With less than two weeks from voting day on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, it’s worth pausing to reread the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
The statement stands out for its clarity and generosity, and is presented both as an invitation and an opportunity. Last week, leading No campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine labelled it a “symbolic declaration of war against modern Australia”.
Mundine’s assertion (which he stands by) stood out for its characterisation of a form of words that have won the Sydney Peace Prize.
One of the biggest media stories to come out of this campaign will be the disinformation — let’s just call them lies — that has flooded the national discussion.
Seven weeks ago, on the cusp of kicking into the official campaign, Kalkadoon and Arrernte filmmaker and Yes23 co-chair Rachel Perkins wrote that the media would play a profound role in the Voice referendum, and asked: “Are they up to it?”
At Crikey, we’ve approached the referendum the same way we approach most stories: starting with an interest in how power works in this country. Our Northern Territory reporter, Julia Bergin, arrived in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in April at the same time as the Dutton/Price caravan rolled into town, and she soon partnered with local outfit Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) to go beyond the Yes/No soundbites (they’re just back from visiting three remote communities, two on early-polling day, to find that many locals had no idea it was their day to vote).
As well as stories coming out of the NT, we’ve crunched the numbers on the No campaign’s finances and just who voted for Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, picked over the constitution, questioned the messaging of the Yes camp, examined the war on truth, tracked the rise of anti-Semitism, and reported on the intention of white supremacists to exploit the No vote. We’ve also published a fair amount of fact-checking.
We’ve interrogated the use of the term “elites”, asked what it means to be racist (and reported on how the label has been weaponised), examined the prime minister’s playbook, traced the fingerprints of the IPA’s talking points, asked whether sport should stay out of it, compared the CVs of the Yes and No camps, measured the effect of News Corp coverage and the media’s addiction to conflict, and sat in on yarning circles. We’ve also featured numerous case studies of what self-determination looks like, and what wouldn’t be considered consultation by any stretch.
Most crucially we’ve published writing by First Nations thinkers, academics and writers such as Celeste Liddle, Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Jeanine Leane, Amy McQuire, Benjamin Abbatangelo, Perkins, Latoya Rule, Thomas Mayo, Kieran Stewart-Assheton, and Claire G. Coleman, with views ranging from passionate Yes to hard No.
Today Tarneen Onus-Williams chronicles the personal cost to community on the path to constitutional change: “No matter our vote, we’re required to convince the non-Indigenous people of this country of our demands and values, forcing us into a Yes and No binary that is divisive for our peoples. And after the referendum has come and gone, we will be the ones left to pick up the broken pieces for many years to come.”
They also write of their trajectory from No to Yes, as a leader of the progressive Blak Sovereign movement and a community organiser for Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance.
When referencing Makarrata, “the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle”, the Uluru Statement explains: “It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.”
One lasting question for the media will be whether the words “fair and truthful” will characterise the conversation this country has engaged in.
Today we’re opening up our archive and bringing a curated selection of Voice coverage out from behind the paywall. And we have one final question for our readers: what more do you need to know?*
* (No, really, tell us below to help inform our coverage over the next 10 days.)
That’s one to be copied – for safe keeping from the Memory Hole which looms.
Print it out and distribute to feelzy frendz and watch them turn purple, assuming that they read beyond the first Q. or two, which is unlikely – conniptions can be painful.
If YES gets up (bookies odds against grow higher by the day) it should be formatted as a Democracy Sausage bingo card.
Who will want to shout ‘housey housey!’?
Already copied! Some very pertinent questions from JR – the sort of thing one would expect from, I dunno, a journalist?
We await a response…
Please don’t hold your breath whilst waiting – you know that questioning the folie du jour is racist blasphemy.
Jack’s detailed questions to Crikey on #TheVoice seem to have disappeared… how odd.
Not at all odd if you are familiar with this joint’s tendency to dump things down the thoroughly clogged Memory Hole as well as retrospective cleansing on wrong think from even its archives.
The only unusual aspect is that the comments responding to the purging have remained – Winston Smith’s clone must not yet be up to speed with the correct method of how todeal with upersons & wrong think which is LEAVE NO TRACE!
What do Governments federal, state and local government already pay to aboriginal organisations ?
We should know the amount already paid
Very, very generous to publish this comment. Thank you heaps, SB and Crikey.
What are you giving thanks for? Your piece is already gornnn, cleansed, expunged, misreported and unfacted.
Stockholm Syndrome?
It has been a lively discussion and there have been lots of lies emanating from the no side. I note that Dutton hesitated before coming out on the no side and in light of his follow up comments could just as easily gone for yes, and we would not have had this divisive battle,
Personally, as a caucasian, I welcome a yes vote and am quite satisfied I understand what it means, but one thing that hasnt been mentioned is the ensuing interest in Blackfella culture, and the benefits that could flow on from adopting some of their culture, especially the way they deal with each other. When my forebears invaded this country and commenced their genocide of the indigenous inhabitants, they displaced a culture that was far superior to our own. one of the major differences was that the land owns them and there was no point in invading another tribes land. Be nice if we believed that, wouldn’t it.
The only true answer to all the following questions is the same one: ‘We don’t know yet’. But I will be cheerfully curious to see what ‘opinions and/or suggestions and/or preferences, presented as assertions, masquerading as facts’…Crikerians throw into the mix:
What ‘representation’ protocols will apply to Voice ‘representations? For example, regarding addressee lists and transparency, consistency and comprehensiveness of circulation, documentary security, confidentiality, receipting, correspondence chains and archiving? Will The Voice be permitted to make differenting ‘representations’ depending on recipient, including the manner in which these representations are made? For example will shadow ministers be extended the same ‘representational’ status as Executive government members? For example will APS protocols apply to Voice ‘representations’ made to individual department office holders? What form will ‘representations’ be required to take, to be regarded as formally ‘made’ IAW the proposed Constitutional amendment? What information receipt, acknowledgement and handling protocols will be required by the intended audience and/or recipients, in order that said ‘representations’ will be regarded as ‘made’. What public transparency protocols will be required for same? Will Voice ‘representations’ be public documents? Will they be required to be tabled in Parliament? Always? Sometimes? Who will define this? Will Voice internal discussions leading to ‘representations’ be public information? Will they be subject to FoI?
On what grounds will The Voice be constitutionally empowered to appeal a parliamentary decision made IAW section iii) of the proposed amedment wording, regarding The Voice’s…composition, functions, powers and proceedures? For example if a parliament decide that The Voice would be composed of ten FN Australians, functioning by sitting twice a year, with powers only to annotate and archive its own discussion minutes and frame ‘representations’ based on them, followed by the procedure of emailing those ‘representations’ to the Secretary of DPMC for possible Cabinet item inclusion at Sec DPMC discretion…would The Voice be able to appeal this parliamentary decision-making? What if The Voice were composed of 50 FN Australians functioning by meeting twice a week? Are there any usable criteria by which voters in the referendum might reasonably make reasonable assessments of whether, and/or how often, and/or why, The Voice might appeal its own section iii) status (extant or changed)? For exanple, if The Voice had been been functioniung reasonably well under iii) status A, and then a change of government changed The Voice to reduced iii) status B, would this be automatica grounds for appeal?
What other hypothetical circumstances could or would or will or might lead to an appeal by The Voice to the HIgh Court of a parliamentary decision? Any? Many? Some? None at all? What level of certainty can be applied to this assessment? In the event of a Voice High Court appeal over such a disputed decision by parliament, who will pay the costs of the appeal? If The Voice loses an appeal, willl the Federal government seek a costs award? What internal mechanisms and protocols will The Voice apply before lodging any appeal? Who will supply The Voice with legal advice and representation? Who will pay for this legal advice and representation? Can individual Voice members, or sub-blocs of Voice members, instigate High Court appeals? And so on.
Look, these are all questions that we just don’t know the answer to yet. That’s the truth. That’s the facts. By definition we can’t: The Voice doesn’t yet exist. But they’re all questions that we are going to have to answer, sooner or later. Because they’re questions of basic functioning efficacy. That makes them the nitty-gritty of this entire Referendum proposal. If you’re at all a resposible citizen, not just a feelzz zeee vibezzz bandwagon-jumper. To suggest, as Albo and the ‘Yes’ gang does repeatedly now, that the ‘mere’ referendum ‘vote’ is ‘not about any of these questions’…sorry, but it’s the height of patronising contempt. It is – exactly – trying to sell Australia a pig in a poke: oh, Jack, now don’t you telling ‘untruths’ by claiming you don’t know what you’re buying. Why, we’re just trying to sell you a nice juicy wriggling shape in a sack.
Please, Sophie Black: don’t insult our intelligence by throwing about patronising chaff about ‘misinformation’, a ‘war on truth’ and ‘fact checking’. We don’t know the answers to these questions. That doesn’t mean we can’t answer them given time and goodwill. It doesn’t mean our Parly isn’t perfectly capable of answering all of them, and more; of sure, nutting out a perfectly workable Voice set-up. Of course it is. But stop treating us like fools by pretending these sorts of questions are just irrelevant distractions – ‘misinformation’, or whatever – that have ‘nothing to do’ with the 14 Oct vote. They have everything to do with it, and asking them before the vote it is the obvious and responsible thing to do. Holding a Constitutional convention to do so…that would simply have been smart, decent, inclusive and – probably – successful.
thnx
This is beyond parody – it’s up (yesterday), it’s expunged (today), it’s up again (Thursday evening – despite the time stamp claiming that it is only an hour old!!) and who knows when Big Sister will again cleanse the record?
$10 sez this will not be visible come Friday arvo and we all know what happens to AWAITENINGED posts on Friday after lunch – over the weekend someone takes a plunger & Rotorooter to the clogged Memory Hole and the whole fiasco will begin again.
Seriously, has no-one in the bunker any shame?
That’s a lot of facetious-ness…
Yes, we don’t have the nitty-gritty details, because constitutions are about principles, not nitty-gritty detail, and we’re voting on a constitutional change.
When we vote at a general election, we also don’t have the nitty-gritty detail about each parties announced policies…and no one gives a fig.
We leave the details to the legislature, as we will do again with the Voice.
It’s not that difficult.
Except in this case the Commonwealth already has the power to legislate the voice, so this is the first referendum to try and do something unnecessary. Plus if a future Parliament abolishes the legislation, then the voice wont actually exist even if it is in the constitution (ask yourself where is the InterState Commission required by Section 101?). So the referendum is unnecessary and pointless, as well as pretty much guaranteed to fail to get up. By not legislating the voice first as Bill Shorten originally proposed, or providing the details, the Yes campaign has failed to engage with the middle ground, leaving us with a divisive, and expensive likely waste of time and space.
What’s the old rhyme about “hold onto Nurse for fear of worse”?
Politically, as in “…leave the details to the legislature…”, that means ‘trust government’ – never a bright idea.
What is going on?
JR’s post from yesterday, with its very reasonable questions, comes & goes.
Then, as promised but unlike the still on-hold JC, Comes Again!
Has nobody in the bunker heard of the concept of integrity, honesty, decency and “having the courage of one’s convictions”?
These are good questions, the answers to which would ultimately be determined by the government of the day. The government of the day will be determined by our usual process. Proposals about how the Voice should function would be put forward by people seeking election. They will form part of the considerations of electors. Once it is in the Constitution the notion of the Voice will not be easily abolished. It will need to be considered. Every few years. Every time we vote.
It might be a body that has sufficient resources to tackle your questions with integrity and sufficient good will to hope that they get the answers right. Or it might be a body that makes no attempt to be representative with an associated tokenistic budget. It will be up to the government. And the government will be up to us.
The trajectory of the Voice will be a barometer of an important aspect of what it is to be Australian. I personally hope that it gets up in the referendum and that as it evolves and matures it reflects a society increasingly at peace with its history and able to celebrate the bounty of the people who have lived in harmony with the country it exists in for such a long time.
If the Voice does not succeed in the referendum or does not mature as I hope it will, that will also be good to know.
The constitutional questions won’t be determined by the parlimanet, they’ll be resolved by High Court rulings. In terms of the others, what the framers anbd proposers of the Voicer have in mind is quite clear from the Statement from the Heart, including the intended/expected remit of the Makarrata Commission. That is, briefly, that following a ‘Yes’ vote, a parliamentary committee should be formed (including two FN reps from each state) to agree upon a Voice struture, which is then presented to parliament. Parliament would pass in turn frame legislation for it – either as presented (surely the Voice advocates’ preference/expectation), or in some altereed form (so as to allow passage) – and it would be enacted as law. The Voice as constitutionally already extant would then, presumably having come into legislated being IAW iii), have some degree of capacity/agency ic deciding, as a very first agency-matter, as to whether or not it regarded its own parliamentarily-determined clause iii) status (composition, function, powers and procedures)…was in keeping with (as it expected it) its constitutional status. It may decide, if (for example) that in order to pass parliament the actual status had to differ markedly from that proposed by the parliamentary committee (and/or the FN members on it), to appeal that status as being unconstitutional. The High Court would then have to hear the arguments and make a ruling on it, as the very first order of Voice business. I’m not suggesting that will or would occur. Just that it could.
The key here is the inherent risk of a fundamental mismatch between the expectations of The Voice’s core FN advocates, and the expectations of the parliament (as an expression of the full Australian electorate). This is why a full Constitutional Convention ought to have been the first, and critical, step in this Referendum process. Rgds.