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.
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