A 364 million dollar committee ? Yes folks, that's the proposal. 25 August 2023

 

The official referendum booklet arrived in the mailbox today. Fascinating stuff.

The Yes case states that “The voice will be a committee of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who will give advice to the Parliament and Government on issues that affect their community”

And there you have it.

The Voice will be a committee.

Voice proponents are telling us that we need a referendum to set up a committee.

We already have thousands of committees claiming to be working hard to reverse aboriginal disadvantage but failing in this endeavour.

Nobody knows how many people will be on this committee or how they will be appointed or what they hope to achieve when they sit in the committee room.

At the top of the Yes case we are urged to vote Yes for “unity, hope and to make a positive difference”.  So when the 20 or 24 people get together what will they do ? Hold hands and hope ?

When did “hope”  become a strategy for anything ?

One thing we do know is that this is going to be one spectacularly expensive committee. The 2023 budget papers show that 364 Million dollars has been allocated to the Voice, in effect, to the committee.

A 364 million dollar committee with no clear constitution or function (somebody will somehow figure out those troublesome details sometime after the vote) is being presented to the Australian electorate as a “generous offer”.  

An offer of what ?? 

I reckon for that much money we could set up phase one of a co-ordinated national remote areas land management programme which could train and employ lots of aboriginal people in land management practices to deal with feral animals and plants, loss of native species, fire and land degradation. Much of the adversely affected land is owned by aboriginal corporations.

Maybe committee members could lend a hand in support of the National Feral Camel Action Plan which has been established to deal with the one million feral camels roaming around central Australia, causing severe environmental impacts.

The Yes case presents 8 numbered reasons for voting Yes.

Number 5  is “Save money”.    I have to ask, How will spending 364 million dollars on a committee save money ?  

I suppose we have to consult the hope secretariat  for that.  And I guess they will refer it to the budget liaison subcommittee for consideration.  And they will declare their deliberations commercial in confidence and outsource an audit to PWC.

Does the reader feel that I have strayed into mockery of the Voice proposal ?

If so, I guess I have to confess myself guilty as charged. But how else are we to respond to the inane nonsense which they are promulgating with the assurance that a Yes vote is “just good manners”.

The whole thing reminds me of a Monty Python script, or what might have been but regrettably will not be a Clarke and Dawe skit. I wonder if writers on the ABC TV series “Utopia” will dare to have a go at the Voice campaign, or if the ABC will let them ?

In 1958 Cyril Northcote Parkinson published his book “Parkinson’s law, the pursuit of progress”. I recommend this book some version of which is still in print to anybody interested in the fascinating study of public administration and the operation of bureaucracies.   Parkinson would have had a field day with aboriginal bureaucracies which have been proliferating in recent years and will expand even further if we are silly enough to vote Yes to the Voice proposal.