Will Australia Hear The Voice?

Written By: - Date published: 7:07 pm, March 6th, 2023 - 10 comments
Categories: australian politics, democratic participation, racism, referendum - Tags:

Australia’s Prime Minister Albanese is trying to get actual indigenous representation into the Australian Parliament with a referendum. Going to be tough.

The details of what this representation would entail are here.

A majority of Australians support it, though it’s softening this year.

But actually winning a referendum with this democratic impact is hard. The last time this kind of thing was attempted was in 1999 with Prime Minister John Howard. It failed, mostly undone by not having the functional details worked out enough to defend itself.

Of course it’s going to get hit by the right, especially from Peter Dutton.

But also the left. Senator Lidia Thorpe as Indigenous spokesperson for the Greens (with about 10% of the vote), advocated for a treaty before the establishment of a Parliamentary representation mechanism called the Voice.

“When the British invaded these lands, we never sat down to negotiate what peaceful coexistence looks like,” Thorpe wrote in an opinion piece for SBS National Indigenous Television. Consequently, the Greens held off supporting the yes campaign.

On Australia’s national day, Jan. 26, which marks the arrival of white settlers to Australia and is a day of mourning known as Invasion Day for many Indigenous people, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Melbourne to march in a rally billed as anti-Voice. Thorpe addressed the rally wearing a shirt that read “Sovereignty Never Ceded.” She called for a treaty, action on Indigenous deaths in custody, and an end to the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.

A few weeks later, Thorpe announced she would quit the Greens and become an independent senator to “speak freely on all issues from a sovereign perspective without being constrained in portfolios and Green party positions.”

Immediately after her departure, the Greens announced they would support the Voice.

The referendum will be held somewhere between October and December this year. Hopefully Prime Minister Albanese has watched the 3 Waters debate here and learnt how important it is to go to the people direct loud, often and in detail, if the whole thing is to succeed. The risk otherwise is that it is killed off and nothing like it will be seen again for a whole later generation. Which is what appears to be happening in New Zealand.

After this vote, Prime Minister Albanese will put out another referendum on paving the way to become a republic. Who knows maybe we will have generated the courage to follow suit by then? 

Arriving pretty close to New Zealand’s own election this year, there’s a further risk that New Zealand charts away from indigenous power-sharing at the same time as Australia charts towards it.

The stakes are high and the risks are vivid.

10 comments on “Will Australia Hear The Voice? ”

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  1. cathy-O 1
    7 March 2023 at 9:13 am

    "….and an end to the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families"

    that can't be still happeing !! i must have misread something

    • tWiggle 1.1
      7 March 2023 at 10:36 am

      I read about the call for stopping removal of children, and assume it is similar to Māori family harm examples, where children might go into institutional or foster care outside their family and community.

  2. tWiggle 2
    7 March 2023 at 10:53 am

    As I understand it, the Voice Call will create a constitutionally-enshrined indigenous consultation group with the job of making representations to Parliament on any relevant legislation. It will have no voting rights, so is unlike the Māori seats in our Parliament.

    Seemed a bit toothless to me, but then the size of the indigenous population in Australia is less than the 20% we have in NZ, and represents far-flung communites, unlike generally well-dispersed Māori tribal groups. Therefore, rather than have a few parliamentary MPs, the Voice representatives would have direct access to the nuts and bolts of law-making and executive decision-making.

    Still, the fish hook is in that word so beloved by managers shafting workers, "consultation". Even this innocuous form of indigenous representation is receiving plenty of pushback from the usual easily-outraged groups.

    • SPC 2.1
      7 March 2023 at 3:21 pm

      It's called the shadow of sovereignty, respect (for – here the indigenous group as per the UN requirement) without power (so democracy is undiminished).

      It looks like the UK PM talking to the Crown – right to be informed about what the government is up to in their name. There is a right to be advised and give advice. The UK PM can take advice on-board, or not, as they choose.

      • tWiggle 2.1.1
        7 March 2023 at 7:32 pm

        Just a question – how is democracy diminished when such a group has more than consultative power within governance? Some of the anti-voice muttering seems to be how the reference group is assembled, that it won't be accountable because representative, but probably not elected.

        This is throughly rich when you consider the electorate shennanigans and historically rank corruption in Australian politics. And it stinks of 'THEY might bring in laws that constrain or affect US'; overlooking 250 years of the US doing exactly that to the THEM. This included actively barring First Nation and Torres Islanders from full voting rights and obligations in areas where they were more populous until 1984.

        Democracy is more nuanced than one person, one vote sometimes.

        • SPC 2.1.1.1
          7 March 2023 at 7:47 pm

          It's simply a matter of the democratically elected government being the group ultimately accountable to the electorate for what it decides to do.

          Those who government consults with – indigenous, business groups/industry groups/employers/unions/farmers/environment groups etc – whomever is the impacted by the policy are consulted and provide advice/advocacy for their own group.

          Those who have a problem with it seem to lack perspective about how commonplace this is and how marginalised some have been from the privilege afforded to others.

  3. SPC 3
    7 March 2023 at 3:28 pm

    I can imagine what Sky TV would have said if Ardern had proposed The Voice approach here.

    When they line up against it in Oz, The Elbow will note real Australians want to be united around protection of the environment – it's land, it's waters and give everyone a fair go – but that media owned by an American imperialist advances the cause of the occupying forces of capitalism.