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Notes -
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
whitenon-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.
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