Play Nice Referendum - Indigenous Voice in Parliament

[Gethelred]

Link to the proposed Referendum, from the Referendum Working Group:

(Edited 6 April 2023)

These are the words that will be put to the Australian people in the upcoming referendum as agreed by the Referendum Working Group (made up of representatives of First Nations communities from around Australia):

"A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?"

As well as that, it will be put to Australians that the constitution be amended to include a new chapter titled "Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples".

The details would be:


View attachment 1636890

The Prime Minister has committed to the government introducing legislation with this wording to parliament on 30 March 2023 and to establishing a joint parliamentary committee to consider it and receive submissions on the wording, providing ALL members of Parliament with the opportunity to consider and debate the full details of the proposal.

Parliament will then vote on the wording in June in the lead up to a National Referendum.

The ANU has issued a paper responding to common public concerns expressed in relation to the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice here:

Indigenous Voice to Parliament | Australian National University

Responding to common concerns about an aboriginal and torres strait islander voice First Nations portfolio Background

www.anu.edu.au

Summary details of the key points from this paper may be found in Chief post here:

The Uluru Statement from the Heart:

Not specifically No. In any case it does not form part of the Referendum proposal.

View attachment 1769742

Seeing as things have gotten a bit toxic in here, let's try to return things to a more civil tone.

The following will result in warnings to begin with, and if said behaviour continues will be escalated:

• referring to another poster as racist without direct provocation.
• dismissing or deriding another poster's lived experience.
• personal attacks or one line posts designed solely to insult or deride.

You might notice that the final rule is from the board rules. Thought we should probably remember that this is against the rules in case it's been forgotten.

Let's play nicely from here, people.

 

[JackOutback]

There are valid arguments to vote no. Like 'Treaty should come before Voice'. Can't say I've seen any valid arguments in the No pamphlet or in the arguments being peddled in the mainstream media or this thread.

 

[killtaker1993]

So everyone is entitled to an opinion but only if it's the same as yours? That's called communism mate go live in China. Bet your a Chomo supporter too.

If he/she/they wasn't entitled to his/her/their opinion, I wouldn't have been able to read it in the first place would I?

 

[killtaker1993]

That analogy is a cop out. According to the polls No voters currently are the majority. That means some of these people need to be persuaded to change their minds.

You think branding them racists or idiots will do the trick?

If someone's first instinct is to vote No, they will never vote Yes. It's useless trying to convince them, I wouldn't even waste my time

I tried convincing my mother to vote in favour of SSM and nothing could change her mind (I note the same flimsy dressed-up excuses for voting No are similar in structure and logical reasoning to those used in the SSM debate)

 

[PJays]

There are valid arguments to vote no. Like 'Treaty should come before Voice'. Can't say I've seen any valid arguments in the No pamphlet or in the arguments being peddled in the mainstream media or this thread.

What's valid is in the eyes of whoever's assessing.

The Yes arguments are all about vibe and feeling. Unconvincing to those not as easily swayed by emotion.

And the burden is on the Yes side to make the case for change. If I'm unconvinced, and think the alleged benefits won't exceed the potential costs then independent argument for No are unnecessary

In other words the onus is entirely on the Yes case. All the No side needs to do is refute those Yes arguments.

 

[Sun Ra]

What's valid is in the eyes of whoever's assessing.

The Yes arguments are all about vibe and feeling. Unconvincing to those not as easily swayed by emotion.

And the burden is on the Yes side to make the case for change. If I'm unconvinced, and think the alleged benefits won't exceed the potential costs then independent argument for No are unnecessary

In other words the onus is entirely on the Yes case. All the No side needs to do is refute those Yes arguments.

Quote: All the No side needs to do is refute those Yes arguments.

They are doing way more than that pal, in fact that is the one thing they are not doing.

What they are doing is telling lies and spreading borderline racist disinformation which is the same thing I suppose.

 

[Sun Ra]

Crikey / Opinion / Indigenous Affairs

The Voice’s ‘liberal doom loop’ problem​

The nation is now at a crossroads: there’s the path of ugly nationalism and the path of generous patriotism.

MAEVE MCGREGOR
JUL 26, 2023

ABORIGINAL MEN IN CHAINS AT WYNDHAM PRISON IN WA C.1901 (IMAGE: PUBLISHED IN 'NYIBAYARRI: KIMBERLEY TRACKER')

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers please note that this article contains images and mention of deceased persons. It also contains depictions of violence and racism.

The image is repulsive. Consider the faded contours of the Kimberley pastoral station stretching into the vast distance to the left; how it’s partially obscured by the tin edifice that was the Wyndham prison around 1901, and how both speak to the unchecked avarice and prejudice that situated the group of boys and men in the dusty dirt at the photo’s centre.

Now focus on the two most striking parts of the frame: the handcuffed and chained existence of the boys and men, who are shackled together by neck chains weighing close to 2.5kg each. And behind them, pipe in hand, their keeper, a white man sporting a handlebar moustache and a hint of triumphalism.

In the way of so many signal moments that capture the nation’s bloodstained history, the frame is a portal into a world of injustice, where for more than a century until 1958 the systemic (though illegal) use of neck chains on Indigenous peoples persisted throughout Western Australia. This was so notwithstanding its parallels with the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the findings of the Roth royal commission of 1905, which found the “brutal and outrageous” practice was commonly justified by reference to spurious and unscrupulous allegations of cattle theft.

Spurious, because confessions of cattle theft were often extracted from Indigenous prisoners on threat of murder by gunpoint. And unscrupulous, because such claims scarcely concealed the usual, unvarnished purpose of the arrests, which was to expel Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands and, in some instances, press them into slavery.

Knowing the recommendations of the Roth royal commission were, for the most part, duly ignored, and knowing history dared to repeat itself with the royal commission into black deaths in custody some 82 years later in 1987, a thorny question arises: what do you see in the photo? Or perhaps more to the point, what do you want to see?

Something from the closed, distant past, or something with a legacy or parallel that writes the gap between the promise of our egalitarian ideas and the realities of today and tomorrow?

The question matters because among the most obnoxious yet potent lies peddled by the No campaign is the dangerously loose claim that a Voice to Parliament would run contrary to basal notions of equality and egalitarianism. In May, for instance, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton used a speech in Parliament to speak of a crisis in identity and national cohesion, warning the Voice would cast an “Orwellian” shadow over the nation where “all Australians are equal but some Australians are more equal than others”.

He worried the proposal would “re-racialise our nation” and “permanently divide us by race”. And he echoed (without attributing) Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, telling the chamber the “great progress of the 20th century’s civil rights movement was the push to eradicate difference — to judge each other on the content of our character, not the colour of our skin”.

In recent days, 2GB host Ben Fordham has played on this sentiment, accusing Labor of trying to create “an exclusive group”, while prominent No campaigner Louise Clegg has urged the country to heed Dutton’s warnings, pointing to the dangers of “affording a small group of people an elevated right above all others to a say on everything”.

And so on it goes.

To the minds of anyone unpersuaded by the merits of the Voice, the tenor or “vibe” of such arguments is at least superficially compelling.
On one level, it comfortingly invites Australians to reject the notion that ours is a nation in which Indigenous peoples confront anything approaching discrimination or structural bias in their day-to-day lives, let alone racism. Once that’s accepted, the Voice descends into something that’s liable to breed resentment and accusations of “reverse discrimination”, where instead of cautious reform designed to mitigate chronic Indigenous disadvantage, it’s recast as a cudgel that will inevitably hurt ordinary, non-Indigenous Australians.

Hence Clegg’s lie the Voice will have a “say on everything”, as opposed to at best a limited “power of influence” over laws that affect them in some material or distinct way, and the common but false refrain the Voice will violate principles of anti-discrimination.

But even to those not sold on the beguiling idea that racial discrimination is a thing of the past, much less the unreality of “reverse discrimination”, it’s possible the argument still holds some force.

These people, it bears emphasising, wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves racist, and nor would they oppose diversity or Indigenous reconciliation. On the contrary, at least to their thinking, it merely strains faith to conceive the Voice as something which doesn’t philosophically run contrary to liberalism’s promise of equal rights for all.

And it’s therein the true genius of Dutton’s sophistry on the Voice lies. By mawkishly evoking a common civic creed and monopolising the universalism of basic human rights — but skilfully ignoring the discrete rights of Indigenous peoples under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Australia has supported since 2009 — the No campaign has refashioned the Voice as something that promises to derail history’s bend towards justice.

Indeed, it’s a variation of what some have called liberalism’s “doom loop”, where cultural heterogeneity and true egalitarianism can be seen to pull against each other, as borne out by the curtailing of affirmative action in American colleges last month.
By contrast here, in the context of the Voice, it’s a subterfuge of the worst kind; a victory of theatre over substance, if you like, or a sideshow of deceit and unreality.

Scratch away at the rhetoric’s putative concern for egalitarianism, what lies beneath is an arid cultural nationalism that deliberately and dangerously pitches Indigenous peoples against the rest. Nowhere is this more vividly captured than in the corrosive words of former prime minister Tony Abbott, where he recently spoke of “two classes of Australians: the few, whose ancestry here could be traced back some 60,000 years; and the many, whose ancestry in this country dates only from 1788”.

It’s the sort of language that can quickly descend into something far uglier or reflexively contrarian, such as Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s claims this week that Victorians are “difficult” and devoid of “common sense”; former federal Labor MP and no campaigner Gary John’s suggestion that Indigenous people should be blood-tested for “all benefits and jobs”; John Howard’s claim today that the “luckiest thing” to have happened Australia was British colonisation, and Dutton’s sly and unsubstantiated claim in October, repeated in April, that child sexual abuse is “widespread” and “normalised” in Indigenous communities.

Stepping back, it’s a space which all too easily shades into illiberal populism, where outlandish lies and claims are weaponised in an assault against not just this fact or that minority but reality as a whole, leaving scant room for cool analysis.

One such lie, resurrected from the right’s graveyard of denial, is Dutton’s suggestion the long march of time has materially reduced First Nations disadvantage — never mind such claims find no reflection in the sobering statistics on Indigenous incarceration and low life expectancy. Nationally, almost one in three people behind bars is Indigenous, despite First Nations peoples comprising 3.8% of the population, while Indigenous men statistically reach only an age of 71, and Indigenous women 75, compared with 80 and 84 respectively for their non-Indigenous counterparts.

Distilled, such figures capture all the policy failures, historic wrongs, scientific triumphs and social sins of a nation in one fell swoop. They speak crude and truthful lines that utterly dissolve the right’s false narratives about egalitarianism and fitful progress for Indigenous people.

Lost on those who veritably see the Voice as something which heralds inequality is the reality that equality, if it’s to be taken as a foundational idea, must take acknowledgement of inequality as its starting point. To do otherwise lands you in the realm of strained and artificial reasoning where it’s said — for instance — that everyone enjoys an equal right to the age pension (as the Federal Court recently decided), even if non-Indigenous Australians statistically enjoy it for significantly greater lengths of time due to longer lifespans unshaped by the consequences of more than two centuries of dispossession, marginalisation and disadvantage.

Or that everyone has an equal right to attend university, even if First Nations peoples are, in the choice words of Education Minister Jason Clare, more likely to “go to jail than go to university”. Or that everyone enjoys equal rights to live free from discrimination, even if these rights are more liable to recede and vanish in the lived experience of First Nations peoples.

Indeed, it’s the repeated failure of government to meaningfully partner with and consult Indigenous communities under the Closing the Gap agreement, the Productivity Commission points out today, which foredooms progress.

And so ultimately this, along with recognition of First Peoples as the “bearers of the first historyof our continent”, is the strongest argument for a Voice. We’re technically all equal, yes, but some of us — most Australians — far more so than First Nations as a group. International law recognises that it’s this history of disadvantage, and the distinctive collective identity of Indigenous peoples, which justifies steps which ensure their views find reflection in mainstream laws that directly impinge upon them.

Yet instead of recognising this simple truth, the campaign has descended into a struggle for Australia’s identity, and one that pitches the country at a crossroads: one path promises the ugly nationalism and shattered trust fashioned by Dutton’s lies; the other embraces the generous, patriotic act of reconciliation the Voice extends to all Australians.

The path you prefer depends in large part on how you see or choose to see the photo of chained inequality above. Something that is of closed significance, or something that to this day reverberates in our prisons and the outcomes for Indigenous peoples across the nation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR​

Maeve McGregor
PUBLIC AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT
Maeve McGregor is the public affairs correspondent for Crikey, with a special interest in law and government integrity issues. Prior to this, she was a lawyer.

 

[Gavin Excell]

A new report from the Productivity Commission finds that Australian governments are making Indigenous disadvantage worse by failing to meet Closing the Gap targets. The broad-ranging criticism is contained in the commission’s first review of the 2020 “National Agreement on Closing the Gap”.

Its recommendations to achieve meaningful improvements to close the gap between the health and socio-economic outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians includes support for an Indigenous Voice to both Federal and State Parliaments...

And that closing the gap can only be achieved if governments face real accountability for the way they partner with Indigenous communities — like via a Voice to Parliament.

Voice could help close the gap: Productivity Commission

The Productivity Commission has bolstered arguments for the Voice, saying the current approach to addressing disadvantage is not working.

www.afr.com

Governments falling short on Closing the Gap commitments

The report sets out the Commission’s findings and recommendations on the ongoing implementation of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap by highlighting areas of improvement and emphasising where additional effort is required to close the gap.

t.co

I think the significance of this has been missed

The PC aren't bleeding heart leftists. They look at things dispassionately and make findings based on what is working in government and what isn't

Despite all the chest thumping by government departments about the steps they are taking to close the gap, they aren't making genuine delegation to the local communities.

Something has to change to improve things

 

[Captivating]

It's a prison. These are prisoners guilty of stealing and killing cattle.

Once imprisoned, the use of chains was seen as ‘essential’ due to the high rates of escape – in Western Australia in 1901 when only 10% of the prison population in gaols was classified as Indigenous, 96 out of 99 prison escapes were by Aboriginal prisoners.

University of Adelaide

 

[Crankyhawk]

So everyone is entitled to an opinion but only if it's the same as yours? That's called communism mate go live in China. Bet your a Chomo supporter too.

not communism; more authoritarian or group thinkism..

 

[PJays]

What they are doing is telling lies and spreading borderline racist disinformation which is the same thing I suppose.

There's plenty of misinformation coming from the Yes side. For example:

"This is a modest proposal"

"This has nothing to do with treaty"

"Voting yes is about recognition"

"It's time indigenous people were seen and heard"

Those are some of the main lines being trotted out regularly.

 

[Sun Ra]

There's plenty of misinformation coming from the Yes side. For example:

"This is a modest proposal"

"This has nothing to do with treaty"

"Voting yes is about recognition"

"It's time indigenous people were seen and heard"

Those are some of the main lines being trotted out regularly.

Fantastic post mate ......... a lot to unpack here.

 

[Ghost Patrol]

All the No side needs to do is refute those Yes arguments.

If it's that easy, then why are they/you just dribbling bullshit and constant lies?

Is Peter Dutton your role model?

 

[Crankyhawk]

There's plenty of misinformation coming from the Yes side. For example:

"This is a modest proposal"

"This has nothing to do with treaty"

"Voting yes is about recognition"

"It's time indigenous people were seen and heard"

Those are some of the main lines being trotted out regularly.

what does it have to do with treaty. It isn't a treaty. It may be a body which could negotiate treaty, but its no where near that.

voting yes is about recognition (because they bundled both votes together) - that isn't misinformation (as voting no is voting against recognition - because of how the question is posed)

 

[Gavin Excell]

There's plenty of misinformation coming from the Yes side. For example:

"This is a modest proposal"

"This has nothing to do with treaty"

"Voting yes is about recognition"

"It's time indigenous people were seen and heard"

Those are some of the main lines being trotted out regularly.

"It's time indigenous people were seen and heard"

You find this objectionable?

I guess if you do, vote no

 

[Chief]

Someone with 7 white great grandparents and 1 indigenous great grandparent and lives in Melbourne can identify how they like, but biologically (and probably culturally) they're white.

You know that self-identification doesn't determine it, yeah?

I mean the legal conditions have been repeated over and over in here.

What's blocking you from understanding?

 

[PJays]

what does it have to do with treaty. It isn't a treaty.

The Albanese gov has committed in full to the Uluru Statement From the Heart.

Voice, treaty, truth.

We can say with near certainty if the Voice passes, treaty will be proposed shortly thereafter. (It could theoretically get proposed anyway even if Voice fails. My point here is just that if Yes succeeds, treaty will definitely be floated).

If you like the idea of treaty this might not bother you.

Point is, it's a package deal.

voting yes is about recognition (because they bundled both votes together) - that isn't misinformation

Recognition is a small and peripheral part of The Voice proposal under consideration.

Many from both sides support the concept of recognition in the preamble. But that is not the fundamental question being debated in this referendum. A constitutionally enshrined voice is in a different universe to recognition.

Pretending this is primarily about recognition (by constantly referring to recognition and implying the Voice is necessary for it) is a deliberate strategy being employed by Yes campaign but it's highly misleading.

In theory preamble recognition could be added to any referendum (like it was in 1999 but failed).

The Voice is not mere recognition. It's much more.

 

[PJays]

"It's time indigenous people were seen and heard"

You find this objectionable?

I guess if you do, vote no

The highlighted words imply indigenous people aren't already seen and heard.

That is false.

Misinformation.

Indigenous people have one vote like everyone else.

There are 11 indigenous federal MPs. (A huge over-representation in percentage terms).

There are thousands of indigenous land councils, corporations and community groups. They are consulted.

Every state and territory plus the federal government has a minister responsible for indigenous affairs.

The government spends significantly more money per capita on indigenous people than other Australians.

Arguably Indigenous people are seen and heard more than any other minority.

It's false to say "IT'S TIME..." as if they aren't already being seen, heard, consulted and represented.

 

[Crankyhawk]

The Albanese gov has committed in full to the Uluru Statement From the Heart.

Voice, treaty, truth.

We can say with near certainty if the Voice passes, treaty will be proposed shortly thereafter. (It could theoretically get proposed anyway even if Voice fails. My point here is just that if Yes succeeds, treaty will definitely be floated).

If you like the idea of treaty this might not bother you.

Point is, it's a package deal.


Recognition is a small and peripheral part of The Voice proposal under consideration.

Many from both sides support the concept of recognition in the preamble. But that is not the fundamental question being debated in this referendum. A constitutionally enshrined voice is in a different universe to recognition.

Pretending this is primarily about recognition (by constantly referring to recognition and implying the Voice is necessary for it) is a deliberate strategy being employed by Yes campaign but it's highly misleading.

In theory preamble recognition could be added to any referendum (like it was in 1999 but failed).

The Voice is not mere recognition. It's much more.

Not much more. A recognition of a lobby group that’s all. No actual powers.
And I don’t have an issue with treaty though I expect I would vote no to anything with substantial personal cost (though I also note that my threshold- Medicare levy level- is apparently more than what treaty has cost in other countries..)

 

[PJays]

I mean the legal conditions have been repeated over and over in here.

I'm aware of the legal conditions.

Are the conditions for determining indigeneity consistently applied everywhere that they should be relevant?

 

[Gavin Excell]

The highlighted words imply indigenous people aren't already seen and heard.

That is false.

Misinformation.

Indigenous people have one vote like everyone else.

There are 11 indigenous federal MPs. (A huge over-representation in percentage terms).

There are thousands of indigenous land councils, corporations and community groups. They are consulted.

Every state and territory plus the federal government has a minister responsible for indigenous affairs.

The government spends significantly more money per capita on indigenous people than other Australians.

Arguably Indigenous people are seen and heard more than any other minority.

It's false to say "IT'S TIME..." as if they aren't already being seen, heard, consulted and represented.

How do you then respond to The Productivity Commissions report that concludes the current approach and engagement simply isn't working?

 

[peetoo]

Morphing into scotty

 

[Romeoh1]

The Albanese gov has committed in full to the Uluru Statement From the Heart.

Voice, treaty, truth.

We can say with near certainty if the Voice passes, treaty will be proposed shortly thereafter. (It could theoretically get proposed anyway even if Voice fails. My point here is just that if Yes succeeds, treaty will definitely be floated).

If you like the idea of treaty this might not bother you.

Point is, it's a package deal.


Recognition is a small and peripheral part of The Voice proposal under consideration.

Many from both sides support the concept of recognition in the preamble. But that is not the fundamental question being debated in this referendum. A constitutionally enshrined voice is in a different universe to recognition.

Pretending this is primarily about recognition (by constantly referring to recognition and implying the Voice is necessary for it) is a deliberate strategy being employed by Yes campaign but it's highly misleading.

In theory preamble recognition could be added to any referendum (like it was in 1999 but failed).

The Voice is not mere recognition. It's much more.

‘It’s much more” -can you elaborate on what this much more is please?

 

[PJays]

Let's be clear. This is gotcha journalism from someone who spent longer preparing for the interview than his interviewee.

Ley wasn't prepared but let me list some experts who have raised significant concerns about the constitutional elements including the meaning of "Executive government" or what it means to make "representations", or how this might fundamentally change the way Australia operates.

Nicholas Aroney and Peter Gerangelos- two Professors of constitutional law at top Australian unis- Queensland and Sydney.

Amongst many others including several King's Councils.

Even yes supporting experts like Greg Craven and Frank Brennan have raised significant concerns.

 

[PJays]

How do you then respond to The Productivity Commissions report that concludes the current approach and engagement simply isn't working?

Do they dispute the facts I just listed which prove indisputably that indigenous people are being heard and represented?

 

[Gavin Excell]

Do they dispute the facts I just listed which prove indisputably that indigenous people are being heard and represented?

But they conclude completely ineffectively