What was claimed
Every piece of legislation going through federal Parliament would have to be approved by the Voice to Parliament.
Verdict
False. The Voice would only be able to make representations on issues relating to First Nations peoples.
A Facebook post claims every piece of proposed federal legislation would have to be approved by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, if the upcoming referendum is successful.
This is false. The proposed constitutional amendment would only permit the Voice to make representations on matters relating to Indigenous peoples.
Constitution experts have told AAP FactCheck there would be no obligation for the Parliament or executive government to even consult the Voice before passing, amending or repealing any law, or making any decision.
“As an Australian, I am deeply concerned that every piece of legislation going through federal Parliament would have to be approved by the Voice-elected representatives in Canberra,” says the post (archived here) from April 12 2023.
It then outlines a number of items from an “initial list of matters to be introduced in the Voice”, such as university entry tests or fees for Indigenous peoples, income tax to be halved for Indigenous peoples and all new liquor licences to be vetted by the Voice.
The same claim is being shared by other social media users, as seen here and here.
This list is based on a speech by One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson (page 130) on March 22 about an anonymous letter allegedly sent to her office. AAP FactCheck has addressed claims about the letter here.
In March, the government released the formal wording of the proposed constitutional amendment, which recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of Australia.
The amendment allows for a Voice to Parliament to “make representations to the Parliament and the executive government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people” and gives Parliament the power to “make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures”.
Gabrielle Appleby, a law professor at the UNSW Sydney, told AAP FactCheck the Voice would have a “constitutionally guaranteed function of making representations to the Parliament on proposed laws”.
Professor Appleby added: “How that happens will be determined through future legislation and other instruments such as standing orders of the houses.
“It might be that a committee is set up to allow the Voice’s representations to be considered and reported to the houses.
“This is a similar process that already happens for every piece of legislation and subordinate legislation that is made, which is referred to technical and policy scrutiny committees for comment.”
While these specific details are yet to be decided, the government has released a set of design principles for the Voice to Parliament, which includes information about how the Voice would be able to give advice.
The co-design report led by Professor Marcia Langton and Professor Tom Calma also outlines the potential Voice model.
Neither of these documents suggests the Voice has to approve all proposed legislation.
University of Melbourne laureate professor emeritus of constitutional law Cheryl Saunders told AAP FactCheck the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment “does not require the Voice to be consulted (on) anything”.
“It leaves it to the Voice to ‘make representations’. Its authority is to make representations on ‘matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’,” Professor Saunders said in an email.
“How that would work in practice is an issue for the implementation of the new arrangements, if the constitution is altered and the necessary legislation made. It is an issue with which many other Commonwealth advisory bodies deal.”
Professor Appleby noted there was no obligation to follow any advice from the Voice.
“The constitutional guarantee is that the Voice can make the representations,” she said. “How the Parliament considers and responds to those representations is determined by the Parliament.”
Monash University constitutional law professor Luke Beck agrees.
“The constitutional amendment is to set up a ‘Voice’ to enable Indigenous Australians to speak. It is not to create an ‘ear’ that is obliged to listen,” he told AAP FactCheck in an email.
“The explanatory memorandum for the constitutional amendment says very clearly ‘The constitutional amendment confers no power on the Voice to prevent, delay or veto decisions of the Parliament or the executive government‘ and ‘The constitutional amendment would not oblige the Parliament or the executive government to consult the Voice prior to enacting, amending or repealing any law, making a decision, or taking any other action’.”
This is echoed by University of Sydney professor emerita of constitutional law Anne Twomey in her submission to the parliamentary inquiry on the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 bill.
“It is important to note what is not included in the words of s129(ii). There is no obligation upon Parliament or the executive government to respond to the representations or give effect to them. There is no obligation of prior consultation. There is no requirement to wait to receive a representation before the executive government of Parliament can act,” she wrote.
Conclusion
The claim every piece of legislation going through federal Parliament would have to be approved by the Voice is false.
The wording of the constitutional amendment does not confer any obligation on the Parliament or executive government to consult the Voice prior to passing, amending or repealing any law, making any decision or taking action.
The proposed amendment allows the Voice to make representations on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Under the amendment, there is no requirement for the Parliament or executive government to follow any advice from the Voice.
This piece has been modified and was originally published via AAP.
AAP FactCheck is an accredited member of the International Fact-Checking Network.
Thank-you Kate!
Does anyone know FB’s policy well enough to judge how it will respond to a post like this?
FaecesBook is only interested in the dollars……………….
……….if somebody offered to pay them to take down the offending post, I’m sure they would be straight onto it.
Absent that, nothing will happen.
The nay sayers on this subject are a miserable lot. The proposal is simple. You can agree with it or oppose it. But the opponents cannot muster an argument so they create their own list of problems and then proceed to criticise what they have created thinking that applies to the actual proposal.
I just wish they would go away.
Charming. But revealingly so.
I do oppose it. I have provided arguments why. For my troubles I’ve mostly just been called racist, ignorant, cynical, face-spitting, nasty and now ‘miserable’. And told to go away.
Instead, you could try explaining to me how any of those lawyers quoted above can be so sure, for example, that the Voice wording ‘does not confer any obligation on the Parliament or executive government to consult the Voice prior to passing [lego]’, given that it’s pretty hard to exercise a Constitutional right to ‘make representations’ on a policy if you are not given advance notice of it, reasonable time and resources to prepare your ‘representations’, and very arguably, the opportunity to engage in interactive analysis of its implications to you with its executive authors. And certainly, how they can be so breezily confident of all that…before the HC has actually ruled on a test case.
Mine is not an unreasonable or ‘miserable’ scepticism. Maybe you might like to try engaging with an opposing argument?
Because it doesn’t. Nothing in the proposal suggests a requirement for “consultation”.
Because the words “representation” and “consultation” have established legal meanings.
Privileged, unless you’re a High Court judge, that’s just an assertion. It’s no more compelling than saying to Indigenous Oz: ‘Oh, we White progressives won’t betray you this time, we promise! Our grandiose assurances and flamboyant gesturing won’t turn out to be hollow all over again!’
Lots of words have ‘established legal meanings’. White man’s imported legal meanings, of course. Long live The King! eh Privileged.
‘Terra nullius’ had an ‘established legal meaning’ for a couple of centuries here. And then a test case…changed it. Voided it completely, in fact. Ever heard of it, Privileged?
If that is the Voice advocacy’s game – get the Constitutional right first, then deploy it – that is one (realpolitik) thing. Legal activism ‘can’ be a powerful tool. (Mabo was a useful change of the ‘established legal definition’. Though plenty of disillusioned Blak advocates would now disagree, angrily.) But legal activism is a fraught path, especially when leveraged at the uncertain Constitutional level. The unintended consequences are unknown and potentially vast. So you have to be clear about your intentions and honest with voters. This is not a soft pap prog cuddly reality TV phone-in/gimme-vote like SSM. If at all, the Voice needs to win and take the ‘yes’ vote with you all the way and from the start, on full disclosure terms. You have to be quite clear about the stakes, the intentions, and the very real potential implications that may flow. You all laugh at Senator Thorpe, but she is doing non-Indy Australia the very great courtesy of declaring honest intent. It may give you a cheap thrill to mock and condescend her, or a Hanson for that matter, or Dutton, or me, and call us all various nasty names, but I certainly don’t care and I’m not taking my scepticism anywhere. This is my home and my land now, too (in as much as land can be anyone’s). And I doubt any of those other varying sceptics care about name-calling or are going away either, so save your breaths. So far the ‘yes’ case is a bundle of feeelz Motherhoodisms, a bunch of airily pompous assertions from legal and tenured activist Ivory Towers (like those above), and an avalanche of accusations of bigotry, ignorance and bad faith heaped on us sceptics.
You need to do better: argue your case more kindly, more inclusively, with infinitely less arrogant entitlement and credentialism, in infinitely better faith. Which means arguing against the strongest ‘no’ case you can find (and/or conceive yourselves, ftm, if ours are just too dumb and ignorant and racist for your lofty tastes). Not the weakest strawmen of your own bias-confirming invention. And it’s not about pointscoring against me or Peter Dutton or whatevs, FFS – it’s about preemptively safeguarding against YOU ‘yes’ voters yourselves betraying Indy Oz, all over again. With this half-assed, imperious, shape-shifting, disingenuous cake/eat it too approach to date, you are at great risk of indeed ‘winning’ your latest soft pap prog MacGuffin – but only on the worst of cynical terms: a Voice that really is powerless, meaningless, and hollow. And thus a final Crown-assimilationist full stop on First Nations strategic aspirations. Leaving the core advocates stranded, fighting doomed and meaningless jurisprudential skirmishes they’ll never win in any substantive sense, against ruthlessly entrenched non-Indy interests that have zero intention of conceding an inch on treaty and sovereignty and never did, ghettoising FN Oz further, while evaporating an increasingly bored and resentful urban Whitey’s surface goodwill, which you grifted into transient being for all of five minutes on the promise that your Voice was no big deal. The problem with winning a Const. changing referendum on that broad basis is that the filthy dumb higgerant racist voters tend to take you at your word, and ruthlessly hold you to it when the real crunch comes. That’s the annoying thing about a democratic mandate. When the truly hard ground has to be gilded by the powerful and privileged…you’d better be bloody sure the mandate fine print was clearly understood in advance. And accepted, openly an knowingly.
Chrs & best rgds, Privileged.
You are playing semantic games. The functional reality remains to be tested. The issue isn’t whether or not the executive is or is not ‘required’ to consult the Voice. The issue is whether or not the installed Voice, entirely reasonably, might at some point – perhaps exasperated that this magical new Voice hasn’t, after all, magically changed everything about how Whitey ‘does’ Indy policy – elect to use its Constitutional right to challenge the executive/Parly in the HC. It’s not about what you assert the Voice wording does or does not facilitate. It’s about what a future test case rules. It is a hostage to an as-yet unconceived and unconsidered set of circumstances. Voice advocates may be proved right. You may be proved wrong. With unexpected and potentially bitter division for Australia, and (I would bet) potentially devastating disillusionment highly likely for Indy Oz, either way.
But you ‘Yes’ voters can’t have it both ways. You can’t simultaneously maintain that the Voice is both the most important, urgent plank of Indy strategic advancement right now, and/but also a functionally near-meaningless administrative tic that won’t change anything in practical governance terms. A vital new symbolic and procedural power and instrument that is going to kickstart an advance in Indigenous wellbeing and reconciliation never seen before, etc etc…oh, and also a minor administrative nod in the Constitution with no ramifications in itself, save for the usual King’s-shiny-bauble condescension of Whitey patting the nice little Blakfellah on the head, and loudly and self-flatteringly inviting him to admire how jolly progressive we’re being towards ‘im. You’re welcome, Blakfellahs!
Are you, with the Voice, extending First Nations Australia a jot more real power, or not? Say, even just the still-uncertain power of a HC challenge? Do you concede that at least, DrSmithy? (Incidentally, it may of course simply ‘some’ voices within the First Nations community who use the Voice’s Constitutional status to mount a challenge, right? Say, the Victorian power base of Senator Thorpe et al.) Have the guts and decency (and absence of the usual Whitey two-faced dissembling) to be honest about that, at least. So we’re all on the same page: so voters who are persuaded to vote ‘Yes’ can vote knowingly, aware that they may be co-authoring a future test clash between how their elected Parliament, Executive and public service currently administers matters ‘relating to’ Indy Oz, and how they’re defined, and how a High Court might interpret the efficacy (or not) of whatever forms and mechanisms the Parliament has put in place for the Voice (also unclear, barely even discussed).
Unless everyone is quite clear on what fortune a ‘yes’ vote is making our system hostage to, you are potentially setting up just another bitterly divisive betrayal of Indy Oz.
No, I’m pointing out what’s written in the Referendum.
You, however, are dishonestly equating two terms that have very different meanings, both in law – where it matters for this discussion – and common speech.
In addition you are conflating the Constitutional change with the legislation that will define how the Voice functions.
Then you’re writing walls of meaningless text to obfuscate that your entire argument is ‘we cannot predict the future with complete certainty’, which is a statement that could be made about everything ever done in the history of the world.
‘In addition you are conflating the Constitutional change with the legislation that will define how the Voice functions.’
But it’s absurd to assert that the two aren’t functionally and conceptually entwined, and, at worst case, destined to go head-to-head in the HC. That is 100% the whole point of the damned exercise; it’s 100% why a Constitutional right is fundamentally different to a mere legislated one. Why the current Voice proposal is different to any mere Parliamentary procedural or conventional/functional entitlement to make ‘representations’: via committee, lobbying, MPs, peak bodies, etc. It CAN’T just be ignored by Parly/Exec (unless the Voice consents/lets itself be ignored), or given the flick downstream (like ATSIC, say). ie because there is an external-to-gov/Parly ‘umpire’ to appeal to, Smithy. It doesn’t matter how often the current advocates and supporters insist otherwise. The external right will be there. Arguably, even an obligation and a mandate on future Voice stewards to activate and test it. That is the entire and explicitly argued point of the core/designer advocates, when they advocate for this constitutional .change, with executive remit.
This is what I mean by the yes vote ‘cake and eat’ dissembling. You want to only have to argue a minimalist case, but install a maximalist instrument.
And you’re the one who’s ignoring reality. How on earth is our Parliament going to frame operational legislation in a way that contains, say, a Lidia Thorpe & faction, from forcing a HC test case based on the Voice’s ‘failure’ to facilitate their ‘representation’ to Exec/Parly? Even entirely against The Voice’s wishes? What, Whitey Parly gets to shape/crimp what/how The Voice can make its ‘representations’, can it? Why the need for the C. right, then? If in a crunch Parly maintains hegemony, the C. right might as well not be there, anyway. In which case Indy Oz solidarity will last about oooh say two seconds. Rightly. Thorpe is very clear about where she stands and what her ambitions are. She has demonstrated a brutally effective appetite and an adroit capacity for using institutions she fundamentally rejects – such as her Crown’s commission as a Senator – to advance those ambitions, anyway. Good for her, and respect, as much as we differ. Do you honestly think she is not going to push hard to use the Voice’s constitutional untouchability to drive her agenda forward?? Now I personally have no problem at all with that. But I suspect 80% of your own ‘yes’ voters will. Not least I’d reckon the Voice’s extant leading architects and advocates. Deliciously ironic, if they end up handing her a jurisprudential knackerman’s knife for what she at least seems to regard as a uselessly flatulent, failed generation of over-indulged Indy Poltcs placeholders.
If that’s how it plays out, so be it. But Indy Oz is unlikely to win, if so. I think, anyway. So I just don’t think it’s enough for the yes case to just say ‘I’m pointing to what’s in the Referendum’, mate. You’re the ones who want to make in unprecedented C. change that hands one race-defined cohort among our multicultural many an exceptionalist C./jurisprudential tool, Smithy. Not us ‘no’ voters. So IMO it’s about YOU taking preemptive responsibility for what others might decide to do with that tool, once permanently installed at C. level. It’s up to YOU to walk us honestly through the consequences, intended, unintended, likely, possible…and even relatively remote. Otherwise it’s just another progressive Whitley recipe for Indy Oz a recipe for betrayal.
Have a look to the US, to see the mess an over-abundance of explicitly not-quite-thought/spelt-out ‘rights’ enshrined (and endlessly case-contested) in the Constitution can do. Super-unified and executive-government-functional, ain’t it. Those jokers can’t even get auto guns out of loonies’ hands.
Chrs and best rgds, Doc. I am I assure you in good faith. I think this is a grievous, counter-productive error of strategic choice.
You seem to be saying that Thorpe will be handed a golden key so that she can railroad legislation and control proceedings by default. That may actually happen Jack and if and when it does an amendment will be taken up that blocks an individual or minority group within from doing so probably watering down whatever consultative rights the Voice began with. It is right that the High court should oversee and test arguments..
I expect that by representing the most disenfranchised group in modern history more effectively it will drag all the other starved minorities and their rights into the spotlight which may even include means testing as a fair weight.
We can’t know what the consequences are,, our first Nations are highly evolved in interelating,we will all benefit is my gut feeling.
All I am saying is that none of us can possibly know – certinalynot with the arrogantly offhand condescension of those highly-intersted and vested legal voices cited above. And that the potential counter-productive unintended consequences – about which the ‘yes’ case has absolutely nothing at all to say, or even acknowledge – risk at their most internecine, spoiling, squabbling worst…creating a terribly regressive, not better, situation for Indy Oz than it currently faces. I’n bot suggesting Thrope or anyone else will ‘control’ proceedings – that’s yet more strawman fallacy fropm the ‘yes’ case (just as the title of this article is). I am suggesting that it’s absolutely not good enough for the ‘Yes’ case to leave it to optimism and ‘fudged good intentions, rainbows and unicorn farts’. Plus a lot of dissembling, diversion, and frankly obnoxious dismissal of large parts of the opulation as bigoted and ignorant. You say our First Nations are highly evolved at inter-relating, but it’s that plural voice that is the key: in fact there’s a long, bleak, post-’67 history of modern Indy Oz politics being ruthlessly divided and ruled by reactionary vested interests which leverage the same ‘autonomous powers’ intended in good faith to create a united, well, voice…to do the exact opposite. It beggars belief that ‘Yes’ advocates can blithely claim the Voice will ‘unite’ Indy Oz in the very same breath that they sneer at the likes of anti-Voice Indy figures like Mundine, Price and Thorpe as absurd, cynical, Uncle and Aunt Toms, as ‘not representative’ of Indy Oz, and so on. It’s manifestly self-contradictory to the point of satire. You seem to me to be advocating for a magically created ‘First Nations unified voice’ that will be ‘unified’ only if you can exclude/ignore/tell to ‘go away’…the bits of First Nations Oz that refuse to agree.
If feisty independent figures like both Thorpe and Price (both elected Reps, by the way, so both already equipped with very loud ‘voices’ to make ‘representations’ on ‘policy affecting Indy Oz’ to Parliament/Executive/APS) aren’t enough to underscore the extreme optimism of the operational recipe you vaguely suggest – when [lego railroading/disruption-by-HC-lawfare is attempted] an amendment will be taken up that blocks an individual or minority group within from doing so…’ – then sorry, but I’m not sure what might be. Surely you can foreshadow the obvious outcome: partisan politics of one form of another seizing upon the new extra-Parliamentary spoiler-tool for purely cynical ends. The inevitable outcome, IMO, will be First Nations betrayal once more. At the very least: it’s just not good enough for the ‘yes’ case to ‘hope for the best’, Stuart.
Many thanks for engaging, SC. It’s greatly appreciated. Best wishes for the referendum campaign and vote.
PS…and/but why on earth would we go to all the trouble of installing a C. right to great fanfare and self-congratulation…while contingency-planning to ‘water it down’ if in actual practice this game-changing Voice all gets a bit too…well, game-changing? Shouty? Demanding? (Independent of Paternalistic Whitey Control, even, SC…?)
I mean: this is what I mean when I say this is a recipe for just another First Oz well-meaning progressive betrayal. If you’re going to raise these huge expectations….you’ve got to work you bum off to win the whole-Australia mandate first – openly, honestly, explicitly, in-advance – not just the referendum vote, on the day. Chrs mate.
On what basis ? There’s no legal or even plain English interpretation of “make representations” that would lead to ‘must be consulted on all [or, indeed, any] legislation’.
It may well be that the Government chooses to give the Voice that power (though why they would do so and thus deliberately create a potential roadblock for their own policy goals is something of a mystery), but that is entirely independent of what will be in the Constitution.
Again, your entire argument boils down to ‘we cannot predict the future perfectly, therefore we must do nothing’ – which is the quintessential conservative position and can be said about every legal change ever made.
I think my argument betters boils down to: ‘We cannot predict what future Voice advocates/individuals (and other Indy Oz players) will choose to do with a currently unavailable (never tried), as-yet untested and not even clearly defined extra-Parliamentary, democratically-unaccountable, C. level ‘sectional interest’ power. So, while there remain a whole range of potential unintended uses/outcomes of it, and unless there is a compelling, detailed and prescriptive case made for creating that power…then don’t.
It may all turn out just peachy. And it may not. I’m not a fan of making myself hostage to fortune without at last being clear-eyed that that’s the choice I’m making. Yet even on this thread, there are multiple different shades of view, regarding what it is the Voice is/will be, and how our political system’s extant efficacy will be safeguarded against unintended uses/consequences. You seem to think Government will retain de-facto policy hegemony/functional control. Privileged is relying on established case law definitions remaining fixed forever. Stuart Cox meanwhile thinks Parly will just ‘water down’ the Voice after the fact if it gets a bit bolshie/tricky. That same difference in views/expectations is amplified and reprised right across the ‘yes’ case. It’s cavalier, slipshod, expedient…I think it’s lazy and reckless, and a sign that the ‘Yes’ case just hasn’t done the work needed for a shift of this scope. All in all, it’s hardly encouragement to me that the ‘yes’ side is really clear and sure about what it is you’re proposing to create. And that, as I keep saying, means a recipe for just another betrayal of unrealistically raised Indy Oz expectations. Just IMO.
Chrs Doc. Thnx a bundle for taking the time, and good luck with the campaign and vote.
Most of that is just alarmist BS regurgitated from your local Rupertarian. Strip that out and we have the core ‘without knowing the certain future we cannot act in the present’ position.
I am quite confident you haven’t got a clue what I think.
Charming, as I said. In the end, all the ‘yes’ case seems capable of is moralising personal abuse.
All the best anyway, DrSmithy. Thnx again for your time and best wishes.
ROFL.
I’m not on the “yes” case.
That’s not “personal abuse”.
You complaining about other people’s “moralising personal abuse” would have to close to peak irony for this forum.
AH, so me just ‘regurgitating alarmist BS from ym local Rupertian’ isn’t condescending personal abuse???
This is the exceptionalist, narcissist thing with you soft pap progs. Your internalised presumptions of moral rectitude are so unexamined, that you’ve come to regard yourselves as incapable of stepping over the rhetorical line of decency, so long as your target is a ‘morally lesser’ person.
It’s poignant. You genuinely cannot see how noxiously abusive it is to reduce someone else’s carefully thought-out, well-argued, good faith views to ignorant received agit-prop, Doc. Yet if I were to reverse the exchange, you would screech blue murder.
Let’s move on. Go well, mate. None of this is worth the heat it seems inevitably to generate.
No. Or if it is by your standard, then that would have you make you one of the most staggeringly hypocritical posters here, given you rarely get through a day’s posting without at least one – and usually multiple – examples of “condescending personal abuse”.
For example:
Demonstrably false since you do it all the time.
Your whole argument remains: since we cannot predict the future with completely certainty, we must do nothing. You can rewrap it in your usual excessive verbiage, unfunny sarcasm and anachronistic insults, as much as you want, but it remains that simple. Your concern has been covered by numerous constitutional law experts, and their majority conclusion is that a Voice veto on all (or any) legislation is not possible based on the amendment – but you ignore this.
The one credible person suggesting some legal challenges might ensue still doesn’t think it a big enough risk to recommend a no vote – but you ignore this as well.
Unles you are being deliberately deceptive your opinions appear to be clearly stated, your supporting arguments much less so.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that you don’t know what you think that you are thinking, from the evidence at hand.
Here’s a little thought experiment –
The Voice passes and (a) nothing changes, (b) nothing changes for the better, (c) things turn to merde.
Or it does not pass and, the entire Truth & Reconcilliation issue, like the republic, is buried for a generation at least.
This will either be to the great detriment of the interim PM who has spent so much metaphorical “blood & treasure” on the issue or, dare one suggest that, as intended, he’ll take the opportunity to say,”hey, I gave it a red hot go, now let’s move on.”
Have I missed any other feasible outcome?
There’s always the slim possibility it is implemented as expected and things improve.
However, I am inclined to agree that the expectation is the Referendum will return a “no”, and have been of that opinion since the election.
The opposing argument is simply called reality. But don’t give up, Jack. We need our reality to be balanced with your reality. It’s why the ABC is crap these days.
or….you ‘could’ try engaging with my actual arguments, drastic. just a thought.
Let’s leave aside the usual hyperbolic strawmanning going on in this article. It’s boring now. On the matter of the multitude of possible definitions of ‘make representations’ and ‘matters relating to Indy Oz’…
If it comes to substantial policy or procedural differences between The Voice’s reasonable expectations and (referendum) mandate, and what the Parliament actually instrumentalises and/or passes, and the Voice exercises its reasonable right to leverage its constitutional status with a procedural (or even policy) challenge (on say what implied obligations/rights ‘making representations’ demands of Parly/government/Executive), then those breezy assertions made above will only be decided by a test case(s) in the High Court. A thousand lawyers can make all the declarative statements they like about parliamentary mechanisms and hegemony, but they actually don’t know. They cannot be sure, until the High Court rules.
That’s the entire point of having a Constitution, installing a High Court to rule on Constitutional v. Parly/Legislative disputes, and embedding a separation of powers throughout our system. Every assertion above may turn out to be correct and vindicated in functional and even test case practice. But it may not, too. Not one of those lawyers quoted knows.
That’s the truth.
What “multitude of possible definitions” ?
it just isn’t. The words have specific legal meanings that courts have interpreted for at least decades. If they wanted to say consultation, they would have. Besides , even if somehow the High Court interpreted it as consultation, so what ? Parliament is not bound by what the Voice says.
But Langton has already said that if Parliament makes legislation that her ‘Voice’ mob don’t like, they will challenge it in the High Court – and Parliament IS bound by High Court decisions! No other country in the world has surrendered its government’s right to pass laws subject to the approval of a tiny minority of its population. And like lemmings, we rush towards the abyss…
[citation needed]
Until they change the legislation.
Neither is Australia.
I’ve been listening closely and I’ve not heard her say that. Can you give us a link to that statement so we can listen to her say that for ourselves?
I suspect a level of “interpretation” is required.
If you’re going to make such a claim about Langton, provide the source. And yes , normal separation of powers means the High Court interprets the Constitution. It simply isn’t true that the Voice does anything that you suggest. It’s not rushed at all.
The crown allowed our Constitution through provided that one % of revenue was spent on aboriginal welfare. Our founding fathers said OK, yeah right, then binned it asap. That’s as I understand it. It’s amazing what greed and contempt can achieve. If the referendum spits out a No nothing much has changed in 123 years. It’s about control, isn’t it, basically. There’s no logic in a No that I can see. But I suppose all the High Court judges could turn up to work totally blotto one day, if that’s what you are suggesting.
Rubbish! 39 billion dollars on Indigenous affairs and programs is nothing? How will the Voice stop domestic violence, alcoholism, unemployment, lack of education, incest, et al? Senator Jacinta Price – an Indigenous woman – says that it simply will not! It will merely empower an Indigenous elite, giving them the means to hold Australian governments hostage! If that isn’t divisive and racist, I’m buggered if I know what is.
How will a Voice help? Most of us aren’t involved in developing policy so let’s relate it to something most of us do have a chance of relating to – the workplace.
Let’s say there are some significant problems at work. The boss says he’s bringing in a team to identify solutions. The outside team doesn’t know our industry or our workplace. It comes in, does it’s thing and tells the boss what to do and the boss does it.
Now let’s consider a different way of handling things. The boss says I’m bringing a team in to help us figure out how to solve our problems. Now, they’re experts in helping identify and resolve problems but they need to understand our industry and our workplace so their skills can be applied to our particular situation. So, we’re also going to have an internal team to work with the people we bring in. The internal team will give advice to the outsiders.
He wants to hear who’s interested in being part of the internal team to join the outsiders and he wants the different departments to consider who can best represent each department to give the outsiders advice. He wants to harness the expertise of both groups – his staff who are experts in their work and workplace and the outsiders who are experts in the review process.
Which scenario do you think will come up with the best solutions? The outside team operating on its own which is what we do now? Or the outside team that is joined by the workers who provide advice, which is what a Voice is proposed to do?
Will the advice help better identify the problems the workplace has, figure out the best solutions for those problems and implement those solutions in the most effective way? Or, will the workers in the internal advice team know nothing of value to the review process?
Woke I appreciate the time and care you took with your kind and helpful analogy but I think this part…:
‘… The outside team operating on its own which is what we do now?…’
…is simply not an accurate reflection of 56 years of Indigenous Oz democratic participation and input into Indy Oz policy in various forms and mechanisms. It completely dismisses/diminishes/ignores the many and current Indy MPs and advisors over the years, and bodies like ATSIC and Indy Departments, at fed state regional and local levels, along with multiple stat bodies, Land Councils, legal services, health services, independent groups, lobbies and of course over half a million democratically voting individuals of wildly varying views. Again: I think you are setting a bit of strawman. It may be the The Voice does achieve a better representation-making ‘unity’ than every other iteration in the past….but again the obvious splits as manifest in positions like those of Thorpe, Price and Mundine et al…suggests it’s not as simple as asserting it as a self-evident truth.
Thanks again for your engagement, and best wishes for the campaign.
PS: Incidentally, you asked above (or below) about Langton’s comments on HC justiceability. I’m not at my computer but from memory the main splashes came out of an ABC interview with Ali Moore in Jan/Feb…and yes, it was certainly amplified by a few hardened Voice opponents, so it ought to be treated cautiously. But she was fairly forthcoming and frank about the prospects/potential for HC challenge, (certainly, at least, as mooted by Greg Craven…a fellow ‘yes’ man, btw.)
But it doesn’t really need any current advocates to ‘give away’ anything. It’s not really about current, projected, goodwill intentions. It’s about what someone else might do with the unique and untested Constitutional leverage in future, once it’s there. Chrs x
Your claims about governments’ willingness and ability to work with First Nations bodies are false and that applies to both Coalition and Labor governments. Re-writing history doesn’t change it and I’m not so ignorant that I will be convinced by it.
If your concerns about “unique and untested constitutional leverage” are genuine, I think they’re just a result of a miscalculation of risk. Even Craven, Brennan and Leeser all agree the risks are so limited they think the country is better placed voting Yes to the current proposed wording. However, each of us must calculate the risk for him or herself.
I can assure you my concerns are ‘genuine’ – how odd that you would use that preamble – and yes, you’re right, it’s for each of us to make decisions about calculated risk. None of us can be sire. I very strongly disagree with your (I think) pretty shabbily offhand dismissal of the last half century+ of all kinds of goverments working with all kinds of Indy groups. I think it’s a real slap in the face to thousands and thousands of good faith, productive, hard-slog careers and lives’ works, Indy and non-Indy alike and together, given over to the quest to make a difference. I think, with genuine respect, that yours is far too bleak and unfair a retrospective view. Again, we all do have difference experiences, and views thus arising, of these matters.
Warmest regards again, Woke Woman.
Given the Intervention delivered lower birth weights and lower school attendance, I think we can safely say that the status quo, i. e. grand standing ministers write a plan on back of napkin, envelope if you’re lucky, and feed their brain farts to the media, doesn’t work very well. Voice may not improve things but I doubt it will make it worse.
And it’s hardly First Nations peoples fault that budget items listed under “Indigenous affairs” have not been spent well.
(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-08/school-attendance-birthweight-fell-during-nt-intervention-study/9238544)
If the referendum is a ‘yes’ there’s no evidence whatsoever that it will change a thing with regard to Whitey ‘co troll’, right? Right? Because that’s what you’re all arguing: that the Voice won’t change the way Parliament currently operates, its primacy, it’s hegemon. So….wtf? A symbolic empty C. gesture is going to suddenly
You can’t have your cake – minimalist case – and eat it too – leading to a maximilist change. Decide what you’re asking Australians to vote for and then argue its merits, without abusing anyone as racist, ignorant, greedy, contemptuous, etc. Can you?
Chrs drastic, and best wishes throughout.
It’s not hard to argue that every decision made by the Federal Government affects every Australian in some way.
‘AAP FactCheck Is an accredited member of the International FactChecking Network’
Correct. The IFCN is funded by, amongst other, Soros, Google, Bill and Melinda Gates, YouTube, Meta, etc. etc. etc. – each and everyone of them truth-seekers…
Why not just refer to it as ‘The Ministry of Truth’?
From the little bit of hunting I’ve done, this post seems to be misleading at best.
Yep, some may construe that post as ‘misleading’ – others may see it as highlighting the possible outcome of the proposed amendment.
While the ‘AAP FactChecking’ unit … has found that ‘there is no requirement (or obligation) for the Parliament or executive govt to follow any advice from the Voice’, nowhere has the FatUnit stated that this cannot happen.
As others here have stated, until claims assessing what constitutes ‘issues related to First Nations’ people’ are tested in the High Court, no one knows. Greg Craven’s views in this regard are apposite.
and? even if the Voice makes representations outside of what is related to First Nations’ people, so what? Parliament can ignore the Voice
While the ‘AAP FactChecking’ unit … has found that ‘there is no requirement (or obligation) for the Parliament or executive govt to follow any advice from the Voice’, nowhere has the FatUnit stated that this cannot happen.
Because you… can’t prove a negative ?
This doesn’t change that the Voice as defined in the Referendum has no veto power.
That’s a ridiculous standard. Theoretically anything in the Constitution can be interpreted differently by the High Court at some stage in the future. There would be no Constitutional freedom of political communication in Australia if the HC didn’t rule the document implied such a right existed.
1. The advice can be ignored by the parliament and the executive.
2. Craven’s concerns are so limited he still intends to vote YES.
1 – The advice could be accepted by the Parliament and the executive
2 – I’m not interested in how Craven votes on the issue – I am more interested in his broad, and detailed critique of the proposed amendment.
1. We certainly want all good advice accepted. At the moment it’s being ignored and that’s damaging to people and a waste of our taxes. So it sounds like we’re in agreement there.
2. His critique is that the proposed amendment puts us in a better situation than we are now, he’d just prefer his proposal over the one the government has put to the committee.
His detailed critique is that Australia is better off with the proposed Voice to the parliament and executive than it is without the Voice to the parliament and executive.
Ohhhhhh, maybe you’re saying that his critique led him to what you consider to be an incorrect conclusion?
Ohhhhh, I’ve always found verballing one’s interlocutors to be a slightly desperate tactic.
Not an attempt to verbal. I genuinely thought I’d misunderstood your point in my reply “2.” above and this what you were saying. Apologies!
Please explain what you do mean. I can’t think of any other interpretations.
Like Bellingcat, Syrian Human Rights Observatory, APSI, IPA, CIE etc ad nauseam – way more stooges than the 3 originals.
And far more dangerous.