While there has been considerable discussion of the 1967 referendum that allowed the Commonwealth to make laws for Indigenous peoples and include them in the census, far less attention has been given to the more recent postal vote on marriage equality.
The 2017 postal vote — which determined that the right to marry in Australia was no longer determined by sex or gender — did not involve constitutional change, nor were its results binding. This was acutely demonstrated when two Liberal leaders, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, left the chamber rather than support their constituents when the Marriage Act was finally amended.
But there are lessons to be drawn from the campaign for the current debate on the First Nations Voice to Parliament.
The right-wing opponents of equal marriage overlap with those currently leading the No campaign, although many religious leaders who opposed same-sex marriage are now supporters of the Voice. What was less obvious in the marriage debate was opposition from the left, of the sort symbolised by independent Senator Lidia Thorpe and some Indigenous activists, who are voting against the Voice under the banner of a black sovereignty movement.
I understand the rage and despair that leads Indigenous peoples to reject the Voice as no more than another feel-good attempt to integrate them into a hostile state. I shared a similar view about same-sex marriage; like other lesbians and gay men of my generation, I was rather proud of the fact that our relationships needed the blessings of neither the state nor the church to flourish.
But whatever our views on the issue, we knew that the marriage vote was about more than simply changing the Marriage Act. The same is true of the Voice. Whatever its defects, the symbolism of a Yes vote is to support greater recognition and equality of Indigenous peoples.
This is the case made by conservatives such as Mark Speakman, New South Wales opposition leader, who said: “On balance, I think the potential rewards outweigh the potential risks.” But it is also an argument that can be made by those who feel the Voice avoids more fundamental questions of recognising Indigenous sovereignty and compensation.
The more details in a constitutional amendment, the less it can fit future situations. The current constitution includes sections such as Article 59, which gives the sovereign power to disallow any law, even after it has been passed by Parliament and signed by the governor-general.
King Charles is unlikely to act on this power, although I am certain he is aware of it. But that clause demonstrates the extent to which our constitution only works because convention and culture interpret it according to current circumstances. To insert detailed outlines of how the Voice might operate in forthcoming decades is to misunderstand the power of constitutional recognition.
The Voice provides a platform for new initiatives to the Commonwealth from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is unclear how a defeat in the referendum could make it easier for this to occur.
When the marriage postal vote was passed, it was a powerful message of support for everyone in what we now refer to as the LGBTQIA+ community, even if many of us were not interested in rushing to the altar. Many people were hurt and offended by the language used by their opponents, although the nastiness of the No campaign this time seems far more damaging. But the final vote provided huge reassurance to young people struggling to come to terms with their sexuality or gender identity.
The Yes campaign runs the danger of becoming too associated with elites, symbolised by Qantas’ high-profile support, also evident in the marriage campaign. The marriage vote was least successful in the western suburbs of Sydney. Of the 10 electorates with the highest No vote, eight were in metropolitan Sydney. And of the 10 with the highest Yes vote, five were once safe Liberal seats; now none are.
It has been claimed that supporters of marriage equality deliberately chose not to target areas with high concentrations of recent immigrants, fearing deep religious opposition. Whether true or not, it points to what should be a major concern for proponents of the Voice, namely the need to explain the history of violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples to people who may have little direct contact with mainstream media.
Surely even Indigenous leaders who have doubts about the Voice can recognise the opportunity to increase Australians’ awareness of the dark side of our history. Lining up with the most reactionary elements in the country to oppose the Voice, whatever one’s reservations, is hardly a step towards reconciliation.
My kids are 18 and 21. The importance of symbolic recognition and support might help win them over to the voice, I will try it.
They and their friends supported marriage equality. They are concerned about the Voice because to them it’s not about equality, it makes one group different. My pleas to consider the different needs and outcomes for aboriginal people are rejected – they say the poor, the disabled and refugees all need extra effort whether for opportunities, health or justice. If our system of government doesn’t deliver tailored solutions for the marginalised then there is something fundamentally wrong.
Other suggestions on arguments for this would be much appreciated!
Except we have literally had federal government suspend racial discrimination act to allow race based welfare policy in the NT. Do your children object to accessible car spaces because all the car spaces should be “equal”?
That is a poor analogy.
I’d suggest that what the kids are objecting to is accessible car spaces that say “First Nations’ disabled only”.
The kids are absolutely in favour of accessible car spaces (to use your example). But those car spaces should be available to anyone who needs them.
The point is treating everyone the same doesn’t deliver equality because ignoring differences doesn’t address the cause of disadvantage.
I think your kids have a point.
A constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament is by its very nature inequitable. It is saying that Aboriginal people deserve a more important (and irremovable) seat at the table, above and beyond “the poor, the disabled and refugees” by virtue of their race.
Whether you accept this state of affairs is determinative on your vote in the referendum.
A legislated Voice to Parliament on the other hand would be a far more reasonable proposition and could be before Parliament tomorrow.
….and out the door with a change of government.
Two points:
Because Tony Abbott in a broom cupboard would inevitably be replaced with a real human, but most of all ( and this should bear no argument ) because it would stop the 230-odd years of whitefellas dictating policies that blackfellas have no say in designing, and which have always failed for that very reason.
Why do you and others presume to overrule to eternity, the wishes of our fellow Australians to be heard ?
Where is ATSIC? Abolished by an executive decision by a Liberal/Nats government –
ATSIC was embroiled in controversy and scandal and reviews found it was not working as intended.
It was replaced by the following:
Incidentally it was a vote of parliament which abolished ATSIC – not executive decision. If people felt strongly about it being abolished, they were free to vote accordingly at the next election.
And then we had the NT Intervention, a Mal Brough back of envelope thought bubble
Ask them to read and consider the Uluru statement.
Of course there is something fundamentally wrong! That’s the whole point! The world is full of fundamental wrongs, and this is their chance to fix one of them at no cost or risk to themselves or anyone else. There’s a whole row of problems staring us in the face, too many to repair all at once to the point where it appears overwhelming. But sort them out one at a time and it becomes perfectly doable. They obviously have a social conscience, but a No vote consigns this particular problem, as well, presumably, as all the others, to the Too Hard basket. Wishful thinking for somebody to do something about the poor aborigines has got the poor aborigines precisely nowhere – and never will. The government gave up on the problem, and asked the actual people concerned what it was that they thought would help them. And after a great deal of genuine consultation amongst themselves, all of them, they managed to narrow it down to one simple thing. I find it really remarkable that, after the way we have dealt with them for 200 years (which I won’t go into, they should look for themselves) they came back with the request that we listen to them. Some of them naturally wanted us to leave and go back where we came from, or for us to hand over the entire government of the country to black people, or made other demands, none of which could be granted. When it all boiled down wise heads prevailed. They said, we know how to fix most of our problems, if only the Government would listen to us – they never have in the past. And when it came to a legislated Voice, they said, OK but that will only last a short time until the next Government changes it and we’re back to square one, that’s all happened before, which it has. So we don’t want that. We want a permanent voice, so that they’ll always have to at least listen. A permanent voice is the next step along the path to equality, a step without which the next steps cannot be taken on the journey. (A journey we are ALL on into the future, as described in the Uluru statement.) So please vote Yes on the day – you’ll feel better for it, especially if you know why you’re doing it. It’s a good thing. Young people standing up for a disadvantaged group who only want to sort themselves out once and for all. To say that the Voice will set them apart is laughable when you consider all the history. They were here for at least 65,000 years before we rocked up to take it off them and very nearly eradicate them and all that they stood for. On its own that should give them a voice worth listening to. But so far we have been pretty much deaf. We’re at a bend in the road kids, do you want to see around it or would you rather go back?
The Voice would give our First Nations people about the same imput to Parliament as is already held by the thousands of commercial and industry lobbyists
With all due respect, that isn’t correct. Please inform me which commercial/ industry body has a constitutionally enshrined right to make representations to government?
This is an absolutely terrible line of reasoning to try and convince someone that the Voice is a good idea.
I guarantee you the average punter on the street does not have a very positive view of lobbyists.
The counterpoint would be: it doesn’t make a group different, it recognises that a group is different because they were the original inhabitants displaced by colonisation.
This is essentially the underlying question of the referendum.
Yes. This is the point many miss – ignoring differences doesn’t deliver equality.
Get them to read James Boyce’s Van Dieman’s Land or at least excerpts from it. Also Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore and/or Bruce Pascoe’s Black Emu.
No argument should be necessary.
Anecdotal non argument, similar was used in Brexit for adult to have young people not vote or vote negative?
Meanwhile the No campaign, associated with the whiffy nativist Christian authoritarian CPAC, keeps shooting itself in the foot (by using high profile but volatile influencers), and kept going by constant polling & RW media talking points, social media; they may have blown their ‘powder’ too early?
Thanks everyone for your thoughts.
They’re pretty good arguments!
Did it make you question why you’re jumping on the voice bandwagon?
Dennis well said – I have worked with First Nations people for many, many years in WA, NSW, NT and SA. I still cry when I see the pain, suffering and impact of racial intolerance which I believe is still widespread in our non-indigenous community. I am a child of the holocaust, I fear that the outcome of the Noalition’s right wing crap will have yet more negative impact on First Nations people. It seems designed to ensure discrimination and intolerance will continue and it will keep the Gap where it is or indeed widen it even further. You are absolutely correct when you say “Lining up with the most reactionary elements in the country to oppose the Voice, whatever one’s reservations, is hardly a step towards reconciliation.”
If the Voice is as “successful” as the SSM vote then it is dead in the water.
Only 48.5% electorate chose Yes when returning the junk mail, voluntary, self-selected, non-binding plebiscite.
Of the <80% ballots returned the Yes was <62%.
https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1800.0
7,817,247 (61.6%) responding Yes and 4,873,987 (38.4%) responding No. Nearly 8 out of 10 eligible Australians (79.5%) expressed their view.
You seem to be assuming that those who didn’t vote, would have voted No. Pro rata might be a better assumption.
Being self selected (a major contraindication in any commercial polling) it may be safely assumed that the was the total Yes vote.
If you look at the ABS figures it is clear that even with a 50/50 distribution of the absentees it would not have passed the referendum requirement of a majority in a majority of states.
Literally the same argument could be made about the No.
We live in a society that defaults to permissiveness. Therefore it’s quite reasonable to conclude anyone not registering a vote was otherwise disinterested in SSM.
Which is… irrelevant ?
SSM Survey results aligned with a decade’s worth of opinion polling preceding it. There’s no reason to believe it was not representative of the entire population.
This was the reasoning some very bad faith religious and conservative leaders used after the plebiscite results.
The fact that the same sex marriage campaign did so well to avoid the usual pitfalls with culture wars makes it even more surprising how badly the voice campaign has done.
The “usual pitfall with culture wars” is that it triggers an identity crisis and moral and ethical quagmire.
A significant number of people who voted for same sex marriage had once held homophobic beliefs. Each of those people had to either rationales or deny those previous beliefs in order to vote for same sex marriage.
Therefore moral arguments weren’t going to work. The problem with moral arguments (apart from morals being subjective – see differing attitudes to murder e.g. war) is that people rarely want to admit to being immoral (although in response to increased puritanism we’re also seeing a rise in people who revel in amorality e.g. Trump).
But most people like to think of themselves as moral, even Trump supporters and supporters of the “no” side.
So to convince those people to vote “yes” it can’t be presented as a moral choice. It needs to be presented as a practical choice which will actually improve things for indigenous people (because again most people won’t want to admit to fundamentally wanting indigenous to fail). So the number one focus of the “yes” side needs to be how the voice will help indigenous people to succeed.
Success is a positive thing and people like to think positively. This can also avoid a moral dilemma – that we caused these problems (even if we did). People can tell themselves it was all some misunderstanding.
Lying is ok. People lie to themselves all the time. Otherwise we have to face up to everything being empty and meaningless….
The Voice can’t be accurately compared to the marriage equality plebiscite.
The latter was about ensuring equality before the law for all people, allowing two people regardless of sex to marry.
The Voice is attempting to enshrine inequality in the law by elevating one group (rightly or wrongly) above all others in the Constitution. It will remain even after any gap in outcomes for indigenous and non-indigenous people have been closed.
That’s not true and the Constitution literally contains a races power that is used against First Nations’ peoples
I don’t think that is the smack down argument you think it is. The race power should be removed. That is a constitutional amendment I would gladly vote for.
Incidentally, in the 1998 case of Kartinyeri v Commonwealth (whilst the court was split as to whether s.51(xxvi) could be used to discriminate of the basis of race) Gaudron, J., held that it was difficult to conceive of circumstances in which a law to the disadvantage of a racial minority would be valid. Hardly ‘used against First Nations’ peoples’.
The races power was never intended to help anyone but White Australian. As for the marriage equality, the No side literally claimed we all equal as we all had the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex.
Spurious argument from the No side though. Look at the marriage equality issue from the other perspective. Changing the law to allow same-sex marriage allows everyone to marry someone of the same sex (not just the same-sex attracted). In that sense it broadens equality even more.
It was a spurious claim, like most of the No side’s claims were. You could just as easily say that the Voice broadens equality because it is a response to the direct, specific and entrenched disadvantage experience by First Nations’ communities.
but you’re right that the power “cuts both ways”