It's the Voice, can you Understand it?

Since getting back from Christmas holidays, its been impossible to turn on the TV or pick up a paper without being bombarded by articles or stories concerning the proposed indigenous "Voice to Parliament". Like most people I've been aware of different proposals that have been floating around for years to recognise First Nations people in the Constitution, however now it's clear that barring a major U-turn, the government is going to take a specific proposal to a referendum later this year, which prompted me to go on-line and find out more about it.

After looking in a few places to see what specific question we're being asked to decide, it looks like being some variant of the proposal on the "From the Heart" website, which broadly, is to ensure there is a body enshrined in the Constitution which would enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to provide advice to Parliament on things which affect them.

It sounds simple enough but like most proposed constitutional amendments, contains no detail on how the Voice might work beyond that, a point which the Opposition has seized on and which the Government has so far pushed back on. To be fair to the Government, when changes are proposed to the Constitution, it is fairly usual practice for good reason to not provide a lot of detail at the time, as it is the role of Parliament to then debate and pass legislation which is made pursuant to that new power. For example, if the Japanese have started raining bombs on Darwin all of a sudden you want the government to have flexibility to pass laws and take action in a hurry, not wait for some esoteric argument to play out in the High Court about the extent of the "Defence" power. 

What I was however a bit surprised about was why they look to have decided to enshrine the Voice in the Constitution, instead of just enacting legislation, as the Commonwealth already has the power dating back to 1967 to make special laws affecting Aboriginal people. I suppose putting something in the Constitution ensures the permanence of the Voice, and that it can't be legislated away like previous indigenous bodies such as ATSIC. However the problem is that referendums to change the Constitution are notoriously hard to get through.

First you have the issue caused by our unrepresentative, regressive and outdated Federal system, the farce of which was on full display during the COVID pandemic, which means that not only an absolute majority of people have to vote for the change, but also a majority of states. 10,000,000 plus NSW, Victorian and Queensland residents might approve the change, but if 2,500,000 people from WA, SA and Tasmania don't, then the whole thing is a dead duck. But aside from that, the fact is that no matter how worthy the Voice might be, there are a lot of people who just won't vote for it.

People, for instance, who are battling with cost of living pressures and who think the government should be concentrating on more pressing things like energy policy, fixing the health system and housing affordability instead of spending so much time and effort on what, to them, is a fairly remote and abstract issue.

People who live in areas where indigenous crime is a long-standing problem and who for that reason are unlikely to be in a charitable frame of mind come referendum day.

Recent migrants who are facing their own challenges fitting in to their new country and either don't have knowledge of or aren't all that interested in Australian history, and are therefore less likely to understand the context of how the Voice has come about.

Then there are people who after 3 years of the COVID pandemic are thoroughly sick of the government interfering in their lives and for that reason will be less inclined than usual to support something the government wants.

Recognising the possibility that the referendum will be rejected, Albanese has left the door open for the Voice to be subsequently legislated, but this strikes me as politically untenable. If you've just had the voters reject something by referendum, how do you then turn around and say, we're going to ignore what you want and enact it anyway? So if as now seems likely, the Government does decide to put the Voice to a referendum, their one shot in the locker is to try and bring the voters with them.

Which brings me to the question of the Voice's merits. Everyone will have an opinion on this and mine is I would like to be able to support it. I don't think anyone would dispute the fact that having their lands over-run 250 years ago by a technologically superior civilisation had devastating consequences for indigenous Australian which has led ultimately to an entrenched cycle of disadvantage relative to the European settlers. 

To the extent that the Voice takes heed of what the leaders of those communities say and enables government to take positive steps to break that cycle and improve the lot of indigenous Australians, then that has to be a good thing. The problem though with many a sensible or well-meaning initiative is that once it reaches the political sewer of Canberra, it either gets knocked on the head completely (remember the emissions trading scheme anyone?), gets warped into something it was never intended to be (NDIS), or the execution of it gets completely messed up (Robodebt, which was meant to clean up welfare fraud but wound up being an unmitigated disaster).

Right on cue the political wrangling has started with the Nationals opposing it, the Liberals yet to declare their position, and the Greens likely to oppose it because it doesn't go far enough. In view of this and with the polling tight, it's unclear what will happen in the months ahead other than the Government has got its work cut out trying to promote the "Yes" case and also stop the proposal being bastardised in the process. 

Unlike Dutton I don't expect full enabling legislation to be presented ahead of the referendum but I do have some concerns about how the referendum process will play out in the months ahead, and that the Voice might become something it was never supposed to be, or lead to other unintended consequences. 

Therefore, with apologies to John Farnham for appropriating his lyrics for this blog title, to assist with everyone's understanding I don't think it's unreasonable for the Government to answer some key questions, including:

• What sort of issues the Voice will provide advice to Parliament on: there are the obvious ones of course, but if taken literally, the wording of the referendum question could mean the Voice will have a say on every piece of legislation brought before Parliament, because as citizens of Australia, ipso facto every law "affects them". I am sure that is not the intention but it is something that needs to be made clear.
• To what extent is it intended Parliament must have regard to the Voice, and how will any limitations on its powers be enshrined in legislation: the Government has been at pains to stress that it is an advisory body only, however in the future if the Greens or another party on the extreme left ever got the balance of power in the House of Representatives, there is the risk that the Voice may be strengthened to become a de facto unelected third chamber of Parliament with real power. Having been locked in my house by Brett Sutton for the best part of a year during the pandemic, I for one have a violent objection to unelected officials or bodies being given significant powers by the government, and so it's important to know this can't happen.
• Given the failure of other indigenous representative bodies in the past such as ATSIC, what practical measures is the government intending to take to make sure the Voice doesn't go the same way: this is even more critical seeing the Voice will be a permanent fixture of the Constitution and it would be a shameful outcome if it failed and sat forever in the Constitution as an indictment on Australia's inability to reconcile with its First Nations people.  
• What will this mean for the 96% of Australians who aren't indigenous: I raise this because increasingly these days, its impossible to attend any event no matter how mundane or catch a plane without having to sit through "welcome to country" rituals of varying complexity or paying respects to the traditional owners of the land. I find this irksome for 2 reasons, one is that a tedious legal seminar on something like the reform of State property taxes has nothing to do with indigenous affairs, and the second is that it smacks of the shallow tokenism people or organisations increasingly adopt in the Digital Age as a substitute for doing something meaningful and involving genuine self-sacrifice to support a cause. My concern is that rather than focus on the difficult problems the Voice is meant to try and solve for indigenous people, it is used as a pretext by the "woke" brigade as a means of imposing more and more observances and requirements on the rest of us, which will not only have zero effect on improving things for indigenous people but will instead just create more division.

As the referendum is still a long way off, hopefully the answers to these and some other questions are provided, but unlike the 1967 referendum and the same-sex marriage plebiscite, I think this is going to be close run thing. To get it through, the government is going to have to work hard to properly make its case, not just bat away questions or criticism as they have done so far. 

I really hope the Government can get this right, because if the Voice does get rejected, that won't be regarded well internationally, but more critically, it would be potentially devastating for indigenous people.