On October 14th 2023, Australia voted on a referendum to add a new chapter to the Commonwealth Constitution:
- there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
- the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
- the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
The Australian Constitution came into operation on January 1st 1901, making it one of the oldest written constitutions in operational existence. It sets out the main sources of power, and how that power is balanced, between the Federal Parliament, the Executive Government, the Judicature, and the States that complete our federal system. It is a rulebook, with no flowery language. There were only two references of recognition in its preamble: the Queen and her heirs and successors, and the people of Australia.
In 2017, indigenous delegates at a National Convention issued the Uluru Statement from the Heart, calling for an end to “the torment of our powerlessness, the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution, a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”. On the night of the election of the Labour Government, May 21st 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committed to implement the Uluru Statement in full.
Our suburban street on the south side of Adelaide in South Australia had a letterbox drop from one of the residents, enthusiastically plugging the ‘Yes’ side of The Voice. We respected their opinions and liked that they ‘owned them’ by putting their names and address on the flyer. So we responded in kind, as respectfully as we could, outlining our doubts.
1. The Race thing
No matter which way you sliced it, no matter how much the ‘Yes’ camp twisted in the wind about it, the rights conferred upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through the Voice were discriminatory. By definition. It was fascinating to observe sentient beings try to argue to the contrary. What we think they were struggling to convey, in actuality, was that it would be benign or positive discrimination. But as Bruckner wrote:
Progressive thought is blind when it suggests that there can be no anti-white racism or an antisemitism among the formerly oppressed or the young people in the projects because they themselves have suffered from this evil. They are the victims; they are exempt from the prejudices that affect the majority of the population. But the reverse is true: racism is multiplying at exponential rates among groups and communities, taboos are collapsing, and everything is explained in terms of physical characteristics, identity, purity and difference. And this is a racism that is all the more certain that it is right because it is regarded as a legitimate reaction on the part of the persecuted.
Colonialism was good and bad for indigenous peoples all over the world; does it still have an impact today, except as a fertile source of feckless resentment?
The aboriginal peoples are neither a monolith, nor a helpless, pitiful giant, nor flora and fauna. They do not need a committee to speak for them and, if they did, how could we ensure the Voice would do that? Would Professor Langton, on campus at Melbourne University (where you can buy a ‘Professional Certificate in Preparing for Treaty’ for just $7,576) intuit what a young man on the APY Lands required in life? Did it take a village to raise a child? Could he not work out whether he sought the ‘dreaming’ or the ‘market’? To say that he could not seemed to reflect the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’.
In 2020, the High Court, by a majority, determined that a man born in Papua New Guinea who was a citizen of that country, but resident in Australia, where he committed a felony, could not be deported because he identified as a member of the Kamilaroi aboriginal group. This begged a murky and uncomfortable question: who is aboriginal? Who would be eligible for election, appointment, etc., to the Voice body? The 2021 census revealed that most of the 80% claiming aboriginal descent (many self-identifying) lived in the cities, and – pardon us – many were white enough to burn your retinas. Aboriginality as eligibility for appointment to the Voice could become a huge powder-keg all by itself, a massive source of bitterness, cynicism and division, before it even got rolling. As U.S. Chief Justice Roberts said (in another context): “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
2. The Constitutional Problem
The Voice was sold as ‘advisory only’. But advice can be disregarded at one’s discretion. Representations must mean something more. In any case, the Prime Minister said “it would be a brave Government that ignored the recommendations of the Voice”.
There was no attempt to confine the right to make representations to the Legislature and the Executive based on concerns particular to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. On the one hand, you couldn’t quibble with that. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are Australian citizens and can have views on any policy subject they like. However, if the Voice, as a constitutionally-enshrined body, could make representations on anything and everything, didn’t that give the federal Government of the day the right to make laws on anything and everything? This could spell the death of federalism, and we wondered how the various State Premiers, so enthusiastic about the Voice, might feel when their roles were reduced to that of regional distribution centres. The Prime Minister, a former (and future) research officer, didn’t get the memo: most successful referenda are preceded by a Constitutional Convention.
3. Another useless Committee?
The ABC – Australia’s version of the BBC – kept referring to the referendum proposal as merely recognition and a purely advisory body to Parliament, but it was something more. The concept of representations to the Executive was problematic. The Executive is described in the Constitution as the Royal, the Governor-General, Executive Council, Ministers, Departmental Officers, the armed forces and civil servants. The Australian Bureau of Statistics in November last year stated that there were “254,000 employees in Commonwealth Government”. Would they each have to hear the Voice? Could that not render governance sclerotic? And there are literally thousands of aboriginal corporations, advisory bodies and native title specialists in existence now.
Another thought: the members of the Voice might soon find themselves as despised as ATSIC (the previous national indigenous body, wound-up in insolvency and scandal). Voice members might have to be sequestered, like a jury. Who would want to sit on it? Who needed the aggravation?
4. Enough bona fides?
We were more than willing to acquit the overwhelming majority of ‘Yes’ voters of bad faith. We accepted their good intentions at face value. Their impulse was to do something. Fair enough. However, something tightened in the chest when a ‘Yes’ advocate referred to indigenous ‘No’ campaigner Jacinta Price as “coloured help”, there “to punch down on other Blakfullas”. Or when the Prime Minister called No-voters “Chicken Littles”. Or if someone advanced some benefits of colonisation and was smeared as “disgusting”.
On paper, the ‘Yes’ campaign should have prevailed, in a canter. It had the support of Federal Labour and wall-to-wall mainland State Governments, numerous judges, Law Societies and Bar Associations, progressive media companies, the ABC, Qantas, BHP, Telstra, the Big Banks, Woolworths and Coles, Wesfarmers, the major sporting bodies and celebrities from the arts, Get-Up, even Shaquille O’Neal and MC Hammer. The ‘Yes’ side spent over $100m. ‘Yes’ signs abounded; ‘Yes’ ads washed over television and the internet in a turgid jet.
But the pitch was devoid of detail. It ran on the ‘vibe’. It smacked of a vanity project by the leisured and treasured elites. There was a lack of evidence, or even coherent argument, that the Voice would confer benefits where they were most needed. The members of the Voice wouldn’t be elected. No one knew who would be appointed or for how long. Could they be removed, and by whom? Would the Voice be subject to national laws? What exactly would it do? How would it be funded? How much funding? When and where and how would it meet? Would minutes of its meetings be published? Would the rest of the country be able to comment on its representations to Parliament and the Executive?
Also, the Voice seemed but the ‘first door’ to Treaty (including sovereignty), a Truth Commission (‘Makarrata’) and reparations (‘pay the rent’). It was actually sold to indigenous people as ‘the hook’. Yet the ‘Yes’ Campaign shut down questions about detail, process, key performance indicators and so on. It was like a sales person on the lot telling you: “This car will make you feel like humming. I can’t tell you the specifications, the weight, the manoeuvrability, the lifeline, the mileage, the price. I can tell you, it comes in one colour. Sign here to buy.” This dopey idea smacked increasingly of a grab for power, money and glory.
5. Shame Shame Shame, we’ll all take the blame
The silliest argument for ‘Yes’ was that if the referendum failed, it would leave the nation with a soiled international reputation, a pariah in its repudiation of indigenous aspiration. Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Africa are all on fire. In Australia, we were having a disagreement, in a mostly agreeable manner. We didn’t think the U.N Rapporteur would rap our knuckles that hard if we voted ‘No’, irrespective of how much the Prime Minister might snivel.
6. The Result
The Constitution has only been amended eight times in 122 years, most of those changes being fairly procedural. The last referendum was in 1999, when a comfortable majority decided to stick with Her Majesty. It is a high bar: one has to obtain a majority of the six states and a majority of the national vote, including voters in the territories. By last Saturday night, it was very clear that the ‘Yes’ case had been annihilated. Every state voted ‘No’ by a comfortable majority. The national vote, as of writing, is 60.7% ‘No’ to 39.3% ‘Yes’. The Voice did worst in remote seats comprising the most traditional indigenous citizens, and best in affluent inner cities. It was like an inverted Brexit: the status quo remained.
And the feedback to our little responding flyer? One chap returned a copy with furious comments in the margins. One was returned simply ripped in half. But several people rang our doorbell and told us they agreed with every word.
As for the Prime Minister, he blamed the lack of bipartisanship on others, claimed credit for taking the question to the people, called for unity, and doubled-down on implementing the Uluru Statement, thereby emblematising La Bruyère’s epigram, that indulgence towards oneself and severity towards others is the same vice.
Peter Jakobsen is an Australian lawyer.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Why weren’t mummy and daddy forced to repay the £10,000 damage to the picture frame?
Because the miscreants are adults, at least in terms of age.
I don’t like exemplary sentences.
Two years for wrecking a frame that cost $10,000 and can be easily replaced seems excessive. Replacing the value, a fine and community service would do.
(And for the avoidance of doubt I think JSO activists are as idiotic as their cause.)
It’s a strange world really though. I come back to the horrible things that people in authority do to others on a regular basis, sometimes quite knowingly. Like the invasion of Iraq or the untold damage done during the covid madness.
We definitely live in a multi tiered justice system. The more senior a position of authority you have, the more damage and destruction you can get away with.
You would definitely put and stop to the endless expansion of the state if people in authority would be made to pay for the consequences of their actions.
I am sure there are many like me who applaud the sentences.
The actual value of the damaged propery should be irrelevant. The tariffs for sentencing (the guidlines for judges) to not have a monetary value attached.
Agreed, and I agree with the below comment. It’s not like they’ll even serve all of that time anyway. Meanwhile, my bigger concern is that the UK ( and elsewhere, seemingly ) has a society that is trying to normalize paedophilia. Look at the non-sentences doled out for those caught with child sex abuse images as a comparison. These people get to go about their lives, rub shoulders with decent people, nobody’s checking if they’re keeping a distance from children ( Christ, some of them have children! ) and try their level best not to get caught next time, because this isn’t something that you can just shut off in your brain;
”Two years for the very personification of entitled moronism.
For the first time in her life there are consequences to her actions. It’s… what’s the word I’m looking for? I know: DELICIOUS.
It’s tough way to grow up – but you’ve earned every single second. Your parents should be slopping out with you.”
https://x.com/KiszelyPhilip/status/1839673198142455981
But this Pheobe person is doing this stuff all of the time. When does it become necessary to stop these people? After one incident like this or after 20 incidents. The justice system has actually been very lenient with these people.
Why can’t we just leave these people glued to the wall? Let’s see how they would feel after a few days.
Exactly. Certainly my preferred way of dealing with these Next Tuesdays.
Or glue them together… because if you can’t beat them, join them!
But seriously though that is not a bad idea. They are suggesting that it is our collective responsibility to save the planet by eradicating fossil fuels and and plunging ourselves into the dark ages. So whose responsibility is it to unglue them from the wall? Let the museum close and they can spend the night. If our oil usage has consequences, then so do your tomato soup and glue fetishes.
Maybe after a few days somebody could bring them some soup!
Their cause to many sounds noble and getting rid of fossil fuels sounds plausible. But actually it is not noble to deny the third world fossil fuels that would alleviate their misery and it is not plausible to be rid of fossil fuels since they supply 85% of the worlds energy. ——–So their cause is one based entirely on faith and emotion rather than fact and reason. I blame government and a compliant media for having brainwashed these easily manipulated people into thinking there is a climate apocalypse just around the corner, when infact there is no evidence that CO2 from fossil fuels use is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate.
imagine the smell.
Hmm. Could enter them into the Turner Prize?
Or maybe Lego could bring out new enviro sets from various scenes from all this. A couple of Lego characters with hands stuck to a road blocking a Lego Ambulance? Oh! wait…
https://toybook.com/lego-sustainability-news/
Such as this
With people crawling all over the tanker and fiddling with it, where’s the explosion?
Let us remember, back in 2008, when Hedge Fund Billionaire Jeremy Grantham set up the Grantham Research Unit Climate Fraud outfit, including Mega Liar Bob Ward, PhD (failed).
Ward became famed as “fast fingers Ward” and was the go-to guy for all the MSM in their Reality-Denier scams.
Of course, Grantham then had, and very likely still has a portfolio of oil firms.
He also set on our old chum Neil (Professor Pantsdown) Ferguson. The Pandemic and general medical prognosticator that has never been less than one order of magnitude exaggerating risk and outshone himself in some “five orders of magnitude” super scares.
The very bloke who was chosen by the blue arse cheek of the Uniparty to help Stalin’s Nanny Susan Michie in her agit prop nudging.
Now elevated to the WHO, together with Welcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar.
So, are Grantham (and Kyte) somehow to be considered ax Big Oil people?
Well in some sense. I’m certain that Grantham and his chums are bright enough to have no doubt that Net Zero is bollox on stilts.
But destroying coal in the UK (obviously not in China, India, Indonesia etc.) was a good move in boosting the value of his oil stocks. Gas will be next to be destroyed and Ed Milibrain (of Climate Change Act 2008 again) is now facilitating this endgame).
And destroying Western Economies is the ultimate aim.anyway, as Christina Figueres has confirmed.
That tin of tomato soup could have gone to a food bank. What a bunch of degenerates!
Throwing food around is what toddlers do in high-chairs.
Vastly over-rated. Heinz soup and the picture. That said, it’s damage to someone’s property so whatever the law says for that.
I think MajorMajor has it right: Leave them there. Just to make sure nobody assaults them put some sort of barrier around them (which might accidentality also mean that none of their mates could come along and free them). I also think that’s what should be done when people glue themselves to the road – a few bollards and a hi-vis tarpaulin to try to make sure nobody runs them over – then get the traffic moving around them. Similar for the M25 gantry protests – a quick net fixed underneath and then get the traffic moving again.
Activism is all well and good. If there is injustice that is clear by all means, We often hear the supporters of JSO and Extinction Rebellion etc compare them to the Suffragettes, but these people were protesting about rights for women and the vote. But it was crystal clear that women were not being allowed the vote. Climate Change being caused by the use of fossil fuels is not so clear. It is riddled with uncertainty and is always a question of degree. There has to be an evaluation of cost/benefit and the benefit of fossil fuels is clear. They have brought billions of people out of abject poverty, and this is the part of the equation that JSO etc simply do not accept, basically because they understand virtually nothing about how energy works. So we cannot have energy policy based on faith and emotion, and there comes a point where the activism goes too far all based on irrational fear. These climate activists are starting to go too far and they must be nipped in the bud before people get seriously hurt or worse.
The issue of votes for women was not at all clear. As late as 1917 many working class men did not have the vote either – it wasn’t just women who were not enfranchised. And much of the opposition to votes for women came from women themselves.
Judge Christopher Hehir…told the activists to come to court “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison…”
Many years ago, at a time when UK football hooliganism was world news, a taxi driver in Singapore took me on a tour, and drew up outside a large grim 19th-century brick building. It was Changi jail. ‘No hooliganism in Singapore,’ he stated with a proud air. ‘You get the cane here, you don’t sit down for six months.’
With our prisons full, and offenders undeterred by the thought of a little comfy custody at the public expense, maybe it’s time to look East and rediscover how we used to deal with juvenile delinquents. Maybe Judge Hehir should have told the soup-flingers to prepare not to sit down for 6 months.
We obviously need to heed their great wisdom and knowledge. They have shown us such great incites into the abyss the world is headed into if we do not stop using oil. So young to know so much. What really drives them is their narcissistic egos looking for attention and purpose. We can only hope they grow up some day, but living in their urban protected group think bubbles, there is doubt they will.