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Notes -
Culture War Update on my previous post on Australia's Voice to Parliament.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally released the wording of the question that will be proposed in the referendum as follows:
He has also release the proposed provisions being added:
Parliament is expected to vote on the wording of the referendum question in June.
Some brief comments:
The proposed question is a leading question, by implying that the recognition of the 'First Peoples' necessarily requires the establishment of the Voice. There could easily be two separate questions here:
One for a constitution recognising Indigenous people in the Australia Constitution, a symbolic gesture, something that has been suggested many times in the past (which I still don't support but is still far less contentious that setting up a new government body).
One question for the establishment of the Voice itself.
The proposed amended provisions don't actually outline the structure or powers the Voice will have, which is still a major concern of many Australians. Instead, it allows for the Australian Parliament to define it through regular legislation. While this is being touted by Labor as a smart or good or effective way to go about it (perhaps disingeniously) because it allows the Voice to be adjusted with regular legislation, I see this as concerning for two reasons:
Firstly, in order to pass any legislation in the Senate, Labor needs the support of the Greens. Supposing this referendum does pass, and the Labor government tries to pass the first legislation to establish the Voice, they would need to negotiate with the Greens who have an even more radical and woke conception of what the Voice would be
Secondly, I can easily see how these provisions can be abused by woke legal activists through the High Court, getting them to extend the Voice through implied powers. The wording 'make make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government' could easily be made to mean any number of things, 'representations' is a pretty malleable word (you could quite sensibly, if disingenuously interpret this to mean they should have representation in the House of Representatives, for example). The ability to 'make representations' being in the Constitution could easily overrule any regular legislation made by judicial activism to give certain de facto powers to the Voice (perhaps this is the point). The other provision is 'relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples', which given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are in fact Australian citizens and are affected by literally everything in Australian politics from taxes to trade, one can easily see how this provision means 'everything'.
I strongly oppose the term 'First Peoples', which would bake a woke/progressive terminology and worldview into the Constitution.
And the thing that perhaps annoys me the most of all this, is when the Voice turns out to be a disaster in one form or another, which I'm nearly certain it will, there will be no way to actually get rid of it, now being constitutionally enshrined. This will be ATSIC 2.0 but there is no actual way to get rid of it and the corruption, even assuming the culture and media is actually conducive to it. There is no way that another referendum will occur in my lifetime to repeal this amendment. This is what annoys me so much, that this is a social 'Tesla valve' (or Cthulhu only swims left, or the slippery slope), if this does pass there is no reversing it. Reversing it would require a mass genuinely reactionary popular sentiment (on the level of Orban at least) to happen in Australia, which won't happen, and even if it did happen would introduce new different problems of its own.
Even if you try to charitably represent it by applying it only to matters that specifically relate to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, this still poses a problem. For example, in zero-sum situations such as racial reparations where a benefit for the Indigenous also entails causing disadvantage for other Australians, that can still be considered to be a "matter relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples" and the Voice will have the ability to "make representations" on that matter.
To try and claim, as Albanese does, that the Indigenous should have a "say" on matters that pertain to them ignores that it's often the case that these policies do not only have an effect on Indigenous people, but also have consequences for your average citizen. And when looked at through this lens, any such attempt to give the Indigenous preferential sway over these kinds of decisions becomes less and less justifiable.
I so wish we could even debate the charitable interpretation as you say. But all evidence points to the contrary, we're not even at that point.
Just as one example - the Australian Government's 'National Energy Transformation Partnership' includes an 'initial priority' to "co-design a First Nations Clean Energy Strategy to ensure First Nations people help drive the energy transformation" (whatever that is meant to mean). Literally this stuff is already everywhere. Everything has to have 'First Nations/Indigenous' strategy/plan/consultation no matter how little it has to do with Indigenous issues. This is just going to institutionalise it to the highest degree - constitutionally.
Agreed, I don't believe the charitable interpretation is warranted at all and the Voice's powers will in reality almost certainly be expanded far beyond the immediately apparent scope of the wording.
I do think it's useful to have arguments against both the motte and bailey, because it's very easy for defenders of the policy to rely on the ambiguity of the proposed amendment to argue "It clearly just pertains to cases where the matter specifically concerns Indigenous people". I consider any such idea to be based on a wilful and motivated ignorance, given the sheer pervasiveness of "indigenising" public policy here in Australia, but having an argument against that interpretation of the Voice's scope shows that the proposal is inherently objectionable on such a fundamental level that even if you interpret its provisions in the most unobjectionable manner possible, there are still glaring issues to be found.
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