It’s good to know that your basic beliefs are worth dying for, Fay Weldon said during that notorious Hypothetical in 1989 about Salman Rushdie and the fatwa against him for The Satanic Verses, the one where the despicable Yusuf Islam, along with a British Muslim leader, called for Rushdie to be murdered.
Weldon would later go on to be accused of “Islamophobia” for writing a pamphlet about Rushdie’s book and what it and the fatwa said about the modern West. She passed away in her 90s back in January. Those words have always stuck with me in the decades since I watched them on the ABC. Values of freedom of expression and thought, of tolerance, of rationality. Enlightenment values, really — values portrayed by the right as flabby, weak-kneed liberalism or, worse, an elite conspiracy, not merely inadequate to the demands of the modern world, but a form of out-of-touch secularism aimed at destroying the good-hearted, God-fearing patriotism of your average person.
Values portrayed by the left as a philosophy of privilege, comfortable middle-class white thinking, a crumb-maiden to white patriarchal capitalism. And, yes, Enlightenment values that the British cherrypicked and told themselves, and First Peoples, they were bringing to “civilise” them here, when it was the Enlightenment that gave birth to European anti-colonialism and a forensic gaze at the hypocrisy of colonisers purporting to be superior to other races.
That we know of, the only person whose life has come under threat during the Voice campaign is Lidia Thorpe, from Nazis — a strange target given Thorpe’s scathing opposition to the Voice. But lives are at stake. Let’s be crystal clear: this is not some theoretical application of Enlightenment values. It’s not just about the historical justice of recognising that First Peoples were here when the British invaded, and were dispossessed and slaughtered, or that we are being asked to recognise that fact in a way that Indigenous peoples have sought, rather than simply imposing a white “recognition” on them.
It’s about an institution that will be at the apex of a different approach to Indigenous policy that the evidence says will make a difference. All the evidence shows that health programs developed and implemented in partnership with Indigenous communities deliver far better results. In a country where Indigenous peoples die on average nearly nine years younger than the rest of us, that’s evidence that cannot be ignored.
Lives are at stake.
The Voice is thus an expression of those much-despised, Enlightenment-based liberal values. It is about fairness and historical fact, recognising prior occupation and dispossession. It is about fairness and tolerance in seeking not to impose recognition, but to engage with the “recognised” not as an object but as a subject, as a partner with their own agency, to determine a mutually agreeable form of recognition. About rationality and fairness in accepting an idea that originated not with white policymakers but with First Peoples, and engaging with it and embracing it for its intrinsic worth. And it is about rationality and evidence in identifying the Voice as part of a policy partnership that we know delivers better results.
The No campaign has been about none of these things. It springs from a place well before the Enlightenment. The least-incoherent No argument has been of the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” variety — recognition might be OK but the request for a constitutional Voice is too much innovation. Except, the only thing everyone agrees on across the spectrum is that it is, indeed, broke, and that something needs to change. Peter Dutton even claims to want a Voice, just one a white-dominated Parliament can control, thanks very much.
The No campaign cannot identify what harms the “innovation” of a Voice — that is, an advisory body to Parliament, without legislative or executive power of its own — can actually do. There are no credible jurists who argue it poses any legal problem — quite the opposite, given the long list of eminent judges and lawyers who support a Voice.
In truth, the “dangerous innovation” argument is merely a legal fiction for a scare campaign: a Voice, according to the No campaign, is a threat to white Australians — a threat mostly unarticulated, but some particularly racist No campaigners have gone there, saying it will impose reparations, or dispossess Australians of their property.
The message of the No campaign, from Peter Dutton and former Liberal leaders like Howard and Abbott, is: be scared. There is always someone out to get you, to take something of yours, to get something you don’t have. You’re the victim. Indigenous peoples are just the latest in a long line of people trying to do you over, with the help of an “elite” that hates you. Live in fear, and huddle in resentment.
The past few months, and most of this year, have been about a pretty straightforward clash, one about as simple as the referendum question under consideration. A clash between Enlightenment values and pre-Enlightenment values. Enlightenment values that, however imperfect, are less imperfect than any other, that have delivered a healthier, better educated, more just society, a set of values based on the idea people can be rational, fair, thoughtful creatures. And pre-Enlightenment values that are about living in terror at what lies beyond the flickering light of the campfire, that warn of the danger of anyone from outside your tribe, that imagine a world full of sinister threats to your group.
Win or lose, it’s good to know your values are worthwhile, and that the alternative is a bleak, empty fearmongering. But it’s not comfortable, middle-class people like me who’ll pay the price for the victory of fearmongering. It’s First Nations peoples, including generations yet to come, who will die sooner, live poorer, sicker and less rich lives because of it.
With the wholesale adoption of the right wing christianised anti-intellectual values representing everything that’s poisonously dangerous about the USA, Australia has become everything civilised humans ought to loathe. It’s not about ‘your’ right to have an (ill-informed, uneducated, reflexively negative) opinion. It’s about the right of every single person in this country to live a productive, safe and happy life with the same opportunities and grace afforded equally to us all.
The naysayers are either sitting on their bums saying ‘yeah, nah’ or sitting on their small ‘l’ liberal buttocks decrying either the damage to the constitution (puhlease) or that the voice is but a sop to salve the consciences of the ‘middleclass progressives’.
And who loses?
All of us, but especially Indigenous Australians, whose paintings many naysayers will pay millions of bucks for but who will not give the artists themselves the respect owed to the ancient culture that underlies the works themselves.
What hypocrisy. What mindless exploitation. What a slap in the face to those people.
How petty, mean and just plain nasty Australia has become.
We’ll said.
Thanks GoatGirl. I think the elemental bases of racism are fear and ignorance. There’s also a possibility that plenty of the No persuasion think someone else is getting more than they’re entitled to. Perhaps misconstrued jealousy plays a role as well.
One No voter recently said he was voting no against our Constitution being rewritten. That’s how massively badly people don’t understand this whole thing.
Szwartz Media reported yesterday that at a vox pop I. Melbourne a No voter told a reporter that he didn’t want someone to come and assume things and say things on behalf of Indigenous people. He wanted Indigenous Australians to have a voice. When it was explained to him the the Voice would be an Indigenous body made up of Indigenous people he was surprised and said he was ok with that. When he was asked what he thought the referendum was about he said he thought it was “a land-grab type of thing.” He heard it on TikTok. He and his friend who also saw the video have already voted.
It is one thing not to understand something. It is another thing if you’re too lazy to actually try and figure it out.
I don’t want to call people stupid, but how can anyone make any decisions based on one thing they saw on social media? After years of discussions about how unreliable (to put it mildly) the information disseminated there is.
So I won’t say that people like that guy are stupid. But they’re criminally incurious and intellectually lazy to the point of… yeah, I don’t know what point… it just boggles my mind.
But then again, we have media outlets actively spreading lies or at least giving equal space to both sides of the argument forgetting about the old adage about looking out the window and checking if it really rains. We have vested interests of all kinds spreading lies. And we have unscrupulous politicians who’ll do anything, including doing lasting damage to the social fabric of the nation to gain advantage.
Hm, my original comment ‘awaits approval’ so I’m giving it another try, just in case the approval won’t come.
It was reported yesterday that at a meeting in Melbourne a No guy told a reporter that he didn’t want someone to come and assume things and say things on behalf of Indigenous people. He wanted Indigenous Australians to have a voice.
When it was explained to him the the Voice would be an Indigenous body made up of Indigenous people he was surprised and said he was ok with that. When he was asked what he thought the referendum was about he said he thought it was “a land-grab type of thing.” He heard it on TikTok. He and his friend who also saw the video have already voted.
It is one thing to not understand something. It is another thing if you can’t be bothered to try and figure it out.
I don’t want to call people stupid, but how can anyone make any decisions based on one thing they saw on social media? After years of discussions about how unreliable (to put it mildly) the information disseminated there is.
So I won’t say that people like that guy are stupid, but the lack of curiosity just boggles my mind.
And yeah, I complain about social media, but then again – we have media outlets actively spreading lies or at least giving equal space to both sides of the argument forgetting about the old adage about looking out the window and checking if it really rains. We have all sorts of vested interests. And we have unscrupulous politicians for whom it’s all just a game, it would seem.
We have a naivety that what is stated in media has been overseen by objective editors. This presumption of integrity seems to have morphed into social media.
News Corp.
I’ve read comments from the Naysayers saying our Constitution is ‘sacred’ – what, they actually worship it?
More than likely, they worship white privilege.
They don’t want to ‘understand’ – that they’re wrong.
The fear that someone else is getting more than they’re entitled to, and which is more than me, is the essential basis for all populism. I am the aggrieved, imposed against victim.
There’s no such thing as a racist – just ask one.
Yes, and the fear is stirred up by malaevolent politicians, for no other reason the trying to get a hit against Albanese
What’s not apparent here is any suggestion of what to do about that. And I’ll also make the same comment about BK’s article. We tend to be long on invective and short on solutions.
In retrospect, there should have been more emphasis on winning people over by respecting the fact that they genuinely believe something, even if we considered that belief to be just plain wrong.
While that may stick in many a craw, I think that respect is the only way to effect change in people’s thinking.
Contemptuously slagging nay-sayers may feel good, but it was never going to win the day.
Does anyone disagree?
this old line – the “don’t go and identify a problem unless you have a solution” is just a way of shutting people up – the climate-change denialists used to say the same thing, until it became clear that we do have the solutions, it’s just that the Powers That Be don’t want to see them implemented
roberto, the problem has been identified – for example, GoatGirl’s pointing out above ‘how petty, mean and just plain nasty Australia has become’. And there’s no shortage of similar observations in these pages and others.
What we are not saying is what’s the solution – in this case, how is that pettiness, meanness and nastiness to be changed.
My point is that I think hitting people with invective such as calling them ‘d**ckheads’ doesn’t do the slightest thing to change their view, and more likely achieves the opposite.
When Ray Martin was asked if, in hindsight, he regretted describing nay-sayers with that epithet, he doubled down. Which is exactly what I reckon No-voters did in response to Martin’s invective – they merely doubled down on their intention to vote No.
To repeat something said elsewhere: how did we expect them to respond – slap their foreheads and exclaim ‘gosh, you’re right – I’m a d**ckhead’?
Who amongst us is going to say Martin’s appellation was helpful.
Here’s a solution for you Peter, one that has been suggested so often but never adopted, and I’ll address that shortly. The solution is education at school about how our parliament and governments work so we don’t get the gormless and brainless telling us how we have a) a Bill of Rights like America (we don’t) and how b) our constitution is a sacred document on which our noble country was built (it was a document to promote federation and ensuring that Australia remained British and white).
We also need to knock on the head Very Little Johnny’s vile snub that teaching Aboriginal history as frontier wars is promoting a ‘black armband view of history’. Yes, it probably would be, because there was a deliberate attempt at the extermination of Indigenous people in their own country so that the graziers could stick more sheep on the land and the miners could dig more of it up.
As for why we have such limited education about how our government works, I can only repeat the one word that answers nearly all the questions about failures of policy in Australia today, from action on Climate Change to the NDIS issues: the Coalition. The Coalition, that since Very Little Johnny turned us into a timid, lying, greedy country, to be followed up by every Coalition leader and their ministers ever since, has religiously (yup, pun intended), tried to maintain the myth of white superiority, of Terra Nullius, of equality, etc, etc, etc, without ever teaching the truth of dispossession. As for a course in civics, that should be part of every child’s primary education, but teach ’em lean to keep ’em mean seems to be the catchcry. The more uneducated the populace is about its own system of government the more the Conservatives like it.
There you go, Peter. A solution.
However, it still doesn’t excuse the stupidity and wilful blindness demonstrated by voters on Saturday and no amount of whining and excuses will ever change that. People voted No because they are incapable of accepting somoeone else’s pain as legitimate and because they’re terrified of missing out. I do not subscribe to the view that it was someone else’s fault, although Dutton, Price and Mundine deserve whatever mud gets thrown their way for exploiting the greed and selfishness of the electorate. For everyone who voted No, I say, live with your rotten decision and I sincerely hope that the day you need help from someone, they say very emphatically Nuh, No, Not my problem.
Good luck.
When the genuinely-held beliefs are formed on the basis of transparent lies, when the truth is trivial to discover, what respect can there be?
I’ve yet to encounter a “no” “argument” that wasn’t either meaningless or an obvious misstruth. And yet that appears to be carrying the day. Deep sigh.
Andrew, the question is what to do, or what should have been done, to change their minds.
Is/was the answer to call them ‘stupid’? Or to call them ‘piss weak’ as one well-known Crikey commenter did on Tuesday in the article ‘Crikey answers your thorny questions on the Voice’?
I accept your point ‘what respect can there be’, and I did suggest above that respecting those with genuinely-held No beliefs would stick in the craw of many.
So I’m open to your alternative suggestions as to what to do about it or, more correctly, what should have been done to get it across the line.
Hence the deep sigh. I don’t really have any idea. Truth in political advertising would be nice, but the adjudication would be fraught: probably rightly a non-starter.
Probably should have jumped on the “progressive No” argument earlier. It essentially boils down to “I want a pony”, when ponies weren’t on offer. To argue that there was something “better” that we could have been voting for does everyone a disservice, after the terms of the referrendum have been settled. Instead of getting the treaty they wanted, by voting this question down they’ve probably doomed us to never have another referrendum (per Anne Twomey this morning).
Good points Andrew, and I misinterpreted your sigh. And yes I agree – attempting to adjudicate the truth is indeed problematic – whose truth, yours or mine.
It doesn’t matter about having another referendum – as Crikey said themselves on Monday, constitutional enshrinement confers no power, and the only way a Voice can be enacted and be successful is by the “the goodwill and willingness of government to listen to and act on its advice”.
So let’s see Labor now do that.
Labor has at least two terms before there’s even the slightest chance of the political cycle swinging back to the LNP. That’s nearly a decade to make the Voice work.
The progressive No vote is more, “I don’t want your pony,” because they don’t trust the offer. It’s difficult to judge how influential it was in the broader No vote, but the reactionary No vote surely had a louder airing and has caused more pain for Indigenous people. The risk of that should have been apparent after the marriage equality plebiscite. It will be a great shame if another negative outcome of this failed referendum is a reduced appetite for constitutional reform when it’s so desperately needed.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-3599-4
HI, Andrew. Perhaps I’m looking at this from the perspective of the optimist, but I really can’t see the problem with adjudication of truth in political advertising.
The truth would be judged in accordance with the facts and ALL media should be held to that standard, including social media.
How to do it ? Ban and block all media, especially social media that doesn’t conform to truth standards and explain why.
No doubt there will be outcries of ‘freedom of speech’. Well, and I don’t agree with it, but there is no freedom of speech in our constitution. There are conventions that have been held to allow ‘free speech’ but. as we have seen too often in the past, conventions are only as good as the moral and ethical attitudes of those in power.
Anyway, even the absolute wreck of a political system that is the USA concedes that ‘freedom of speech’ does not extend to shouting without cause, “fire” ! in a crowded theatre.
Is not political lying in the same category ?
I had a supportive comment ( twice ) for your post but, after the dreaded ‘awaiting approval’ both have been censored out of the site. I only wish I had logged it as I have had to do with the shambles of a site in SMH so I could keep on trying with it, but it seems there’s no arguing with a machine, nor chance of intelligent comprehension.
So sad that nothing works like a scare campaign, whether its the carbon tax, your property tax breaks or the Voice. No wonder our governments are such uninspiring failures.
I just hope we aren’t scared of the No vote prevailing due to a belief that that means nothing can be done.
I repeat the clip from Monday’s article ‘Crikey answers your thorny questions on the Voice’:
As an advisory body only, its effectiveness will turn on first, the goodwill and willingness of government to listen to and act on its advice.
So whichever way the vote goes, success is dependent on the above.
As this government says it fully believes in the need for the Voice to Parliament, I can’t see anything that prevents it from enacting that goodwill and willingness to listen and act regardless of the outcome of the vote.
Can anyone say what prevents it from doing so if No prevails?
Albo’s cowardice. Otherwise no, this vote is about constitutional change, not change per se.
Which means the question becomes: If we think Albo will exhibit cowardice if No prevails, why would that mean he wouldn’t exhibit that same cowardice if Yes prevails? If, as Crikey says, the Voice’s effectiveness wholly depends on the goodwill and willingness of government to listen to and act on its advice independently of whether it’s enshrined in the constitution or not?
In fact, the Voice, or a Voice, does not even need to be legislated or called that. The blackfellahs can organise themselves into a representative group and talk to the govt like the mining industry or the BCA or Qantas or the banks or the pharmacists or ….such a long list, but it is not prioritised.
If they want to be a lobby group like the fossil fuel people or big pharma they will also need to pay the same sort of bribes. A “voice” is cheaper and less corrupt.
Given Albo’s cowardice on other issues, yes there’s every likelihood that he would do little or nothing with a Voice. And I agree, enshrined in the constitution or not, government can listen to and act on advise. And that takes us back to my first point.
Which in turn means the referendum outcome was never going to make a difference, and we’ve been sold a pup. And one worth nearly half a billion dollars which could have gone to the indigenous communities.
And I’m embarrassed to say I only realised this on Monday after reading ‘Crikey answers your thorny questions on the Voice’ where it pointed out that constitutional enshrinement made no practical difference in the quest to achieve change.
The question now is: did Albo know this at the outset, or did he sleepwalk into holding the referendum at the behest of indigenous leadership?
It seems you’re one whose opinions change with the wind.
Let me refresh your comprehension. The referendum was to not only recognise the first peoples in the constitution, but to make it real by giving them a permanent right to make representations on matters concerning only them.
A provision made necessary by the conservatives’ proven history of wrecking every social good they can lay their hands on.
Anything less would be mere tokenism.
Journos are all to be taken with a pinch of salt – they’re there to sell media, and truth often gets in the way of a good story.
It appears that your resistance to the Voice is mainly based on not being able to accept the results of the last election.
Yes. The absence of a unified Voice representing the grassroots views of ALL blackfellas.
Afraid so Bernard. Australians seem to love being afraid of almost anything these days. The left, the right, the educated, the ignorant, the wealthy, the poor. Everyone wants to be seen as the victim. The yes campaign made the same mistake as Gillard did with the carbon tax. They expected people to be thoughtful and sensible. Poor bugger all of us.
People are too lazy to do their own research. They prefer to carry on with their lives and be fed lies, and misconceptions so they don’t have to think themselves. I heard a young voter being interviewed the other night and he said “I don’t know much about it to be honest, so I just voted “No””. DAH!
Yep. And I was listening to the radio recently and one of the guests said it’s a requirement of voters to make an informed vote. The NO campaign is all about not being informed.
Yes. If you’re really unsure you would just vote informal .
If you don’t know, don’t vote! Unless we expect the apathetic to find out something .. even just for the novelty of doing something like that.
Or you’d try to find out? Not from social media, mind you.
Tracks similar to poisonous nativist tactics as Brexit and Trump campaigns, with same usual US fossil fueled Atlas or Koch linked think tanks (direct offshore links according to UTS academic), biased activist RW MSM & influencers on social media, RW parties pretending to be neutral using fronts for the dirty work and ageing/paranoid above median age regional voters inc old (nativist) left; described in academic analysis as a mix of ‘collective narcissism’ and ‘pensioner populism’ leveraged for power.
Perhaps leave the oldies out of it. Ageism is already rife.
It’s not ageism, it’s a fact that more oldies have historically voted to the white nativist and conservative right (even changing from the centre/left), opinion polls support the same, like Brexit & Trump, promoting nihilism, nativism, negative sentiments and beliefs; too easy and oldies have no right get off that easily and via MSM gaslighting younger generations, or the future.
Like Brexit and Trump, short term horizons throwing youth and working age, especially indigenous, under a bus….selfish but negative gratification, collective narcissism and pensioner populism; good US doco ‘Brainwashing of my Dad’, by following RW MSM….
There is an inevitable age bias in the power structure.
I’m in my sixties and becoming more left (economically) and woke (socially) every day as I see what the current system is doing to people and our planet … and I’m not alone
Exactly. Hence my point.
Yup. Was more centrist in my younger days, but have been shifting consistently left as the disaster of neoliberalism has played out.
Like carbon tax, Brexit proponents, inc US linked fossil fueled think tanks in London, seemed to agree with Putin on the need to break up the EU; avoiding constraints on environment, consumer, employee etc. and money laundering protections for corrupt nativist Christian authoritarianism.
Dutton has plumbed every depth of misinformation, disinformation and utter hypocrisy to inflict a defeat on Albanese, whether or not it is in the best interests of Australia, let alone its indigenous people.
Though not the worst example of utter hypocrisy Senator James Paterson delivered a “memorable” line on the ABC this morning. The Liberals having fought tooth and nail to defeat the referendum, Paterson then condemned it as a waste of money if it fails to get up.
Wow, do they sit in a backroom somewhere thinking up these lines?
Paterson is a snide little tird.
Agree -hard right wannabe
I Said it many times before and I’ll say it again: I just don’t understand how it is legal to lie in election campaigns, referendums etc. How is that permitted?
Labor might complain about the Coalition lying but they’re in government now and the crossbench would definitely support it, if they put forward a proposal for outlawing lying. Will they? Maybe after this disaster? If nothing else, we’d at least have that.
When “truth in advertising” legislation was first introduced – against wishes of the usual suspects – there was unanimous and BIPARTISAN (quelle bloody surprise) support from politicians to exempt themselves from the prohibition.
Anyone imagining that a government, especially the current shower, would introduce such a concept as “honesty”after this latest debacle would surely be looking for bridges on Mars to buy.
LOL. F… NO. They’re nearly as guilty of it as the Coalition.
Best you can hope for is some milquetoast legislation traded for Greens and/or Teal support of some other policy.
Thank you BK. You nailed ‘the message’ from the No campaign perfectly…fuel for white grievance.