. I hope that’s clear.
Rundle is right. Whatever one’s views about the merits of a constitutional Voice – whether it’s viewed as good, bad or anywhere between – there can be no dispute the Yes campaign (so far) is a shambles. Even calling it a campaign is too kind, because it exaggerates the organisation involved. It will take one of the most remarkable come-back fights ever seen to reverse that and rescue it this year.
There is also a hopeless contradiction in insisting the Voice is an essential step that will transform conditions and must be taken now, and at the same time reassuring anyone who is worried that it will be powerless and not do anything.
I agree that the “yes” campaign is not a smooth running, well publicised process but J think that is largely because it does not seem to have started. Whether it will need a great come-back fight, who knows.
On the last point, I think you have misunderstood the voice proposal at this stage, which is to call for a constitutional change. This is intended to do something and something significant, namely having representatives of First Nations communities and peoples make their own representations to parliament on matters that affect them as a step toward a treaty that will be struck between First Nations peoples and settlers that will set out terms for living together that First Nations peoples can agree to with settlers.
I never bought Albanese’s “small target” approach to the last election. Albanese seems to think it helped him win but I believe he won despite it. With The Voice I think we are now witnessing a replay but with an even less chance of success.
Giving Dutton free hits without his actually doing stuff is asking for trouble. You cannot afford to simply ignore your opponents if you expect to ultimately win. Who knows what other areas this will spill over into.
Two weeks ago in The Saturday Paper, Christine Wallace wrote: “ Albanese did see off former prime minister Scott Morrison last year, and opinion polls show that Australians think he has been a good prime minister to date – and he has. But Dutton’s aggravatingly effective attack, mounted from a weak position but unerringly hitting its mark, refreshed remnant doubts about Albanese’s leadership chops.”
I too am questioning Albanese’s “I’ve always been underestimated” line. I don’t think he won the election, I think he just stayed out of the way to let Morrison lose it. I’m starting to wonder if Albanese is over-estimating himself.
And the first day of the campaign he blew it when asked a question to which he should have known the answer. I think the campaign was lucky he was sidelined with Covid so the more impressive Chalmers and Jason Clare could take the wheel, and both put Labor back on course.
I’m wondering if Albanese realises that PMs don’t have the luxury of being small targets – they have to get out in front and sell. I don’t mean learning to weld or wash hair or make croissants, but talk about the big issues, and what they’re going to do and why – and it has to be simple. Abbott and Trump don’t use 3 word slogans because it’s their lucky number.
Telling people that there are 200 page reports they can read is just a lazy cop-out. People don’t have the time nor the personal interest in the issue to bother trying to find it on the internet. Albanese, or someone with some charisma – Jason Clare – needs to be telling us in short simple grabs what the Voice will be – as Rundle said – what, who, how, where and why.
Linda Burney is a very honest and well-meaning person and is personally close to Albanese, according to Katharine Murphy’s Quarterly Essay, but, sadly, she lacks the presence and authority to take up the fight. I know Jason Clare is busy with Education but the Yes campaign needs someone like him to take the fight up to Dutton.
Of course Dutton is behaving cynically – if he were dinkum about wanting things to improve, he would be in conversation with Albanese to see how they could work in a bipartisan way. It might have been useful had Albanese invited Dutton round for dinner for the same purpose.
Dutton has chosen the Abbott approach – use the first and closest issue to stir up doubt about the Government.
All Albanese’s responses to the issue in the media in the last fortnight are reinforcing for me the “remnant doubts about Albanese’s leadership chops”.
PS. I hope I’m wrong.
I hope Albo et al are damaged enough that by the next election that Labor never get a majority again. The Lying Nasty Party will also be dumb enough to stick with Dutton, who does little to erase their foul stench, and is terminally on the nose everywhere except Queensland.
And we’ll have a glorious Labor minority government, where the talent and goodwill in Labor is unleashed while its poisonously corrupt right faction gets stymied by a progressive-dominated crossbench at every turn.
Be careful what you wish for there. Labor in minority government could easily be in opposition. Labor ought to be able to clean up its act without needing the dubious support of cross benchers outside the party.
Hasn’t happened in twenty years, ain’t going to happen now.
“. I know Jason Clare is busy with Education but the Yes campaign needs someone like him to take the fight up to Dutton.”
And let’s not forget that the Indigenous portfolio is generally seen as a poison chalice by most politicians. You have to be a genuine true believer to take it on and I don’t think there’s too many of those left in the ALP, obviously none at all for a long time in the LNP (discounting true belief in grifting ala B. Joyce). I imagine Clare would be more worried about the taint of failure than he would about succeeding in education. I think Plibersek could do it.
Agree, re Tania P.
What did I say?
“Of course Dutton is behaving cynically – if he were dinkum about wanting things to improve, he would be in conversation with Albanese to see how they could work in a bipartisan way. It might have been useful had Albanese invited Dutton round for dinner for the same purpose.”
And now tonight, Katharine Murphy reports https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/25/my-door-is-open-anthony-albanese-challenges-political-foes-to-contribute-to-voice-legislation
About time. Ball is now in Dutton’s court – if he declines then he is showing bad faith.
Despite your antipathy to Albanese’s handling of the matter, the question begs – do you actually support the Voice ?
Let Dutton carp. There is no leadership to be found in condemning this. Fill in some blanks, but remain dignified, and we can do this.
Did I miss the part where Rundle provided evidence that the Voice is going down in a blazing fireball? Or is this the Australian media again talking to or ultimately taking talking points from the mining industry / IPA / LNP circle jerk?
Agree that Rundle’s musing aren’t helpful, or at least not very much. I’m not even sure where he stands in terms of Yes or No vis a vis the current proposal. But, given the long standing bedrock of racism towards Indigenous Australians, the Voice, which in the end is a formal acknowledgement of prior ownership and therefore the theft and all the degradation that flows from it, is in danger and if the vote is lost we will continue to wallow atavistically in our in ignorance, the shame of the world, for the foreseeable future. A lot of us will look askance at our fellow citizens and wonder what they are really capable of. We celebrated locking up destitute and desperate people in concentration camps in the desert for christ’s sake. And then we bought the lie that it was about saving lives at sea. We need to do something to redeem ourselves.
‘… the Voice, which in the end is a formal acknowledgement of prior ownership and therefore the theft and all the degradation that flows from it…’
Oh, really? Is THAT what it is, Patrick? Ah, I see. Can’t remember reading that ‘detail’ anywhere in Langton-Calma Report. So…am I allowed to ask if you are First Nations? Is that voice of yours, so vocally voicing the Voice’s true Vocal Truth, a Whitey one, or an actual Blak one ie with the implied right to define it?
Is your Voice to be a First Nations Voice…or just another soft pap prog ventriloquist’s dummy?
Whatever your own relationship to the Voice, Patrick…surely you can see why plenty of sceptics who are naturally sympathetic and inclined to default to ‘Yes’ are yet to get fully on board.
Perhaps you and many others would have benefited from watching the Sunset Ceremony on SBS or NITV tonight. Such a great panel of Indigenous voices and also journalist Hugh Rimington who put the Voice into an easily understandable format for sceptics like yourself Jack. There’s really no need to tie yourself in knots over this. It is a logical progress from ditching Terra Nullius – the lie that poisoned white/black relations for two centuries and more and has now left us with the need for a way forward. That way has been presented to us.
Jesus. You people.
I’m not ‘tying myself in knots’, you patronising pill. And I don’t! need an ‘easily understandable format’ from a crystal box panel of Professional Talkers and certainly not a Professional Word Narcissist like Rimington (member of the least trusted worker cohort in Australia) to form an intelligent, moral opinion on the Voice. Unlike, apparently, most soft pap progs on this site I am perfectly capable of reading a 200 page report, and have done – gosh, Patrick, I’m not even a clever-clogs
Knowledge Class type full time, and I can read big words in a glossy APS brochure. So can many of my non-KC friends, by the way. It’s incredible, I know, but some of them don’t subscribe to Crikey or watch NITV or SBS but, by gum, they are plucky little triers are are really rather smart in their own way! Hooray!
You soft paps can be such condescending f**kwits with your smug words, Patrick. I’m sure you’re a very nice and decent fellow in the flesh. I assume the same of everyone I don’t know. But when it comes to a conversation on a deeply abstract political and moral issue like the Voice, it just seems to be beyond your tiny-minded, echo-chambered ability to contemplate the possibility that just maybe you’re wrong; that just maybe your sanctimonious surety isn’t ‘progressive’ and pro-Indigenous dignity and agency at all, it’s just more reactionary Whitey paternalism; that just maybe the Voice will be just another Whitey feelgood broken promise; just more tyre-kicking urban gesture politics; just more noble savage rescue-pet dilettantism; just another damnation of young Blak kids to the imprisoning cycle of ghettoised, agency-robbed hopelessness.
You want condescension, Patrick? Then answer me this: do you think Aboriginal people are inferior to White people? Have a hard think outside your smug presumptions, before you answer. Because it sure looks to me like Voice proponents do, deep down. If you don’t, make the case to me for why they need an extra say in the way our community functions, above and beyond the individual and collective representations we can all already make (including via formal FN lobbies and FN MPs), one uniquely enshrined in our Constitution, one that won’t be available to any other disadvantaged group. Make the case, without resorting to calling me a racist.
But if you do want – or need – to introduce race? If (as I suspect) your only real Voice argument, beyond all the fetished, contrived Whitey ‘connection to land’ palaver – you’re not proposing giving it back, are you – IS that anxious, guilty, urban soft pap prog, left-reactionary race debate? Fine, I’m for that, too.
One of the main reasons I will not be supporting The Voice is that I think The Voice is a shockingly racist concept. Fatally racist, at its defining core. IMO It will label FN people as inferior in perpetual inferiority. IMO Its presence in our Constitutional law will finally, and formally ghettoise Blak Australia.
White ‘good progressive’ Australia has imposed many such racist harms on Indigenous Australia, all with ‘good progressive’ intentions, ever since day one of colonisation. I think The Voice is shaping up to be one of the most damagingly racist ‘good intentions’ of all.
So if you want the racism debate, let’s have it. I don’t know if I’m a racist, to be honest. I could be – you’d have to ask a FN person, preferable a respected Elder. Are you a racist, Patrick? Do you know, for sure?
There. Now is my comment patronising enough for you?
A 1000 apologies Patrick, more properly a soo lookevifi. response to Wellohwell. Though perhaps the general frustrated sentiment useful food for thought for all.
Very sorry for my sloppiness, to you both. Consolation, perhaps, in the minor fool it makes of only me!
Doesn’t take much for the vitriol to spew forth, does it, Jack.
A true, dyed in the wool reactionary, aren’t you ?
Your assertions are mostly lies personal attacks and obfuscations, to hide the fact that you don’t want anything other your poisonous views to prevail, subject immaterial.
“Whatever it is, I’m against it”
Horse Feathers (1/9) Movie CLIP – I’m Against It (1932) HD – YouTube
I invite you to keep track of all the other contributions regarding other posters. The world does not revolve around your opinion of your own importance.
No, true enough that your curtain-twitching moral policeman shtick is shared around quite a few of us, mate. By the looks.
All the best mate, let’s move on.
I have to admit that you do have a certain colourful facility with words. It’s a pity that it used in vituperation, untruths and plain wrong-headedness.
And no, as long as you and your ilk spout the sort of anti-humanistic garbage you do, then I shall pursue them and you.
If you consider me a “curtain-twitching moral policeman “, then my response would be that the question is not one of morals, but of ethics and integrity and that it is a tradition founded in Socratic times. And by the by, I would not wish to be a ‘mate’ to anyone of your ilk.
For the sake of the argument, let’s say you are right about all the horrors you describe. What’s missing is any explanation why it follows from all that everyone must vote for the Voice. I’m getting a strong echo of the old syllogism:
Just another irrelevant sophist argument for kicking the can down the road, as you have done before. You ignore the importance of the real question – should there be an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament ?
The questions, rather than your lame excuse, is “is this a potentially good thing, or at the least, will it do no harm.”
On the evidence presented, the answer can only be YES to both questions.
Pull your head out of the sand, and understand that by kicking the can down the road, you are aiding and abetting those who cannot or will not see that this, if not resolved, will ensure that generations of your descendants will have to deal with it, and the opprobrium that attends it.
I made no argument for kicking the can down the road. I only said your first comment made no connection between all the horrors it listed and the case of the Voice.
What comment ? Reproduce it.
Your comment in equating the prospect of the Voice with your negative syllogism can only be kicking the can down the road.
Perhaps you’d do better read who has responded, rather than going off half-cocked ?
Ah. I mistook your comment to me for a reply by Patrick Brosnan, the author of the comment to which my remarks were addressed. Sorry for the confusion.
Still, the point remains. I have made no argument for ‘kicking the can down the road’, whether sophist, irrelevant or of any other character, not now and not before. So perhaps you might try to understand what a comment means before replying on behalf of somebody else with half-baked assumptions and adding your own brand of confusion. Perhaps a little lie down to calm yourself? You do seem quite hot under the collar as you lay into poor old Jack Robertson; perhaps I am merely collateral damage of the war you have declared on him?
“understand what a comment means before replying on behalf of somebody else with half-baked assumptions and adding your own brand of confusion.”
“Perhaps you’d do better read who has responded, rather than going off half-cocked ?”
“Still, the point remains. I have made no argument for ‘kicking the can down the road’, whether sophist, irrelevant or of any other character,”
Then I am sorry that you don’t understand the import of your own assertions.
I have declared no war on anybody, I merely deconstruct erroneous assertions by using people’s own words.
I have to agree. Grundle has taken an awful lot of words to tell us that he doesn’t know what’s going on. And, this is the second time he’s done it.
Crikey would be serving its readers and the country much better if actually had a key Yes campaign person write an article.
It will be put to a referendum. The basic assumption should that all such go down in a blazing fireball unless something extraordinary is done to ensure their success.
Irrelevant.
What Woke Woman has said, is that Rundle has presented no evidence for his prognostications.
Good article. Not all Voice critics are in good faith and who is and isn’t is an unavoidably subjective judgement that everyone will have to make themselves. I’m sure many Crikey will dismiss me as a spoiler, a ranter, and maybe a racist, too. Fill your boots, you may be right three for three for all I can tell myself. But it’s pretty hard to see how even the most unimpeachably progressive Whiteys – Rundle has a fair case – are going to be allowed to oppose/even query the Voice without having their intelligence patronised and goodwill traduced, given the savagery of attacks by its architects on even Indy critics, such as Professor Langton’s on Senators Thorpe and Price et al – talk about a ‘broad church spray’, Marcia – in today’s Oz.
And as for being allowed to politely push back a little, and maybe ask Professor Langton and her fellow Voice architects – the likes of Calma, Pearson, and many other multi-decade First Nations leaders of high profile and sustained power and influence – why exactly we must cede to their latest imposed quick-fix-it, when their successes with similarly abstract past ‘big game-changing ideas’ been so vanishingly small….forget it. One of the defining sacred cows of Indigenous leadership since ‘67 in this country has been that of ‘sustained upwards failure’. One is never supposed to challenge the credibility on Indy issues of certain by-now career-loooong established FN leaders, many of whom also now happen to be Voice architects. But why not? By their own endlessly rehearsed mantra, thise like Langton…haven’t shifted any ‘dial’ one bit. Save that of their own careers, maybe.
We Whiteys, Voice advocates, change our failed leaders all the bloody time. It’s called democracy. If you want a ‘voice’ of your own within that – on top of the one we all have -fine. But a defining part of a genuine say in your destiny is accountability for that say. So where is that accountability? Why is it still the Langtons, Pearsons and Calmas who have for years and continue to dominate Indy Establishment leadership? At what point does a multigenerational failure of Indy leadership like theirs lead to a change of their Indy leadership? Whether it’s Price or Thorpe, or some other new faces and ideas and approaches, they surely could fail the ghettoised, self-destructing kids of Alice Springs any more than the last fifty years have.
Marcia Langton has had infinitely more say over First Nations policies over the last thirty odd years than I ever will. So why is its serial failure more my fault – as a white socially conservative male aged and disability carer – than hers, as a feted Blak knowledge class leader plugged in multiple categories into successive, multi-partisan governments? And why are we supposed to accept that more of it is going to have a different result?
‘… dership? Whether it’s Price or Thorpe, or some other new faces and ideas and approaches, they surely could NOT fail the…’ apologies.
You might be right, but what if you are? Do you actually propose tipping it all in the bin, and somehow ejecting the Langtons, Pearsons and Calmas?
If you’re on the money, the only way folks will come around to your view en masse is ten years down the track when it’s all well and truly fallen over and the Langtons, Pearsons and Calmas will be shuffling off anyway…
No, I don’t want to tip anything or anyone in the bin. Provided they embrace accountability for failure that goes beyond ‘Whitey made us do it’.
The reason isn’t petty. It’s because accountability is what underpins agency, and embraced agency is what solves problems and uttered dignity and identity. Is all that can do that.
underwrites not utters
@ Jack Robertson
“Not all Voice critics are in good faith and who is and isn’t is an unavoidably subjective judgement that everyone will have to make themselves.”
No, it is not a subjective judgement.
It is an objective judgement based on the value of the arguments against the Voice. Those who follow Dutton’s dishonest path in asking for “more detail” and there has been since the former minister for Aboriginal affairs tendered no one, but two detailed statements to the then Morrison of which Dutton was an influential part.
Dutton deliberately conflates the argument which is not has not, and never will be about ‘detail’ to be written into the constitution, because there never, apart from the requirements to form a parliament, has been. Detail about the workings of the Voice will, as is ALL other legislation, be enacted by the PARLIAMENT, not just the government.
There is NO CASE to support Dutton’s whiteanting of the principle of the Voice.
Therefore, the judgement, whether of those who would oppose, or of the principle itself, must be objective.
And the judgement is either that they are ignorant of their own constitution, or that they are intentionally opposed to trying to better to conditions under which the blackfellas labour, conditions imposed by whites for over 230 years.
” why exactly we must cede to their latest imposed quick-fix-it, when their successes with similarly abstract past ‘big game-changing ideas’ been so vanishingly small….forget it.”
The very wording of that sentence shows your true colours.
“why exactly we must cede to their latest imposed quick-fix-it,”. You seek to obfuscate in several ways – You put the request for a Voice at the feet of “Professor Langton and her fellow Voice architects – the likes of Calma, Pearson, and many other multi-decade First Nations leaders of high profile and sustained power “, when you know as well as I that the proposal for the Voice emanated from the Statement from the Heart, and is only an indication of what may eventuate, subject to the legislation of the Parliament.
“when their successes with similarly abstract past ‘big game-changing ideas’ been so vanishingly small….forget it.”
Name them, the ones for which any of those named by you devised and implemented such schemes. Then name the administrative stuff-ups and cruelty delivered on our Koori brethren as well as on the poorest and weakest other members of our society, and name those responsible.
” So why is its serial failure more my fault – as a white socially conservative male aged and disability carer – than hers, as a feted Blak knowledge class leader plugged in multiple categories into successive, multi-partisan governments?”
It is not for us ‘whiteys’ to question who leads blackfellas, it is for them to decide,
This is too important to be a salve for your “whitey”s inability to come to terms with the fact that ALL political incursions into blackfellas’ business have been resounding failures be cause of that very fact – they have all been decided by “whitey”.
Not until the original inhabitants’ recognition and SELF-REALISED wishes are at the very least heard, will ALL Australians be able to face the facts of our, or rather of the British Empire’s murderous transgresions on a sovereign people be able to be dealt with.
Further – you claim to be a Voice advocate. Yet your use of untruths, obfuscation and irrelevancies proclaim you as a gaslighter, one who seeks to undermine surreptitiously.
With friends like you, who needs enemies?
Bill, This is a thorough and civil response, and I hope JR takes it as a role model in communication. THANK-YOU!
No, I’ve never been or claimed to be a Voice advocate, and boy oh boy I’m sure a fast-firming Voice opponent now, Bill. I oppose it on socially conservative first principles, mostly, in that I think that like all artificial, identity-driven, anti-collective/equality-in-all-Humanity civic fragmentations, it’s a deeply reactionary, regressive, ghettoising sop to guilt-drenched, prosperous White Australians, who want to feel like they are ‘nice’ folks on these (barely and rarely considered) ‘noble savage ishoos’ every Oz Day, but have zero serious intention of any potentially meaningful cultural reconciliation of the Western and Indigenous disjunctures and disputes that matter: on, say, economic, community, family and spiritual matters. Meaingful reconcilation? Well, such as ceding real sovereign power (= over Western law) in some matters to FN structures/law; such as to giving back ownership/stewardship of prime tracts of now-Whitey/Crown land; such as ceding permanent-title ownership of our own property, even; such as re-embracing active, collective-tribal care obligations in areas like aged, child and disability care, etc.
I think entrenching abstract ‘extra special’ Constitutional rights to blackfellahs in lieu of real surrendering (or even just sharing) of our post-colonial primacy is about the cruellest way I can conceive of preventing Blak Oz from ever achieving basic equality, dignity and self-actualisation. So I think that The Voice, on principle, would be – even if well-conceived, argue and executed – really just another well-meaning Whitey prison. I’m a social conservative: I think that ‘progressive’ policy is that which tends towards in-principle equality, parity, all men are equal…towards Human universalism.
But I also think the practially the pro-Voice case is unfolding as disgracefully shambolic, complacent, arrogant, cynical, lazy and odiously patronising. Bullying, even. It is also, BTW, deeply divisive within the FN community/ies it claims to want to speak for. So practically, as it stands, it’s likely a recipe for a catastrophic continuation of Indigenous policy dysfunction of the past. If you need me to itemise that dysfunction, you’re obviously not looking closely enough at the results of it. All that matters, Bill, is that whatever it is we’ve done from ’67 up to now, and by whoever – including by Indy Oz advocates/policy experts/Elders – it has been an objective catastrophe.
Go and read William Tilmouths article, Bill. He’s got a voice already. Doesn’t need my Whitey vote to use it, wisely and well, does he. And he certainly doesn’t need or want my paternalistic ‘by vote’ imposition of the best mechanism via wich to use it, to sort out a better future for his mob’s own kids. He probably backs The Voice, though it’s not entirely clear he does. But whether he gets a Whitey-approved Voice or not, his approach has its voice already, anyway.
Best regards, Bill.
Jack Robertson
1 day ago
“No, I’ve never been or claimed to be a Voice advocate”
Jack Robertson
2 days ago
“We Whiteys, Voice advocates, change our failed leaders all the bloody time.”
“Terminological inexactitude” no.1
” I’m sure a fast-firming Voice opponent now”
“Terminological inexactitude” no.2
Your assertions on the subject have always shown that you, from your first posting have been utterly against the Voice.
You cover your inability to see the wood for the trees with a word salad, just like your mate Scummo.
And what that word salad, as with Scummo, really hides is the lack of the ability to move your RWNJ condemnations to the side of humanitarianism – just the sort of thinking that has kept religious bigotry and fear of the other to the forefront, regardless of consequences. And it is long past time to say “enough”.
You want to know the truth of your type of thinking ?
Read John Pilger’s “The Fatal Shore” from the 1980s, read James Boyce’s “Van Dieman’s Land”, published in 2008. Read any work by Henry Reynolds, talk to any blackfella, which I doubt you ever have done, or even that you know any.
Then have the courage to admit that it is your own adherence to social Darwinism that fuels your utterly repulsive wishes to keep the Kooris quiet and subjugated.
“Terminological inexactitude” no. 3
“It is also, BTW, deeply divisive within the FN community/ies it claims to want to speak for.”
Surveys show that around 88% of black communities want the voice. So where did you pull that assertion from ?
“Terminological inexactitude” no. 4. You actually scored highest with this phrase, as it is also, deliberately so, obfuscatory.
“and he certainly doesn’t need or want my paternalistic ‘by vote’ imposition of the best mechanism via wich to use it,”
The referendum on the Voice is not and could not be a vote by the punters on the mechanism. As has already been stated hundreds if not thousands of times, it is a vote to establish a CONSULTATIVE body of aboriginals, with NO legislative power, to enable them to have input into the laws, which YOUR ilk has imposed on them and which have always been a failure BECAUSE of the cons inability to allow them the same equality that all other Australians enjoy.
Cons don’t have to be this way. Try to think what Jesus would have done – he welcomed all.
And no, I am not an adherent of any religious organisation or creed, I say this only from the admiration of the principles of love and peace espoused by the best of all religions.
robert hughes wrote fatal shore bill. the quote about ‘we whiteys, voice advocates..’ is, obviously, a rhetorical device. fwiw i have read lots of reynolds, and many many many many others on these issues…spent a lot of time on Indy reservations, remote settlements, with Norforce etc as an army chopper driver…worked with/known urban Indys in recent years, both through public policy work (with groups like Clontarf, Kimberwalli Centre of Indig Excellence)…have cared for FN oldies in residential nursing homes, etc etc.
Not sure what all that proves to you or otherwise, but there you go. you prolly need to be a bit careful projecting accusations onto people you know diddly squat about mate. chrs
‘robert hughes wrote fatal shore bill.”
Yes, thank you for your correction. What I meant to refer to was Pilger’s “A Secret Country”.
“‘we whiteys, voice advocates..’ is, obviously, a rhetorical device. “
Yes, it may be a rhetorical device, but it claims that you are one of the Voice advocates, which is patently untrue.
“Norforce etc as an army chopper driver”
Neither proves nor indicates any understanding nor empathy towards the subject – the Voice.
“…worked with/known urban Indys in recent years, both through public policy work (with groups like Clontarf, Kimberwalli Centre of Indig Excellence) ”
Again, even if true indicates no understanding nor empathy with the lot of the blackfellas nor do your assertions have any relevance to your stance on the subject. And in what capacity ?
” …have cared for FN oldies in residential nursing homes, etc etc.”
“So your claims are that you served in the army as a chopper pilot, then as a policy advisor to various First Nations groups, and as a carer for oldies.
Quite a varied and diverse CV for one so highly trained as a chopper pilot.
Unfortunately your history of lying, obfuscating and expressed paternalistic conservative views on everything to do with blackfellas and any other subject does not lead me to have faith in any and all of your assertions.
I have repeatedly tried to direct you to information that will make a (nasty) fool of your accusations, Bill, but Crikey refuses to let me defend myself.
You should search engine my name and add Balmain or IWC Ckhh un nick ekections. That will direct you to all the information about me you might need.
Or just ring me. 0429690261.
I’m a lot of unpleasant thing on Crikey. But I am always transparent and always honest.
Is ‘Bill Robinson’ YOUR real name? I am presuming it is. Most commenters here hide behind anonymity, of course.
Feel free to call if you to chat further. But let’s Just move on from each other here, Bill.
I’m not the enemy you inexplicably want me to be.
‘IWC Council elections’
“I have repeatedly tried to direct you to information that will make a (nasty) fool of your accusations, Bill,”
Uh ………you cannot make a fool of any sort of my accusations, because what I have asserted about your posts is words, not a person. Words by definition cannot be made a fool of.
I have no wish to phone you as I do not believe you capable of a a sane, impartial, rational discussion on anything.
” But I am always transparent and always honest.”
Grant that you are transparent, but not in the way you seem to think.
No, you are not always honest, because I have on countless occasions shown that you are not.
If you actually believe not only what you have said in this post, but all through your posts, then I can only respond by saying that you are delusional as well as badly misinformed.
Crikey keeps censoring my responses randomly, so I’ll not bother anymore.
Please do not call me a liar again, Bill.
PS: you are fundamentally mis-reading this,by the way:
” ‘we whiteys, voice advocates..’ is…’
Bill: I am rhetorically addressing ‘voice advocates’, me playing the role of ‘we whiteys’..OK? I’m not even rhetorically positing ‘we whiteys’ as either pro/anti or ambivalent about the Voice. I’m saying (to the voice advocates trying to persuade ‘us’) that part of the whitey Parly democracy – which you seek to formally buy into as a seperatist entity (constituionally) – is that ‘we’ hold our failed leaders accountable…
You just misread the syntax, Bill.
For one who spouts so many words, you seem by your own admission to be unable to do so clearly. Or is it, as you state all my fault, and the fault of everyone but you ?
Gosh, this is a wordy outpouring of belief in something Australia is not. There would be no need of a voice if all people had an equal say over the decisions of government. The most significant failure is that media owners havre far and away more say than anyone whose voice is overlooked or distorted by the media.
The Voice to parliament is designed to begin to implement the Uluṟu statement from the heart. It will give a voice to aboriginal representatives that will not be overlooked or distorted by the media, except through misreporting on submissions to parliament. It is needed because not all people are equal or have in practice equal right. Please put a sock in your boring torrents, Jack.
So can all the people living with disability who I provide support work for get a Constitutionally-enshrined extra Voice, too, Ian?
All the stateless refugees we’re supposed to be bound by our international obligations to assist, too?
All the beaten ethnic women of western Sydney who’ve been utterly sidelined by #MeToo’s narcissistic obsession with privileged white women who look like them? The Trans lobby? Do they get an enshrined voice?
Because they will all tell you they need a voice that doesn’t get ‘overlooked or distorted by the media’, too etc.
Ian, ‘progressives’ like you aren’t progressive at all. Your only tactic when confronted by the possibility that just maybe you’re not the moral ‘good guys’ you have deeply internalised yourself to be, as a bedrock, unimpeachable self-presumption, is to go after the man. I’m either a ‘bigot, a ‘liar’, a ‘word salad’ maker…’boring’.
You can’t or don’t make a case against mine, because deep down, you suspect I might be more right than is comfortable for your arrogant smug cocoon.
Let’s vote in a Voice. And after a decade of it, with neither real power, program or funding control, or – critically – accountabilit. When it has made zero difference to FN dignity, well-being, agency and autonomy…come and call me ‘boring’ again.
Crikey: stop censoring my comments, while allowing everyone to take repeated public kicks at me. Mostly using aliases, though I’m presuming Ian Hunt is a real person.
Oh dear ! Another vitriolic attack which seeks to divert from the main point.
So now as well as being an army helicopter pilot, an administrative wheel in aboriginal affairs, a carer for elderly Kooris you are now providing support work for people living with disability ?
What an incredibly busy and talented person you must be !
And all this compassionate work happening while you try to bully and browbeat those who see through you ? Not only that, but you try to belittle people who do not conform to your blatherings in stead of trying to bring them along.
Remember the adage – you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
On what grounds would the sections of society you list be recognised in the constitution ?
The grounds for the referendum for the Voice are the need to right the terrible wrongs done to the first peoples of this land; to correct the racism in the constitution which was founded on the ‘concept of Terra Nullius ?
Ah, you make me smile, Woke.
Grimace, I believe would be more appropriate.
Thank you. I have crossed words with this character before and he has not changed. His modus operandi on all subjects is to appeal to the basest nature of reactionism by gaslighting and obfuscating, if not outright lying.
Why any sane human could harbour so much hate for their fellow humankind is beyond me, but I must call it out when I see it.
As to my method of doing so, I find a dispassionate deconstruction of the actual words and concepts to be the most effective, although such kind, as with all cons, will refuse to acknowledge when they have been exposed, as they never have use for facts, except for cherry-picked ones.
Chortle.
Oh, Wokester, I rather think I should be wise to pass on taking your mate as a ‘role model’ in communication, after all. Don’tcha reckon? 🙂
Chortle. All the best, Bill – clearly we have nothing worthwhile to say to each other, so let’s both wander on!
PS: My reply is still in moderation. Might get up tomorrow, I suppose. Beyond my control.
On the contrary, I have worthwhile things to say in debunking your assertions.
You, on the other hand, will have nothing worthwhile to say to anyone except the ignorant and the bigots who are taken in by the lies and obfuscations of your ilk.
Bill my reply is (of course) Moderated by Crikey, so you’ll have to be patient.
Why would I give any credence to anything you have to say ?
yep, quite so. and nor do I want your agreement or your endorsement, Bill. so that’s a positive note to part on, isn’t it. cordially agreeing to disagree. rgds.
I cannot just let the hateful crap espoused by your ilk stand uncontested.
This is not personal, Jack it is an existential argument for the right to be informed by reason and truth rather than to be led astray by the ignorant and bigoted rantings of ALL your ilk.
As long as your and your kind behave thus, I shall debunk them with reason and fact, as people deserve.
bloody hell, bill – so calling me ‘ignorant’ and ‘bigoted’ is ‘not personal’, huh? chortle…do let me know when you are assessing my personal qualities and character, won’tcha!! 🙂
come on, lighten up, fella. i’m not the hateful enemy you seem desperately to need me to be.
“ by the ignorant and bigoted rantings of ALL your ilk.”
I clearly labelled your ilk’s rantings as ignorant and bigoted, if you feel the cap fits, wear it.
I do not need you to be anything – I merely take your own words and phrases and deconstruct their meanings. As I would with any postings.
No, you don’t Bill. Your views are twisted up by and in your obsessive determination to see any and all criticism, scepticism, disagreement and especially eminently moral, legitimate rejection of The Voice as a useful solution to FN misery and ill-dignity…as the hateful, bigoted irrationalities your insecurities about your own view of it needs them to be.
You simply refuse to accept that one can oppose The Voice and still be deeply concerned with and determined to support Indigenous re-empowerment and dignity. You will never even consider that rejecting The Voice might in fact be the very best – perhaps a crucial step – in achieving that (which is what any decent person wants, of which I am certainly one). Just as you refused in their turn to countenance any rejection of The Bridge Walk, an Apology, Mabo, ATSIC…all the long, failed string of Whitey policy-paternalism of the past. Each of which, at the time, those of your ilk hailed as ‘crucial’, each of which became a moral weapon used on sceptics like me, in just the same way as you now invest absolutist salving powers in The Voice.
What happens in five years when The Voice,like all those other magicke Whitey fix-its, hasn’t changed a thing?
Will you be accountable, Bill? Of course not. The Voice’s failure, as ever, will all be…mine, once again.
It would appear now that you have a degree in psychiatry. Something you should be aware of is that starting from false premises will only lead further down the path of irrelevance.
As to the list of symbolic actions to which you refer, granted that by themselves they have not directly resulted in the populace’s grand conversion to the cause of true equality for our indigenous peoples, but only a fool would deny and seek to undermine the value of the incremental changing of perspective from bigotry to acceptance.
The Voice is merely another incremental step, action has a better chance of being positive with consultation.
Or do you always throw the baby out with the bathwater ?
Let the perfect be the enemy of the good, if your protestations are to be accepted.
I keep waiting to see a Government information campaign – on telly, in the media on social media. A few short, sharp clear sentences about why the Voice is needed. But, nothing.
Some people also baulk at the idea that it needs to be in the Constitution and this needs to be explained as well.