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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Australia’s Voice to Parliament (1/2)


The Voice to Parliament is one of Australia’s largest active culture and political wars, and I think encapsulates the whole macro global culture war on a (relatively) micro scale.


What is the Voice to Parliament? Well, half the problem is that no one seems to know what it is, as we will soon find out. The Voice to Parliament (the Voice) is a proposed government body of some kind intended to consist of and represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) enshrined into the Constitution of Australia via referendum. The Voice would have some kind of involvement with the Australian Parliament and the legislative process. The referendum to enshrine the Voice is expected to take place at some point this later this year, and would also enshrine ‘recognition’ of Indigenous Australians in the Australian Constitution. This marks the end of the consensus on what the Voice even is (or would be). Details about what powers the Voice have or how it would function have been incredibly vague and hotly debated.

The Voice is the latest in a long line of attempts to get constitutional recognition (of the special status of) of Indigenous Australians. This is by far the boldest attempt too, attempting include a permanent constitutional body with some legislative power as part of it. The Voice most directly originates from the 2017 ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’, which keeping in with the theme was/is an attempt to get some kind of unspecified constitutional recognition (and power) for Indigenous people. The Statement directly called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution” and “a Makarrata [Treaty] Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.”

After a bunch of government activity looking into the Voice that is honestly not worth getting into, the National Indigenous Australian Agency published the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process final report in 2021. While this does contain a lot of detail how a potential Voice might work, this is merely a suggestion and is in no sense binding. Mostly charitably (but still concerning), my understanding is that this suggested version of the Voice’s powers would be not dissimilar to the current Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (something I am also sceptical of), which has the authority to review every piece of legislation and legislative instrument and make reports on whether they are ‘compatible with human rights’. The Voice would seeming operate in the same way, except it would be constitutionally enshrined (and therefore virtually impossible to remove in the future), and its member will be made of completely unelected and unrepresentative Indigenous representatives. And I must reiterate, this report is in no way necessarily what the Voice will end up being, and even the report is uncertain what the internal structure of the Voice would look like, offering a number of hypothetical examples.


So what do the major political parties have to say about the Voice? The current Labor (left to centre-left) government, the ones who will be ultimately responsible for putting forward the question and implementing the outcome, obviously support the Voice (or at least their version of it), having previously supported the Uluru Statement and making a referendum on the Voice part of their election promises. But they have been alarmingly sparse on details of what it is exactly they are supporting. The only message they have been clear on is that the Voice won’t have veto powers over Parliament (something that is of genuine concern). Pretty much the only detail is now-Prime Minister Albanese’s draft referendum question he proposed back in 2022 in the lead up to the election “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?” along with some draft words to add to the constitution which are similarly vague.

The Liberal Party (right to centre-right), the major opposition party, has yet to openly state their position on the Voice referendum, instead repeatedly asking for more detail about how the Voice would function before they state their position. While it’s hard to say with certainty, my feeling is that the Liberal Party generally doesn’t want to support the Voice but can’t state that position openly for whatever reason (internal party politics, don’t want to give left-dominated media ammo) and is instead engaging on this (effective?) strategy of ‘asking questions’ to undermine public support for the Voice.

The National Party (right rural based), the minor party in the Liberal-National Coalition, is the only major party to actually outright oppose the Voice, although it should be noted that their stated justification is not anything along the lines opposing it as an undemocratic, illiberal body or the privileged status it would grant Indigenous Australians over other Australians, but rather for being “another layer of bureaucratic tape” and that the Voice “will not advance the primary aim of Closing the Gap [term used to describe the difference in life outcomes between Indigenous Australians and white non-Indigenous Australians] and dealing with the real issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.

Then of course, there’s the Greens, Australia’s progressive party. They whole-heartedly support the Voice to the fullest possible extent, and while they are similarly vague as Labor on details, my impression is that they would support the Voice having veto power or similar powers to Parliament. The Greens also support ‘Truth and Treaty’ which is a whole other can of worms I would rather not get into right now (it’s all the highly woke stuff about ‘Truth-Telling’ and ‘Justice’ and give more privileges to Indigenous Australians). The Green’s position is actually really important, because Labor does not currently have a majority in the Senate, and they need Green crossbench support to pass any legislation relevant to the Voice if it reaches the point.

As a slight aside, Senator Lidia Thorpe, an extremely woke Indigenous woman and Indigenous activist whose actions I previously discussed in an old Motte comment recently broke ties with the Greens over the Green’s support for the Voice referendum (and now is fully committed to representing ‘Blak Soverignity’). This is essentially because she believes the Greens are not radical enough, and she refuses to support the Voice while a Treaty doesn’t exist yet. It says a lot about someone when they think the Greens aren’t radical enough.

As part of the referendum process in Australia, the Government is required to provide a brochure/flyer/information explaining the arguments both for and against the given referendum proposal (including related funding and research, essentially the Government is required to provide support/funding to both sides of the referendum). The Labor Government took steps towards removing this requirement through legislation, claiming such a requirement “out of step with today’s electoral laws and does not reflect modern delivery and communications methods.” Many opposing politicians and commentators quite rightly pointed out that this as a pretty blatant and undemocratic attempt to suppress the ‘no’ campaign, counting on left dominated media to overwhelmingly support the ‘yes’ vote. The Labor government ultimately backtracked in the face of criticism. One more thing of note is that in Senate Estimates the Shadow Minister for Education (Liberal) recently raised the issue of schools only promoting the ‘yes’ case and likening it to ‘indoctrination’. Which absolutely is what is happening, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty there are approximately zero teachers in public schools opening advocating for the ‘no’ vote and plenty openly advocating for the ‘yes’ vote. As far as I can tell, nothing has come of this event as of yet.

I feel it's worth noting that One Nation (a minor but notable party) opposes the Voice on the principled grounds of nondiscrimination.

I came back to the country a few years ago to find Labor and Liberal in some tedious stouche that I can't even remember; except I was astonished to find that Derren Hinch and Pauline Hanson were acting like the only grownups in the room.

I thought that was just one weird freak of probability never to happen again, but now I am not so sure. The ONP is starting to look smarter than everyone else, if only because Pauline is merely stupid while the rest of the polity is actively anti-intelligent.

Australia’s Voice to Parliament (2/2)


And where does the public stand on this issue? Well public polling seems to indicate that the ‘yes’ has a slight majority, though notably this percentage has been steadily falling over the last year (the Liberal Party strategy working?). Importantly, the people supporting yes (between yes, no and not sure) dropped below 50% recently. In my opinion, much of the support for the Voice in the public is mostly driven by white-guilt-ridden Australians who automatically support any proposal in favour of Indigenous Australians, regardless of practicality or principle. As some critical thought goes into it, the support has dropped. Add in social desirability bias/Shy Tory phenomenon (the gay marriage plebiscite won by a much small margin than was predicted), it seems uncertain if the referendum would pass if it were held tomorrow.


I guess now is a good time to segue to a commentary on the state of Indigenous/woke politics more generally. As you can probably tell, I do not support the Voice on principle, as it is incompatible with liberal and democratic ideals (and even if you aren’t liberal or democratic, then you wouldn’t support it for other philosophical/tribal reasons). It’s also not the first time a body or institution like this has even been tried. Mostly recently there was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission(1990–2005) which more or less basically tried to do what the Voice wants to do, albeit no constitutionally enshrined. The Commission had to be shut down in 2005 after years of corruption (although in fairness, this was partially driven by the final Chairman in particular). The Voice being constitutionally enshrined as well as having the increasing immunity to scrutiny that woke politics will inevitably grant it is just a shitshow waiting to happen even worse that ATSIC.

For Americans, it might be hard to explain just how (pardon my French, but there’s really no other words to adequately express this sentiment) cucked Australia has become on Indigenous representation/recognition/reconciliation or whatever the buzzword is now. Canadian and New Zealand readers will understand (I feels sorry for our Kiwi brothers who have it worse). The analogy I offer you many American readers is like it’s all the black liberationism woke political stuff has become institutionalised in every institution with official statements. The difference between Australian and America here I think is that America has way more variance, the crazy can be crazier, but in Australia this stuff gets institutionalised scarily fast. Literally every meeting, event or document starts now with a ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ which is basically a statement like a mantra or prayer that ‘recognises’ that the area of wherever you are belongs (in some form, the exact words can and do change) to a given Indigenous group. I’m not sure if I’m even being facetious – in Parliament the sitting day starts with an Acknowledgement of Country and then is followed by prayers. Even worse is ‘Welcome to Country’ which is now omni-present at every major event, is performed by an Indigenous person, who basically “invites” (I would say ‘gives permission’) non-Indigenous people onto ‘their land’ and does some shamanistic ritual. Again, I’m not being facetious, one Welcome I had to sit through included the Indigenous representative doing a ritual to invite the ancestors to come and remove the bad spirits from the audience (my God, how is this allowed in government but a Christian blessing would be the scandal of a century). The Acknowledgement and Welcomes are also becoming increasingly radical too, and it’s becoming increasing common to state that ‘Sovereignty was never ceded’. This was amusingly and frustratingly said in one Acknowledgement by a government employee in a very important government building. It’s honestly hard to describe – look up some (recent) examples for yourself. You get increasingly deluded and discriminatory policies too, for example the Minister for Public Service wanting to increase Indigenous representation in the Australian Public Service to 5%, including executive management, despite Indigenous people making up only 3% of the population and most of them live in remote Northern Territory, Queensland or Western Australia. You get government bodies now who must explicitly have an Indigenous representative as part of their board, even if the organisation has nothing particularly to do with Indigenous issues. I could go on.

The tone of Indigenous activism and Australian society's response has also changed over the years, becoming more radical. Increasing 'blood-and-soil' type rhetoric is being adopted by Indigenous activists (and their naïve supporters). Whereas in the past it was common to refer to an Indigenous group being 'custodians' of an area of land (being semi-nomadic peoples who did not have a concept of land ownership prior to the arrival of Westerners), it's now increasingly common to hear language like 'this is [Indigenous group] Country' and the aforementioned 'sovereignty was never ceded', and some more general claims of the unique and unassailable right that that group to the land that the white man could never possess or truly understand. Similarly, Australian society's attitude towards Indigenous practices and knowledge has gone from liberal paternal 'yeah let them do their own thing and maybe humour them' and 'yeah maybe there is some useful tidbits of information we can glean from Indigenous fire management practices once we get past all the superstitious rubbish' to now being 'we must incorporate Indigenous culture and people into literally everything we do and give it privileged attention' and 'Indigenous knowledge and superstitions ways of knowing have some special quality that makes it them literally True and superior to Western™ knowledge, stupid Westerners have been ruining this sacred Country'.


I want to know where the Liberal Party, and conservative politicians more generally, are in all this. This stuff has completely infected government, in addition to all the usual suspects like education and academia. I’m not sure how they allowed to this to happen. Are they just somehow completely ignorant of how un-impartial and politically woke the government bureaucracy has become? Are they grossly incompetent or powerless to do anything? Have they also fallen victim to this in their own ranks, and lack the ability or backbone to purge it from their own party? Or do they also just support it, if less radically so, being naïve small-l liberals buying into the motte-and-bailey? I have no idea, but from my perspective it feels like they have their head in the sand. It’s been discussed here before about how the Republicans seem to be completely unaware about what they’re up against in the US, still acting like it’s 2008. It very much feels the same way here, if not even more so.

My guess is that Dutton opposes it, but is trying to figure out a way to publicly oppose it which doesn't incur the wrath of the Liberals' own pro-Voice wing, and which doesn't paint a giant target with 'I AM A RACIST' written on it on his back for Labor and the Greens.

I read Dutton's requests for clarification as being basically attempts to get Labor to put up a specific proposal that he can then oppose - much like the republic referendum, the Liberal strategy will be to sidestep the question of whether a republic/Voice is a good idea or not in principle while arguing that this republic/Voice is a bad idea. Labor are making what is probably the correct strategic move in reply by refusing to give any such details - they're trying to force him into either admitting that he supports the idea in principle, in which case he has to join the Yes campaign, or that he opposes it in principle, in which case he has the aforementioned target on his back.

It does show how far the terrain has shifted, though. Go back twenty years or so and John Howard bluntly opposed treaty, Voice, etc., on the plain small-l liberal grounds that the Commonwealth does not recognise or privilege any race or ethnicity, and further the Commonwealth cannot make a treaty with its own citizens. That Dutton doesn't feel able to make a similar argument now suggests that he thinks his position is quite fragile. Some of that might be specific to him - Dutton is a former policeman who was formerly in charge of border control, so he has a reputation as representing the tougher, more hard-right wing of the Liberal party; it makes sense that he feels particularly vulnerable to accusations of extremism - but I suspect that is not all of it by a long shot.

On the ideological background of it all - what frustrates me most is how underspecified all the public activism or debate in this area is. It seems to be something that runs on buzzwords. The biggest example for me is sovereignty. The word 'sovereign' pops up again and again like a tic, and it is extremely unclear what it's supposed to mean. It's clearly not sovereignty in the Western, Westphalian sense - Aboriginal people are demonstrably not sovereign in that sense. It's 'a spiritual notion', apparently, but what that means is never specified - a sense of being-on-the-land? Um, okay? What is that? It 'co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown'? Can someone spell out the political implications of that? If you try to look up any explanation, what you find is frankly a lot of waffle that no one seems to take at face value - the quoted elder there says "we are not subject to the Australian or British law but still maintain our own sovereignty", but good luck arguing in the public sphere that the law doesn't apply to Aboriginals!

And so on with so many of the other claims that seem to come up and time again. Another common one is that Aboriginals are the world's 'oldest continuous culture', another claim whose meaning is never specified and doesn't seem to bear up to scrutiny. So on and so forth. It's hard to escape feeling that, ultimately, there is no there there. Overall it seems that there is a desire among the Australian public to be nice to Aboriginal people, basically, but no consensus about what that means, so what ends up happening is that empty platitudes are voiced and no one thinks further about them. Certainly no one does anything.

Anyway, predictions...

Personally, I predict (but with low confidence) that the referendum will pass, and then conditional on the referendum passing, I predict that the Voice will have no real power. For all the symbolism, I don't believe parliament will do anything that would involve giving up any real power, so I think the Voice will have only the power to advise; and its constitution will be contingent on legislation, giving parliament the power to alter its make-up or defang it at whim. I predict the Voice will provide a bunch of well-paid committee jobs to indigenous activists in Canberra, and not make any difference as regards remote indigenous communities in poverty.

I would not be surprised if activists already expect the Voice to be ineffectual. The moment it's created, I predict the entire sector will turn to pushing for Treaty instead. Just as after the National Apology, energy shifted to advocating for constitutional recognition, and just as Malcolm Turnbull seemed about to achieve that, the Uluru Statement came out advocating for Voice instead, I predict that whether the Voice passes or not, in the next few years the whole sector is going to pivot to Treaty.

Personally, I predict (but with low confidence) that the referendum will pass, and then conditional on the referendum passing, I predict that the Voice will have no real power.

It's not meant to have power, and this is why they will immediately pivot to treaty. It is meant to boil the frog slowly. To change the baseline to "we gave them a voice but no real power, we have to do better!" and suddenly all the 'heroes' who wrangled the voice out of the government become racists or government stooges, just like the apology heroes are now.

I want to know where the Liberal Party, and conservative politicians more generally, are in all this. This stuff has completely infected government, in addition to all the usual suspects like education and academia.

I have a certain level of non-public information which I can't really source for you since it's stuff I overheard. Apparently Dutton is doing his best to wreck the Voice without looking like he dislikes Indigenous people and split the Liberals (who have their own moderate touchy-feely pro-Voice wing). He is the guy who walked out on Rudd's Apology to the indigenous after all, plus has police experience. It's hard to think of anyone who would be more anti-voice in mainstream Australian politics than Dutton. But he doesn't have much control over the party considering how badly the Liberals have been doing electorally, he can't do much overtly.

The inner workings of the Indigenous groups behind the Voice are incredibly incompetent/dysfunctional and simultaneously grasping for more power. They're using the lack of clarity you mention as the thin end of the wedge to gain actual power. They're trying to phrase terms in ambiguous ways such that future courts will interpret more power to them, once they get the Voice through. (Though given how much they gained from Mabo, which found Indigenous agriculture and sedentary lifestyles on one island off the coast of Australia and extended a certain level of land rights across the whole country, waiting for courts to interpret in their favor is not a bad strategy).

Anyway, this tactic is pretty obvious to the much smarter legal advisers who've called for a more moderate, compromise position. But the advisers are largely ignored. Internal divisions within the Indigenous group are opening up and the whole Voice is headed to failure, according to what I've heard. But this may not happen, I don't have a crystal ball to see the future.

(Though given how much they gained from Mabo, which found Indigenous agriculture and sedentary lifestyles on one island off the coast of Australia and extended a certain level of land rights across the whole country, waiting for courts to interpret in their favor is not a bad strategy

The courts just noted that Terra Nullius was bullshit, and that there was pre-existing land-law just like in any other conquered territory. The courts also made clear that Australian governments could override that land law and extinguish Native Title with little more than a wave of the pen.

But Parliament, under Paul Keating decided pass Native Title Act which went and bolstered native title claims around the country.

I'm not a lawyer and can't confidently discuss this stuff, I can only relay what I heard from people who do have expert knowledge of this specific case. The native title that they granted was only really meaningful and effective in places where no Europeans had done anything with the land, basically just wilderness. But the principle of finding settlements on one island in the Torres Strait and then extending it across the whole country is bizarre and goes against a broad principle of law aiming to be specific as opposed to generalizing out from one edge-case.

If I ran the Liberal party, I would try and split the referendum into 2 questions. One that offers "constitutional respect" and one for the voice. Then people could vote yes:no and not be seen as not caring/being racist

Would this be something like the Sámi Parliament? (Also discussed here.) If it's not elected, how is it selected?

The short answer is 'we have no idea'. I have to stress that the what exactly the Voice's powers would be or how it would be structured has not been specifically outline. As presented, this will only be decided on after the fact if the referendum succeeds (classic 'voters won't even know what they're voting for' scenario. Despite pushing from the Opposition Leader for the Government to release draft legislation so people actually know what they're voting on in practice, (woke) 'constitutional experts' have come out of the woodwork and been amplified by media about how releasing draft legislation to the public is totally a bad thing because it will just 'confuse' voters and undermine support for the Voice.

All we can say with certainty is that:

  • The Voice will be a constitutionally enshrined government body that has some degree of influence over legislation

  • The Voice will be made up of Indigenous representatives who were not voted for or appointed (directly or indirectly) by the general Australian public

In practice, it seems like the selection process for the members of the Voice would likely be some combination of appointees from existing Indigenous councils/assemblies/corporations and some elections held specifically by and for Indigenous people in a given area.

All we can say with certainty is that...

I would observe that an absolutely minimal reading of your items here would match the level of representation of DC, the Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico in the US House: each is allowed a delegate with no voting power. In theory a "voice", but in practice basically no actual power.

An important difference worth noting here is that that meh-voice is all the Puerto Ricans have and would be replaced, not supplemented, with real Congressional representation if Puerto Rico became a state.

Aboriginal Australians already have Parliamentary representation; they get to vote for MPs and Senators just like anyone else. And it's not like their wide distribution doesn't result in any Aboriginal MPs or Senators; they're overrepresented in Parliament relative to their proportion of the population. One would sensibly conclude that they don't need any additional "voice".

From what I can tell from Twitter, advocates say that that's the sort of detail that will be decided subsequently by legislation.

Given the problems in Australia of deciding who is sufficiently Indigenous, I would imagine that the approach would just be to appoint "community leaders", who will then be happy about being paid for having a more prominent voice about Australian federal legislation and being able to declare policies they disapprove as "anti-Indigenous" (officially). So, it seems to be an exercise in what is described as "steam control" in The Bonfire of the Vanities - invest money in self-appointed "representatives" of groups, since these "representatives" have the power to unleash "steam" on politicians.

Actually, the natives of Canada are extremely demographically relevant. Their overall TFR was 2.5~ in 2011 and was higher for those on reserves, where it was over 3, and substantially lower for those assimilated urban populations you mentioned. Their share of Canada's overall population has actually substantially increased over time despite Canada's sky-high immigration rates.

In 2011, when Canada’s TFR was 1.61 children per woman, the TFR for Status Indian women was 2.63 children per woman, 3.25 if living on reserve. The TFR for women identifying as First Nation but without Status was 1.47 children per woman, and the TFR for self-identified Métis women was 1.81 children per woman. The TFR for Inuit generally was 2.75 children per woman, with records collected by Nunavut and the North-West Territories indicating a TFR of 3.02 children per Inuit woman living there.

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/indigenouseconomics244/chapter/104/

Great post.

A culture war angle you didn't touch on was admixture with white Australians.

You are either aboriginal or not, ie 1/16 counts the same as 100%.

Nature or nurture, whites outperform aboriginals, thus the indigenous medical school scholarship students all look like this:

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/styles/half_width/public/thumbnails/image/7I8A1087_1.JPG?itok=5ntaThSA

I would be willing to bet most pure blooded Aboriginals are most concerned about better food, health and shelter while the 1/16th seem to be fighting hardest to get the government to hand out cushy white collar jobs - this looks to be what the voice is to me.

It is totally unacceptable in polite company to point out how white some of these activist / scholarship recipients / welcome to country paid performers etc look

Yeah, there's a huge divide between the mostly-genetically-white urban Indigenous and the mostly-genetically-Indigenous Indigenous who live in remote Australia like the Top End. But this divide is rarely acknowledged in practice by either government or civil society, with much of the policies making no real distinction between the two (occasionally you'll see some gesture towards 'remote Indigenous'). Political and social spoils will mostly go towards the urban Indigenous as @Forgotpassword says.

It's actually infuriating because no one wants address the elephant in the room - the main reason that Indigenous life outcomes are so poor is because a significant portion of Indigenous live in remote, 'economically impoverished' communities in the middle of absolutely nowhere that no amount of 'Closing the Gap' initiatives will compensate for. You can't legislate or pay away remoteness, you can't build a major metropolitan centre in the middle of the Australian desert. Anyone who lived in such remote conditions would have their outcomes harmed. And that's not getting into the 'traditional practices' that some groups engage in which might make them incompatible with Western notions of prosperity (i.e. stabbing someone in the thigh with a spear as punishment).

There was also another Indigenous related controversy recently, because an alcohol ban for many Indigenous communities in NT (which was originally implemented with support from Indigenous communities mind you) expired early this year, which was connected to an immediate increase in crime afterwards. After some time by the current Federal Labor government dragging their feet, they eventually agreed to support a more permanent ban on alcohol in the Territory legislature. It's amazing how quickly people will come to support traditional 'law-and-order' approaches to Indigenous issues when push comes to shove.

And that's not getting into the 'traditional practices' that some groups engage in which might make them incompatible with Western notions of prosperity (i.e. stabbing someone in the thigh with a spear as punishment).

I don't think spearing a convicted rapist and murderer after a 26 year prison sentence will substantially decrease prosperity.

My point was more than you might need more modern concepts of justice for prosperity. In other words, as community who still thinks spearing people is a good form of punishment probably isn't receptive to modern ideas and forms of governance

Yeah. The Voice seems very unlikely to do anything productive for full-blooded indigenous in remote areas due to their plight being a gigantic stack of interwoven issues, but will do wonders for a bunch of 1/16th-types who naturally gravitate towards Left wing politics anyway.