The grim afflictions plaguing Indigenous communities — whether it be the unacceptable rates of child mortality and removals, suicide, homelessness, incarceration or life expectancy — are the direct consequences of genocide and the unrelenting violence of settler colonialism.
There is nothing passive or accidental about the past 235 years of systematic subjugation and oppression. Yet, I’m told by proponents for the Voice to Parliament that the apocalyptic state of our affairs can be reduced to the unintended byproducts of well-meaning governments.
These are the same governments that imply they’re unable to secure our input on the laws they impose on us until after a successful referendum. Forget that we have been the necessary collateral damage for building and maintaining empire — the real problem is apparently that, until now, we’ve been mute.
After millennia of vibrant human expression and sophisticated methods of communication, it seems we lost our ability to speak. And because we chose to become silent sapiens and camouflage into the flora and fauna, governments have simply been unable to find us, let alone determine what it is we want.
What’s the proposed antidote to this? A toothless advisory body that provides non-binding advice to the same institutional machinery that continues to sell our lands, steal our children and strip us of our cultures. And it is you, citizens of settler Australia, whose eerie acquiescence and exceptional thresholds of tolerance have both permitted and perpetuated our misery, who will decide whether or not we can now speak up to the overlord.
Once you generously permit us to articulate ourselves, and only if you decide to do so, those same overlords will then determine how the newly unmuted voice of the “First Peoples” works, what we get to speak about and whether or not they listen. What could possibly go wrong?
The problem with kicking truth further down the road, instead of, say, embedding it into every step of the journey, is that we remain confined to the realms of fiction and fantasy. And it’s because of this romanticised commitment to reconciliation, instead of ushering in the long-overdue reckoning, that an incremental base hit is being sold as a home run.
“But a Voice ensures that we can provide advice on the laws that affect us”. Not exactly. The solicitor-general’s advice is clear: the proposed constitutional amendment does not impose any obligations upon the executive government to follow representations of the Voice, or to consult with the Voice prior to developing any policy or making any decision. More importantly, we have the right to self-government, just as we have successfully done for tens of thousands of years. As hard as it might be to fathom, it is we, not you, who are best placed to determine our futures.
“But it’ll be more powerful and permanent because it’s constitutionally enshrined”. Again, not exactly. As Richard Lancaster SC and others noted throughout the joint select committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice referendum, the proposed amendment doesn’t require Parliament to maintain the Voice. Also, abolition isn’t just binning the body entirely, as the government did to ATSIC; muting, constraining or ignoring the Voice to the point of total nullification is equivalent to abolishing something altogether.
“But this is what Indigenous people have asked for”. Sure, within the context that we were permitted to propose something workable within the framework of Australian public law and governance, but also something that is accepted by constitutional conservatives. Let’s not pretend that a blank canvas was put in front of us — the Voice to Parliament is born out of white appeasement, not Black ambition.
“But a No vote means you’re on the same side as racists and bigots. How is that a good thing?” You’re right, there are lots of racists and bigots campaigning for a No vote. For them, anything for the pesky natives is too much, and their reductive approach is as disgusting as it is predictable. But you’ve conveniently forgotten that the left wing still belongs to the same bird.
The idea that moral purity resides on the left side of the political spectrum is insanity. In this term of government alone, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “non-racist” Labor party has reformed cashless welfare back to its racist roots, making income management an almost exclusive feature for Indigenous peoples, just as it was initially designed to be. It has refused to raise the age of criminal responsibility under federal law to 14, and chosen not to implement all recommendations from both the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Bringing Them Home report.
It has left the condemned and derelict Don Dale Youth Detention Centre open, where Aboriginal children as young as 10 — most of whom are on remand — continue to rot, with some detainees having been placed in solitary confinement for more than 20 hours a day. It has allocated $1.5 billion to a petrochemicals plant in Darwin’s harbour, and has greenlit a Texas tycoon-owned company to frack the Beetaloo Basin.
It has sacrificed the world’s most prolific outdoor art gallery at Murujuga for a $6.4 billion fertiliser plant. It posthumously began litigating against the late Yunupungu’s historic compensation ruling, taking him back to court just months after hijacking his passing to promote the referendum. It has expended the sacred grounds and pristine habitat of Lee Point in order to build defence housing, and rammed through pro-market and anti-science policies like the safeguard mechanism scheme to further enable its donors to destroy our living lands, water and skies.
All of this under the winds of change and with a referendum as their primary initiative. But hey, did you hear what Pauline Hanson and Peter Dutton said? Or see the full-page, Jim Crow-esque advertisement that Advance Australia published in The Australian Financial Review?
This is what Anthony Albanese means when he says, “We have been doing things for and to Indigenous Australians with the best of intentions for 122 years since Federation.” But who can blame him or his noble peers for ramming through these policies and undermining the whole premise and promise of the Voice? Like he said, Labor’s actions come from a place of love, not incurable contempt.
We also can’t expect pro-Voice proponents and campaigners to stand up and say anything about Labor’s rancid hypocrisy and unfettered racism until our voice box is sewn back into our throats. As it stands, anyone that speaks out against the ongoing war that Labor is waging is apparently standing on the wrong side of history.
In the words of Kerry O’Brien, the Voice is “simple, unambitious and unthreatening”. No peoples have risen out of centuries of oppressive subjugation through simple, unambitious and unthreatening piecemeal proposals. So please, stop telling us that the Voice is the answer when it’s designed to dance around the problem.
Is the Voice to Parliament the way forward, or built on broken foundations? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Benjamin, thank you for this strong and passionate article, and to the editors of Crikey to ensure that it’s heard.
You’re right in facts, and right in sensibilities, but here’s why I think you’re wrong in conclusion.
The culture of every indigenous people of Australia and of the Torres Strait Islands is unique and precious, but the displacement of culture is not.
Your mob started losing its lands, its security, its destiny and its connection to history just two centuries ago. Mine lost theirs about 2.25 millennia ago. You have the chance to get a voice to parliament in the one land where indigenous people still mainly live. My mob lives all across Europe and I invite you to consider how many parliamentary voices the Roma and Sinti have in democratic countries, and what it has cost them for centuries that they don’t.
Your lands are precious and I hope you get more and more of them back along with recognition of sovereignty, but climate change respects no politics, no government, no custom and no law. The peoples of Tuvalu are currently considering building an electronic Dreamtime for their grandchildren at a time when their lands are all drowned. As magnificent have been the achievements of indigenous peoples In country for millennia, the worth of that knowledge will erode when the temperatures change. Their lives don’t need to be made more precarious.
Keep fighting, Benjamin and know that my heart goes with you but accept a Voice to Parliament too and whatever other institutionalised representation you can get.
You sound like a man who doesn’t need it, but please understand that your grandchildren will.
With love, RD.
That was very moving and I think wise and compassionate, thank you Ruv.
ooof!
can’t (don’t want to!) argue with the righteous anger.
But if No wins, i predict the results will be:-
the Paulines rejoicing, the Duttons getting a much-needed political win …the not-really-sures will just shrug and get back to it…and some indigenous people will be happy -( i don’t know how big that group would be.)
On the defeated Yes side, we will have some indigenous people gutted, a large number of those “white do-gooders” who will walk away in exasperation, and the predictable international headlines which i can guarantee won’t contain the nuance of this article’s arguments.
That will be the reality of the situation, in my opinion.
Within that framework….does anyone think that profound Indigenous issues are going to get a look-in over the next ten years at least?
I reckon anyone daring to suggest some sort of nation-wide effort to advance the cause will be met with a “f off, we’ve done this already….and the answer was No”.
And what pollie is going to go thru it all again?
Momentum is important, and a No, even a No that’s because the Voice is not enough, will just send all the momentum going in the No direction. For years and years.
That’s just my take on it, i may be wrong, i guess i don’t know enough about the logistics of how a Treaty would be written up, and how it would conceivably be an easier task than getting the Voice happening.
If the No vote gets up there won’t be a political party that will make any attempt at all to make some positive progress in Indigenous affairs for generations. It will be a toxic political issue for years and years. I get it that the Voice as such may not be enough, but it’s a start and a start requested by the majority of Indigenous people. In addition, polls show that the vast majority of young people in the country are in favour, so that it surely fertile ground to make even more progress in terms of Treaty, Truth and any number of issues in this area. Do you want to kill off the positive attitudes of young generations with a referendum failure, because like political parties they too will move on and put Indigenous issues low on their list of priorities.
The likes of the author, Thorpe, Price et al actually have an attraction to failure for the sake of their version of purity. Somewhat like the old left wingers, who surrendered any influence generations ago with zero victories and ground lost to the right. History is there for the learning, take note.
not sure if i’m reading you right Graeme, but I am not advocating a No vote. I want a Yes vote. So we are in agreeance 🙂
Just have look at the Republic referendum and its aftermath to see that you’re exactly right with your analysis.
Don’t forget the pontificating in the Mudroch press, that they were right all along.
An unfortunate article that will just feed into the no(action) camp.
The Uluru statement made it pretty clear that Voice was to be the first step towards Truth and Treaty, and it makes a lot of sense to be a central institution and contact point on those processes. If treaty first, then with whom? There are at least 200+ first nations, which sounds more like divide and conquer to me.
Article is a good example of what it means for “the perfect to be the enemy of the good”.
I have no doubt the No camp will seize on it for its two-fold attack (1. Vote No, the Voice is too weak and ineffective 2. Vote No, the Voice will be far too powerful and has over-reach)
Or it’s a valuable and difficult contribution by an Indigenous man with a lot of experience seeing good intentions mask and facilitate real and deep harm.
Porque no los dos?
I agree with everything you’ve said, but pragmatism is the order of the day.
I prefer “let’s do this now AND when that’s in place we can do harder things”.
Is there an argument that advocacy for Truth and Treaty will be even more difficult to achieve if we have the Voice in place?
Getting the voice across the line will be hard enough. It might even be that subsequent things like treaty are easier than getting the voice up.
Agree entirely. If the Voice cannot get up, nothing else will in the forseeable future. Most Australians are just focussed on getting on with their lives (i.e. trying to pay bills, bringing their kids up, watching “reality” TV, etc) and not on what the government has been doing to aboriginals and what it has been avoiding doing. Only a minority pay attention to such issues and can’t be scared off by scare campaigns.
> Is there an argument that advocacy for Truth and Treaty will be even more difficult to achieve if we have the Voice in place?
Truth and Treaty are quite different things, even though they both start with the letter T.
I think it is unfortunate that this whole process didn’t start with Truth so that ordinary Australians who don’t have much exposure to the facts of what happened in 1770 and after could first of all consider the impact it had on families.
Today’s Australians are mostly reasonable people. The problem is, without knowledge of how the indigenous society was decimated, people today can’t properly empathise with the plight of indigenous people 230 years on.
How can something that happened 230 years ago prevent a kid from getting a job today? It doesn’t make sense, unless you either experience it or know what other people experienced. In the absence of that knowledge, it’s easy for a reasonable person to reason that we are all born equal in Australia today, each person gets one vote, and there are no laws that discriminate on race, so everyone is free to have a go and apply for any job.
It’s only when you get down to the details of what indigenous applicants face – the difference in expectations and connection that job interviewers bring to the table – that discrimination makes sense. But how can discrimination make sense to someone who has never experienced it, and has no knowledge of the war that preceded it, or the dislocation of communities, families and culture that sapped the support network of the people who weren’t killed?
All that could come into popular knowledge through the Truth Telling.
And once it has, ordinary Australians will be better equiped to make good decisions about what comes next.
Thanks for your comments Crow, but I actually think the Voice is the best approach in of itself.
Firstly, it lifts the discussion to the national level and can arbitrate between groups. We already seen a gigantic gap in the desires of some indigenous representatives (esp between Price and Thorpe in the senate).
Secondly, my “divide and conquer” line comes from a concern that we would see a very different “deal” between first nations. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me that in Vic you would see a cookie-cutter treaty of some place name changes and minor land rights. But northern WA groups already get a small truck load of cash from Twiggy and friends, and have no incentive to line up with others.
Very well said Benjamin
I support the Voice because it is a very small step in the right direction. And it is to be followed (hopefully) by Treaty and Truth.
I also oppose every action of Labor that you list.
If I was to be swayed by your argument, and vote No to the Voice, what would be the next step? What positive action to improve the lot of Indigenous people should be taken / fought for?
Senator Thorpe has emphasised that it needs to be Treaty FIRST otherwise it’ll be another boondoggle for the usual suspects and the coconuts.
As Yothu Yindi sang over 20yrs ago ♪♪Treaty NOW! ♪♪♪
Yothu Yindi released that 32yrs ago!
I understand Thorpe’s position – is Benjamin’s the same?
What is the process then for deciding who the treaty is with, and who oversees it? Is there a proposal for review?
Same as that YES for – not a hint, titter or whisp.
Agree, it’s basic ‘real politik’ i.e. compromise and understand it’s an imperfect world that involves much grey, not black and white (pardon the pun) for a process over time (Oz is infamously conservative & short term in outlook).
Plays into the hands of those supporting the No campaign using the same tactics as the US GOP and Howard on Republic referendum, create doubts, confusion and keep the status quo, for no action whatsoever; nativist authoritarian trap.
Plenty of good points in this piece, but nevertheless why not get the Voice up with an insistence that the issues raised here are addressed as a matter of urgency.