THE VOICE Constitution alteration bill is not ready for
a vote
Introduction
With respect to the Section 128 Constitution Alteration Bill which will be
presented to the Commonwealth Parliament in March 2023, I believe no case has
yet been made for the VOICE and many questions about THE VOICE proposal remain
unanswered and in some cases unasked.
THE VOICE proposal involves a major change to the
Constitution of Australia and a major change in the balance of power which
affects decision making in federal government.
I want to see a Constitutional Convention established
to fully explore issues raised by THE VOICE proposal before the Section 128 Constitution
Alteration Bill is put to a vote. This Convention would meet as often as
necessary to ensure all pertinent questions have been discussed and answered. Too
many important issues have simply been ignored by VOICE proponents in their
efforts to push THE VOICE through as quickly as possible.
These issues include consideration of doctrines and memes
about aborigines, the problem of false attribution of causes and outcomes, the
existential task for all Australians indigenous and not-indigenous and thinking
about the endpoint for aboriginal policy and activism.
Some of the questions as yet unanswered by VOICE
proponents include:
1. Please present an argument, case, rationale or at least a
plausible narrative explaining how THE VOICE could improve the health, welfare
or quality of life of any person, anywhere.
2. Please provide a process by which some agency can
determine who is and who is not an aborigine using a method and criteria which
can be independently verified by the Australian Electoral Commission.
3. Please explain what characteristic or circumstance of people
who identify as aborigines requires them to have, in perpetuity, a separate
multi-tier representative structure in addition to the many pathways for
representation already available.
4. a. Do advocates want THE VOICE to be just an advisory
body in addition to the plethora of advisory bodies already in place ? If so what would be the point of it ?
4. b. Do advocates want THE VOICE to have executive power or
at least so much influence as to be the equivalent of power ? If so why would the Australian people agree
to this dramatic re-shaping of the balance of power in favour of people who
identify as being of one ethnic group ?
5. Do Australians want to live in a country characterised by
ethnic sectarian division resulting in two separate “Nations”, one for the 3% who identify as aborigines and
another for the 97% who identify as not-aborigines ?
Summary of the discussion paper
In this discussion I investigate what proponents of THE
VOICE are saying and also what they are significantly not saying. I review some
of the doctrines and myths about aborigines which underpin current discussion. I raise the issue of false attribution which
has received remarkably little airing in the public domain yet is central to
any discussion about aboriginal matters.
I explore the existential task of living which aborigines and
not-aborigines must undertake. I ask what is the end point for aboriginal
policy in Australia. Along the way I
explore unanswered and in several cases un-asked questions which arise from THE
VOICE proposal. Some of these are listed
above.
I offer for discussion suggestions for an alternative approach to
aboriginal issues in Australia.
1. What are proponents of THE VOICE saying in
support of their idea ?
In a recent interview with Patricia Karvelas on ABC RN
Breakfast radio the Prime Minister Mr Anthony Albanese said “ The voice is
about two things: recognition for aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
in our Constitution and about consulting them on matters that affect them. That
is all that this is about”.
a) The assertion that THE VOICE is about recognition represents a disingenuous mis-representation
of the meaning of the word recognition.
In most dictionaries, the word recognition when used to
refer to a group of people means:
An acknowledgement of the existence, validity or legality
of the people or group.
Over a period of many years there have been many proposals
about ways in which aborigines could be recognised in the Constitution. One of
these was a proposal for a preamble to the Constitution acknowledging this recognition.
But this was rejected by aborigine activists and somewhere
in the middle of the discussion process the idea of a preamble morphed into the
idea of THE VOICE.
There is no sense in which the proposed multi-tier VOICE
structure can be equated with recognition. It is an entirely different concept
altogether for which no rationale has ever been presented.
b) The notion that THE VOICE is about consulting them (people who
identify as aborigines) on matters that affect them is even more disingenuous,
to the point of being outright dishonest. People who identify as aborigines
already have far more “voice” in “matters that affect them” than any other
ethno-political or ethno-cultural group in Australia. In very brief summary:
* The Commonwealth Government and each State and Territory
Government have a Minister for aboriginal people. No other ethno-cultural or
ethno-political group has a designated Minister.
* There are 11 members of the Commonwealth Parliament who
identify as aboriginal.
* There are 30 Aboriginal Land Councils, 70 large aboriginal
organisations including the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) and 2700 Aboriginal Corporations, each able to
represent the interests of its constituents in any fashion whatsoever.
* All people who identify as aborigines can and do seek
audience with their State, Territory or Federal parliamentary representatives.
* All people who identify as aborigines have the right to
vote in State, Territory and Commonwealth elections, congregate, form lobby
groups and to engage in any legal activity they wish in order to pursue any
matter they wish.
* There is a very large aboriginal welfare industry involving state
and federal government departments, politicians, a multitude of service
provider organisations , service recipients and others who benefit directly or
indirectly from this industry. All these people have a “say” in matters which
they believe affect them, often very loudly.
Some of these organisations such as the NIAA have very large budgets
derived from taxpayers, giving them considerable influence in public affairs.
c) ….”that is all that this is about”. If this assertion by the Prime Minister were
true THE VOICE proposal would come to a halt right there as we can readily
demonstrate that it is not about “recognition” or about “having a say”. Something else is going on and the PM’s
refusal to acknowledge this is disingenuous and
disappointing.
Notwithstanding the above Mr Albanese has described the
Uluru statement from the heart as a “generous offer” although what exactly is
being “offered” is unclear.
He also said that support for THE VOICE is “simply good
manners”, a view which surely extends the notion of good manners into
previously unimagined realms.
The current PM and former PM Kevin Rudd have both said if we
fail to support THE VOICE then people of other countries will think badly of
us. This is almost as silly as the exhortation to good manners and has nothing
to do with the merits, if there are any, of THE VOICE proposal.
d) Proponents of THE VOICE point to the Uluru Statement from
the heart as the wellspring of ideas forming the basis of THE VOICE proposal. The
Uluru statement says:
* That people who identify as aborigines constitute the
first sovereign nations of the Australian continent even though the concept of
a sovereign nation as we now understand it would not have been part of
aboriginal culture over the last 40,000 years.
The Uluru Statement states that …”this ancient sovereignty can shine
through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood”. This is important to
our understanding of the real purpose of THE VOICE proposal which is promotion
of the separationist aboriginal nation agenda. It is not hidden, it is there
for all to see.
* “the torment of our powerlessness”. This promotes the false notion that people
who identify as aborigines are “powerless”. In what way people who identify as
aborigines might be “powerless” is not identified.
With respect to THE VOICE we need to consider the question
of power. If we just have a think about this we can grasp that either THE VOICE
will have no more power than the existing multitude of advisory bodies and
voices, in which case there is no point to it OR THE VOICE will
have real executive power or at least so much influence as to be equivalent to
power, then it will be a de-facto third chamber of parliament and totally
unacceptable in the Australian system of democratic representative government.
Proponents of THE VOICE cannot have this both ways but they are trying to do
just that.
* ..”We seek Constitutional reforms to empower our people to
take a rightful place in
our own country”. This concept of a
“rightful place” was promoted by Gough Whitlam in 1972 and has been repeated
many times since then but precisely what that “rightful place” might be has
never been clarified by anybody.
* The Uluru statement also refers to a Makarrata Commission
and a process of agreement making or treaty between governments and people who
identify as aborigines. These concepts make it clear that the assertion by the
PM that “that is all that this is about” is entirely and disingenuously
incorrect and that aboriginal activists have a much larger agenda. They are not
hiding this, they have it right up front in the Uluru statement which, by the
way the PM has said the Government will implement in full.
There are several more ideas which have been put forward as
relevant to THE VOICE proposal. These
include
* VOICE proponents including the PM have asserted THE VOICE
will assuredly “close the gap”. In this context “the gap” is
shorthand for the difference in indicators of health, welfare, quality of life,
life expectancy and incarceration
between people who identify as aborigines and those who do not identify as
aborigines. Not a single word of evidence or plausible narrative has ever been
produced to explain how THE VOICE might close the gap.
* Many advocates of THE VOICE have said that it will enhance
a process of reconciliation between people who identify as
aborigines and those who do not. Not the
slightest attempt has been made to explain what “reconciliation” might mean or
how it might be promoted by THE VOICE.
In the real world reconciliation is not some grand national
project at all. It is the sum of the actions of all the individuals and
families who decide to live with and share experiences with their neighbours
regardless of ethnicity. This is the character of the Australian multicultural
society of which people who identify as aborigines are a part just as are
people from each of the 200 or so ethnic groups which make up our polity. Reconciliation at a personal and family level
between people who identify as aborigines and those who do not has been
underway for 200 years and is now far advanced. The claim by movie maker Rachel
Perkins and Senator Lidia Thorpe that people who identify as aborigines are
engaged in an ongoing “war” with the rest of us is a misrepresentation of the
real situation which is very much more complex and nuanced. It is a beat-up to
promote the separationist aboriginal sovereignty agenda.
* Several proponents of THE VOICE have said it is the right
thing “in principle”. To
what principle do they refer ? If they
mean that people who identify as aborigines should have a say in matters which
affect them then yes of course they should but they already have this in great
abundance.
e) One very notable feature of “debate” about THE VOICE
proposal is the propensity of VOICE advocates to respond to questions about THE
VOICE or disagreement with the proposal by hurling personal abuse at the
questioners or unbelievers. Our
experience teaches us that when
proponents of an idea behave this way they have no valid case. If they had a
valid case they would patiently repeat it, in detail, as often as required to
get their message across.
Prof. Megan Davis said that questioners are illiterate
because they were in her opinion
incapable of reading the Langton/Calma document which would supposedly
answer all their questions. In fact that document raises many more questions
than it answers.
Noel Pearson referred to Nationals Party as “a squalid
little party” and its leader David
Littleproud as “a kindergarten kid”.
He castigated Senator Jacinta Price as “punching down on
blackfellas” having been “drawn into a tragic redneck celebrity vortex”
orchestrated by the Institute for Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent
Studies.
When former Prime Minister John Howard expressed a negative
appraisal of THE VOICE Noel Pearson
responded with …”but who can arrogate to themselves that kind of presumption
that their own views should be the view that prevails ?” Mr Pearson appeared completely oblivious to
the fact that he was doing exactly that which he claimed Mr Howard was
doing.
Actually Mr Howard was
simply expressing his considered response to the VOICE proposal but Mr Pearson’s reaction shows just how
intolerant are THE VOICE proponents to any form of negative feedback and how
they refuse to engage in reasonable debate or discussion about any of the
issues.
When The Nationals took a stand against THE VOICE Prof
Marcia Langton said in response
“We have to take these matters seriously. This is too important
to play nasty electoral politics about … it would be terribly unfortunate for
all Australians if the debate sinks into a nasty, eugenicist, 19th
century-style of debate about the superior race versus the inferior race.”
I do not pretend to know what Prof
Langton thought she meant by this strange outburst but it is clear she was
attacking the messenger, not addressing the message.
Leader of the federal opposition
Peter Dutton asked the Government to answer 15 questions about THE VOICE
proposal. The questions were not answered and the PM’s response was to accuse
Mr Dutton of “trying to confuse the issue” and of engaging in ”cheap
culture war stunts”.
Greens leader Adam Bandt has
described THE VOICE as “a step towards first nations justice” without making
the slightest attempt to explain what he means by “first nations justice” or
how he believes THE VOICE will bring it about.
This it yet another example of VOICE advocates tossing words around like
confetti at a wedding. All show, no meaning.
f) In view of the complete absence
of any kind of coherent case for THE VOICE why have so many Australians
indicated in polls that they would support the idea ? The short answer is emotional blackmail. Indigenous activists have for many years
successfully pursued the notion that
aborigines have been so damaged by the displacement and dispossession inflicted
by colonisation, which we readily acknowledge, that they require perpetual
special status by way of compensation.
The proposition is that all the
descendants of not-aborigines must bear the burden of guilt for the harms done
to aborigines by their forebears.
Anybody who does not agree with
whatever request is made by aborigine leaders by way of recompense is a racist,
and a hater of aborigines, encouraged to feel vicarious guilt for presumed
crimes about which they have no knowledge.
This paradigm has a kernel of truth
of course. Aborigines were displaced and dispossessed over a period of many
years and subjected to discrimination some of which undoubtedly persists.
However most of that story is in
the past. These days most people who
identify as aborigines have engaged with the mainstream of modern life and are
doing well as a result. Most of the more strident advocates of the story that
aborigines are perpetual victims are themselves professors, heads of
corporations, leaders of health and welfare services, members of Parliament and
holders of high status positions. These
people are a living testament to the fact that for the majority of people who
identify as aborigines life in the post-colonisation era is pretty good.
2. What are VOICE proponents not saying ?
a) VOICE proponents have not said a thing about how they imagine
THE VOICE could, would or might improve the health, welfare or quality of life
of any person anywhere.
At best they have simply ignored this most important of questions.
At worst we have reason to wonder if members the aborigine aristocracy
who are promoting THE VOICE are reliant
on some aborigines remaining disadvantaged in perpetuity in order to provide
them with some appearance of relevance.
Proponents of THE VOICE are notably absent from any specific
proposals, plans or real activities which have a reasonable prospect of
reversing the disadvantage experienced by some aborigines, especially those in
remote and very remote locations, these making up about 17% of the total
population of people who identify as aborigines.
b) VOICE proponents refuse to engage on the question of who is and
who is not an aborigine, who gets to decide, on what criteria and by what
process. THE VOICE proposal is
specifically conceived as a system by which people who are aborigines are
chosen by some unspecified means to represent the views of regional populations
of aborigines.
It is therefore a fundamental requirement that THE VOICE have a
means of determining who is and who is not an aborigine and that this process
can be independently evaluated by The Australian Electoral Commission to
prevent gaming and fraud.
Aborigine advocates refer to the three part definition of an
aborigine proposed by Justice Deane of the High Court in 1983 but refuse to
engage in debate about the problems which this test raises.
The three part definition is:
1) The person must be of aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
descent. The intractable problem with this part of the definition is that
nobody has ever agreed on what it means. Who decides and by what means using what criteria
if a person is or is not of ATSI descent ? Nobody can agree on this and no
aboriginal activist will engage in debate about it.
Senator Pauline Hanson proposed that the person should have at
least 25% of aboriginal DNA. This notion got shot down in flames from all sides
including from some in the scientific community who pointed out that there is
no reference aboriginal genome which could act as a benchmark.
2) The person must identify as an ATSI person. As we discovered
from the 2021 Census about 200,000 people decided to do just that even though
they had not so identified at the previous census. What all this means is
anybody’s guess but as a way of deciding who is and who is not an aborigine it
is useless or worse, opening a door to fraud, posturing and gaming.
3) The person must be accepted as an aborigine by the community in
which he or she lives or lived.
Once again we have an unworkable definitional element. Who decides
and by what criteria what constitutes “the community” of people who are to determine
acceptance or otherwise of the supplicant’s aboriginal identity and what does
“acceptance” mean ? The idea itself invites nepotism, favouritism or exclusion
for unstated reasons.
When Bruce Pascoe announced some while ago that he decided to identify as an aborigine he was denounced as a fraud by people who were familiar with his family history. But then Minister for Aboriginal Australians Ken Wyatt said he accepted Pascoe as an aborigine on the basis of his self declaration. With this one act Mt Wyatt rendered meaningless any definition of an aborigine.
In other realms of public life the decision as to whether a person
belongs to a category is determined by independently verifiable criteria. For
instance a person’s eligibility for the age pension is determined by clearly
stated and verifiable criteria.
If THE VOICE advocates cannot resolve this question the VOICE
proposal should not proceed.
c) THE VOICE proponents are not talking about equality. In fact aboriginal activists and their supporters
stopped talking about equality around about 1966. Prior to the 1967 referendum
aborigine activist groups sought to repeal Section 51 part 26 of the
Constitution. This would have removed the ability of the Commonwealth
Government to make laws about anybody on the basis of their “race” or as we now
understand it their ethnicity, all being of the same species or race.
But someone persuaded someone that aborigines for some unknown
reason needed special laws to be made about them so the “race provision” in the
Constitution was not repealed but expanded to include people of any “race”
including aborigines.
d) THE VOICE proponents have nothing to say about why they think
that people who identify as aborigines are in some unknown and never clarified
way so disabled that they cannot use the existing system of representative
democratic government to express their
wishes in appropriate ways. In a former era this demeaning, paternalistic
attitude was embodied in the office of the Protector of Aborigines.
Unfortunately we now see self appointed aborigine activists adopting the same
prejudice, despite overwhelming evidence from everyday life that the great
majority of people who identify as aborigines are perfectly well able to speak
for themselves and do so.
e) VOICE advocates have nothing to say about how they imagine THE
VOICE would interact with the many “voices” already in play. The Langton/Calma 2018
Joint Select Committee document states “Consideration must be given to the
interplay of any indigenous voice body with existing ATSI organisations at both
local and national levels…” A vague
reference to “consideration” is nowhere near any kind of viable proposal.
f) We hear nothing from VOICE proponents about any kind of
characteristic possessed by or
circumstance experienced by people who identify as aborigines which might form
the basis for their supposed need for special representation to the federal
parliament. Of course the reason we hear nothing is that no such characteristic
or circumstance exists. Nobody proposes that people who are Han Chinese or
Arabic or Koren or any other ethnic group require a perpetual special
representative body.
The reality is that people who identify as aborigines exhibit as
much diversity within their ranks as people of any other group. Some are rich
and famous, some live in remote
“hellholes” (description courtesy of Jacinta Price) and most occupy a
socio-economic and cultural middle ground.
Many live in cities, mostly on the East Coast, some live in country
towns and a few live in outback locations. The only thing which people who
identify as aborigines have in common is ticking the box in the census form.
There is no basis for believing that people who tick the box form a meaningful
ethno-political group.
g) The details. I leave it to others to expand on this theme.
Suffice to say at the time of writing in early March 2023 that even rusted-on
Voice supporters like Ken Wyatt are calling for more details and warning that
THE VOICE proposal will fail if the Government, PM and VOICE proponents keep
insisting that details will be provided after the referendum.
Prof Marcia Langton warned in July 2022 that “avoiding the matter
of the structural arrangements for THE VOICE does not achieve the clarity that
many ATSI people will require”. “If you
don’t present the voter with the available information in some form then the
voter is going to say I don’t know what I am voting for”.
3. Aboriginal doctrines, myths and memes.
Some of these are promoted often and loudly, others simmer in the
background of public discussion.
a) People who identify as aborigines are perpetual victims of
colonisation, displacement and dispossession.
This never ending victimisation
is driven by the intergenerational transfer of anguish caused by harms done, mostly
in the past. There is enough truth in
this doctrine to keep it going even though doing so greatly impedes progress in
the existential mission of mutual engagement (see below) and perpetuates
separationism to the detriment of all.
b) People who identify as aborigines have special needs, in
perpetuity. They must have special
health services, schools, legal services, welfare and housing services and
special administrative structures. The usual “reason” given for this extreme
separationist endeavour is that regular services are not “culturally
sensitive”. What this might mean is never explained.
Also never explained is why people of every other ethno-political
and ethno-cultural group manage just fine with regular mainstream
services. Despite frequent loud
assertion by prominent indigenous activists there is no evidence that these
special indigenous services confer any benefit at all, despite their considerable
cost to the taxpayer. Indeed one constant complaint by indigenous activists is
that we are not “closing the gap” which would suggest rather strongly that the
special services project has failed.
Notwithstanding this you can bet your life savings that if THE
VOICE gets up it will demand yet more funding for special services.
c) The notion of “self
determination” was championed by former PM Gough Whitlam in 1972. Until then
the official commonwealth policy about aborigines was assimilation. This was
unpopular with many aborigines at the time as it seemed to be a way of
diminishing their sense of identity, their connection to the land and their
culture.
So Whitlam came up with self determination. He said this was about
“aborigines deciding the pace and nature of their future development as
significant components within a diverse Australia”.
Reading these words 50 years later I have to wonder what on earth
he thought he meant by them. It just sounds like waffling verbiage to me.
The problem with policies which have no readily apparent meaning
or purpose is that they are used as a bandwagon on which activists seek to
transport initiatives of their own device.
In this case “self determination” has been used to promote the ongoing
separationist agenda in the form of separate services for aborigines run by
aborigines and administered by aborigines but funded by the general taxpayer
with no accountability for the considerable sums spent.
d) This next doctrinal view is internally contradictory. It goes
like this:
On the one hand, only aborigines are able to provide effective
services for aborigines. Aborigines are wise and strong. They know best.
On the other hand aborigines are so incapable of speaking for
themselves and managing their own lives they need special representatives to
interpret and transmit their views to State and Federal Parliaments and the
apparatus of government.
This dichotomy permeates narrative around THE VOICE proposal .
Activists want the electorate to gloss over the disingenuous nature of the
doctrine and allow them to have it both ways.
e) Aborigines have a deep and abiding spiritual attachment to the
land. No doubt this has been the case for millennia. But nowadays most people
who identify as aborigines live in cities or country towns. Only a small
number live on lands to which title was
acquired by a claim under aboriginal land rights legislation. Unfortunately
some of these are the same people who have the poorest quality of life of all
Australians. I mention this to remind us that some consequences of the aboriginal
special measures and separationist enterprise have done more harm than good
despite the best intentions of their architects.
The point about these doctrinal issues is that they set the stage
on which not-aboriginal Australians are encouraged feel guilty about aboriginal
suffering and as a result moved to agree with whatever proposal is put forward
by aboriginal activists. THE VOICE is
such a proposal. It has no merit but
many ordinary Australians feel inclined to wave it through to appease aborigines
and assuage their sense of vicarious guilt.
4. The problem of false attribution
Please bear with me on this fundamental issue which I have not
seen raised in the public domain. Many
years ago I saw a Chinese man in Sydney’s Chinatown step off the footpath in
front of a bus which promptly ran over and killed him. This event happened to a
Chinese man in Chinatown. Do we think
getting run over by a bus is a problem particular to Chinese men? Of course not. That would be false logic. It
is a problem for any of us who step into a traffic stream without looking.
We apply the same false logic to our national discourse about
aborigines and aboriginal policy. We make the mistake of treating problems
which affect the lives of aborigines as having come about because they are aborigines
or indigenous people.
What are these problems ? In summary they are displacement,
dispossession, cultural dislocation and
prejudicial treatment.
Now stop and have a think.
These same problems affect the millions of immigrants who come to
Australia. Immigrants deal with these problems over a generation or few and in
the process engage with the mainstream of Australian society as valued
citizens. They have access to transitional support programmes as required but
these are temporary and are limited by need not creed or ethnicity.
As I write this there is much discussion about aborigine children
running riot at night in Alice Springs. There are more people who identify as
aborigines living in Sydney that there are in the greater Alice Springs region,
but none of those in Sydney are running amok . Why ? The children in Alice
Springs are not out of control because they are Aborigines or indigenous people
but because they are humans trapped in debilitating circumstances, unmoored
from a past culture but not yet engaged with the new and lacking opportunity to
do so.
The essential problem was described by the French sociologist
Emile Durkheim in the latter part of the 19th Century. He called
this condition “Anomie”. Of course he was describing Europeans. My point is
that the condition has been recognised for centuries and can affect any group
of people of any ethnicity, anywhere, any time they are trapped in malign
circumstances with little sense of self worth, little sense of meaning and
purpose in life, inability to engage the
mainstream and lack of opportunity which might enable this to happen.
The solution to the problem is to rectify the circumstances. In
relation to people trapped in outstations, offer them a time limited, need
specific, voluntary supported programme
to relocate to a place where they can have a better life.
As to considerations of policy, when we implement a standing policy, ANY
POLICY, for aborigines
other than transitional affirmative action plans we are barking up the wrong
tree.
We keep making the same mistake over and over. That is heaping new
bad policies on top of old bad policies in the vain hope that some beneficial
miracle will happen. Such has not come to pass in the last 200 years or so
which should be a clue that we are getting it wrong.
We need fewer, not more, policies and
programmes directed specifically at aborigines and none of them should
be fixed or perpetual.
5. What is the existential task for Australians,
indigenous and others ?
Across the globe, everywhere humans find a place to live,
there have been successive waves of new arrivals seeking greener pastures. This
process has been under way for many thousands of years. When a new group encounters established
occupants of a territory there is always some kind of conflict.
In most cases a settlement between the parties is eventually
reached. The process is usually protracted and will never please everybody but
in due course most people realise that living in workable harmony with others
is preferable to fighting with them.
The existential task is mutual engagement. This
is aided by the desire of most people to live in peace and engage in productive lives. The process of
mutual engagement is facilitated in Australia by a democratic polity, miscegenation and multi-ethnic immigration.
THE VOICE proposal is part of an ongoing and thus far quite
successful attempt by a small group of
influential self appointed aborigine activists to frustrate the primary
existential task by keeping aborigines separated from the rest.
We see this in the establishment of separate aborigine
health, welfare, education housing and employment services. Very few of these
services have been evaluated so nobody knows if the vast sums of money spent on
these services has achieved anything useful.
The next step is a separate VOICE to Parliament and also the
executive if some advocates have their way. Then will come a truth commission
the exact nature of which is not revealed followed by a treaty or treaties the
substance of which is not revealed. In due course we will see some kind of
separate “nation” or “nations” for aborigines.
If you doubt this is the aborigine activist agenda please
read the Uluru statement which states clearly …”it (indigenous sovereignty) has
never been ceded or extinguished and
co-exists with the sovereignty of the crown.”
6. What is the end point for aboriginal policy in
Australia ?
Unfortunately I can find little evidence of the question
having been asked and none at all of an answer being agreed upon.
If people are left to their own devices, free from ethnic
(‘racial”) policies of unclear merit, a natural end point will be found when
the existential task of mutual engagement has been substantially
completed. At that point there is no need for aboriginal policy at all.
Aboriginal activists are applying much pressure right now
for Australia to support THE VOICE which has been conceived as a perpetual
bureaucratic device regardless for any need for it which might or might not be
apparent. I think the reason for their agitation is that the process of mutual
engagement is actually far advanced and has gone much further than indigenous
activists would have you believe with their constant references to the stolen
generation, dispossession, ongoing war, displacement, trauma and the plight of aborigines in remote out
stations. The last is very real but VOICE activists appear not to regard
affirmative action about the problem to be a priority.
You could make the case that we should never have
entertained any kind of policy for people of any ethnic group and I agree. But
it is hardly surprising that in the latter part of the 18th Century early European settlers would consider
aborigines to be an inferior race given their lack of technological
advancement. The early colonists thought that some kind of policy for dealing
with the aborigines seemed appropriate.
We now know that all humans are of the same species or
“race” and that the slow development of aboriginal technology was due to lack
of opportunity not lack of innate capability.
The other thing we know is that despite the best (or worst,
depending on your point of view) efforts
of some indigenous activists to keep aborigines and not-aborigines separated
they have in fact come together of their own individual volition, regardless of
any government policy or activist agenda and have in the process made lots of
children of mixed ethnicity. So many in fact that the number of “full blood”
aborigines is vanishingly small. I have seen one estimate that the number might
be about 5000. The same process of
miscegenation is occurring between migrants and not-migrants and between people
of every ethnic group in the country.
The point of all this is that the enterprise of designing
any kind of device to service in perpetuity people who identify
as Aborigines or Indians or Chinese or Vietnamese or Koren or any other
ethno-cultural group cannot have any meaningful purpose.
That does not exclude targeted, needs-driven affirmative
action programmes which have a goal and which end when the goal has been
reached.
Even now all the main proponents of THE VOICE are of mixed
ethnicity. They identify as aborigines by choice. The could just
a validly identify as not-aborigines. Or simply identify as Australians without
getting over-excited about ethnic labels.
The narrative about aboriginal policy in Australia reached a
decisive turning point in 1966.
Until then the main thrust of aboriginal activism, often
associated with the crusading Faith Bandler, was a quest for equality. Henry
Ergas, contributing editor to The Australian newspaper has stated that in the
lead-up to the 1967 referendum the Bandler group wanted part 26 of Section 51
of the Constitution repealed. This would have removed the right of the
Commonwealth Government to make laws about anybody on the basis of their “race”
or ethnicity as we now understand it.
But somewhere along the way somebody convinced somebody that
aborigines were so incapable of looking after themselves that there was a need
for special laws and other initiatives designed to benefit them. And so the
wrong question was put to the people at the 1967 referendum. To compound the
error there was, as far as I can tell, little discussion about alternative
questions and a “no” case was not presented. The referendum was rigged. I now
believe this was a disaster for the course of aboriginal policy in Australia.
Unfortunately I cannot recall what my own views about the referendum were at
the time. I was working 100+ hours a week as a resident medical officer at
Royal Prince Alfred Hospital with very little awareness of the world outside the draconian peonage of my
employment at the time.
It is impossible to know how matters relating to aborigines
would have played out had a different question been put in 1967 but it is clear
enough that the narrative about equality came to an end and a range of narratives
about special provisions came to the fore.
This idea of special provisions has grown into the unwieldy
congregation of perpetual programmes of undetermined merit which the aborigine
welfare industry has become today.
Humans are very strange creatures. We are able to
simultaneously sustain mutually exclusive views without finding it necessary to
reconcile them. Thus Noel Pearson has fulminated repeatedly and with good
reason over many years about the debilitating effect of welfare dependency on
entire communities but at the same time is a leading proponent of THE VOICE
which is yet another special provision without demonstrated purpose.
For proponents of THE VOICE the end point is creation of a
separate sovereign state or states for people who identify as aborigines.
An alternative proposal
This proposal is my own independent contribution to
discussion about aboriginal policy. It comes from my personal analysis of the
situation and what I believe could be the best way forward.
It is based on a fundamental belief that any kind of policy
directed to people of any ethnic group simply
because they identify as belonging to that group (other than limited and
results based affirmative action plans)
runs counter to basic principles of representative democracy in a
multicultural society. This is not just an academic issue. Countries in which
most citizens decide to live and work together in harmony score highest on
international rankings for quality of life. Countries with internal sectarian division
score worst.
The bare bones of my proposal are:
1. Over a period of 10-15 years repeal all policies and wind
down all programmes based on any
person’s race, ethnicity or cultural affiliation.
2. Repeal part 26 of Section 51 of the Australian
Constitution.
2. Ensure that all support services are based on need and
that recipients have access the best available depth and breadth of support
available. Merge existing
aborigine-only services with mainstream services over a period of 10-15 years.
3. Establish a Land Rights and Native Title Commission to
help resolve the many problems embedded in
current arrangements. In particular the problem that title to land
acquired under land rights legislation is held by a corporation and provides
individuals and families with no negotiable stake in the enterprise. If they
want to move elsewhere there is no pathway by which they can sell any
entitlement for money to fund an alternative place of abode. They are trapped.
4. Establish a transitional voluntary support programme to
enable people currently existing in the purgatory of native outstations to move
to locations where they can find a better quality of life.
About the author, Andrew Smallman
I am an 80 years old retired psychiatrist. I was for many
years Director of Northern Beaches Mental Health Service. Since retirement I
have had more time to think and write about issues affecting many aspects of
life.
I have no affiliation with any political entity.
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