After many months of bitter debate about the Voice, an address to the National Press Club this week reminds us that we are back at a point where it seems that, no matter what the truth may be, we will not let it lead to any change, writes Laura Tingle.
Despite the author lambasting the ignorance behind the “don’t know, vote no” messaging (rightly so), there’s no actual explanation of what a “vote yes” accomplishes. I would love to vote yes but I haven’t been able to find any resource on what it meaningfully accomplishes.
Voting Yes accomplishes the recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution, which is symbolically important as they are our first Australians and their culture is an important part of our history as a nation.
Voting Yes also accomplishes the implementation of a policy advisory committee, that may or may not lead to better designed and more efficient Indigenous policy making, potentially saving taxpayers a lot of money and leading to better health/education/employment/etc outcomes for Indigenous Australians. Because the constitutional amendment we are voting on does not include specific details about the formation and targets of the advisory committee, it could theoretically be as flexible as is needed at any given time. For example, in a perfect world where all Indigenous disadvantage has been eliminated, the advisory body could instead become an important figurehead for the celebration of Indigenous culture within Australia.
Voting Yes in this referendum also ensures that there will finally be an Indigenous advisory committee that is immune to the total disbandment we have seen from previous hostile governments throughout Australia’s history. This is something that has happened on multiple occasions and it’s a key reason why Australia has struggled to make progress with regards to the many social issues stemming from colonisation. If you keep tearing up the plan completely every few years, it is very difficult to achieve anything long-term.
Ultimately, voting Yes guarantees important symbolic recognition. Voting No does not. That is the fundamental difference in the immediate outcome of this referendum, based on what we are voting for.
Thank you for replying so thoughtfully. This has explained it better to me than anyone else has (from both sides).
I think part of the communication problem is how wishy-washy the vote is. Without the historical context the importance of the vote gets completely missed. I’ve heard so many people wave their hands and say “representation”, “constitution”, etc., but no one is able to define anything. Your comment makes it clear to me that it’s not so much about the affirmative action, but explicitly avoiding the failures of the past.
Side note: it’s crazy to think we don’t even have a constitutional freedom of speech
You’re welcome. I have been reflecting on the campaign recently and I believe the point about consitutional recognition probably hasn’t been made as clearly as it should have been. The debate has become really bogged down in theoretical outcomes of the Voice advisory body, giving rise to a lot of fearmongering and misinformation, but regardless of how that turns out there is still the symbolic recognition component which is something that has decades of widespread support from Indigenous Australians and both sides of politics. Like you, I was also sceptical of what a Yes vote would achieve early on, but the more I have learned about the history of this entire process the more convinced I have become that it is the only rational choice I can make at this referendum.
Couldn’t agree more. In general, I think left leaning people make the mistake of overly debating the points that right leaning people make and this creates a lot of confusion and muddies the waters to the detriment of the left leaning. I’ll explain why. These are generalities and cut both ways too.
A lot of arguments aren’t made in good faith. Trying to rationally and logically explain/debate something when the other side isn’t making decisions rationally or logically usually doesn’t work. (explaining why fear mongering isn’t valid)
Debating a bad idea directs too much focus towards that idea and makes it harder for good ideas to be heard. This leads people to missing the point or not seeing the bigger picture. (arguing that there are already indigenous people in parliament)
Recognising that some ideas are based on emotional opinions can lead to trying to directly counter that in an emotionally adversarial way. (if you don’t support me you’re racist!)
I think making these mistakes can too easily turn discussions into identity clashes and further entrenches pre held ideas. Obviously you should respond to concerns and as long as the discussion stays civilised there’s no problem. Unfortunately not many people are able to discuss different ideas without taking it personally.
I’m grateful to everyone here that has done their best to express their opinions without resorting to personal comments.
In terms of general discourse I’d say that’s certainly true. The official Yes campaign has actually done a really good job avoiding those pitfalls, though. Everyone involved has showed an insane level of restraint (perhaps too much at times) given the absolute barrage of lies and blatantly bad faith misdirection they have been exposed to for months.
And I will add that I don’t see this as left versus right in the way that other social policy debates are. Constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians has historically had conservative support and in this referendum you can find many examples of right leaning people who support the Yes campaign. Chris Kenny on Sky News has been using his program to campaign for a Yes vote for months, as an example. Part of the reason it has taken so long to get a referendum on this is because great efforts were taken to establish a model that would receive bipartisan support.
In the modern era, I think politics is often less about left versus right and more about education versus misinformation. And that has certainly been the story of this referendum.
Freedom of speech the way our American friends go on about it is implied in our constitution as general freedom. We don’t explicitly have a clause that says you have a right to walk along the beach in PJs or jeans (or even both!). Yet, this activity is perfectly legal.
For some reason, they’ve gone and made a constitutional amendment specifically for this freedom. I’m sure they had a good reason for that. That doesn’t mean we don’t also have this freedom.
It is a lot different actually having it explicitly in the constitution for all the same reasons you would argue for a yes vote in the upcoming referendum. You only have to look back a couple of years to find a time where your example wasn’t legal due to lockdowns.
I don’t live in a part of Australia that had those restrictions on movement. We never had lockdowns in Western Australia like they experienced in the Eastern States.
But even then, the restrictions those places had were temporary in response to a state of emergency and not a change in our wider freedoms.
I’m not arguing the validity of temporary lockdown restrictions due to public health emergencies. I largely agree with the measures. I’m just pointing out your example of “well our constitution doesn’t explicitly protect this, yet we can all still do it” is really not the same thing as having explicit protections of a freedom.
It’s more applicable with freedom of speech. Australia does not have explicit constitutionally protected freedom of speech. Which is never important until all of a sudden it is!
Look at what happened to the ABC a few years back when the AFP raided them after reporting on the activities of some members of our military.
Military activities are a completely different thing. Just ask Julian Assange what the US military thinks about exercising freedom of speech in the context of military actions.
what do you want to know? it hasn’t happened yet so we don’t know what the precise outcome will be.
constitutionally what is accomplishes is enshrining in the constitution a body called the voice which has the right to address Parliament on matters relating to aboriginal and Torres straight islander people.
what this stops governments doing is disbanding advisory councils etc which they have done repeatedly.
The statement from the heart (https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/) specifically requests it. you can read about what they hope it to accomplish here: https://ulurustatement.org/the-voice/what-is-the-voice/
What have you googled and found unsatisfactory?
Partially true but, as I have said in my reply to this comment, the proposed constitutional amendment contains this line
which is clear symbolic recognition of the importance of Indigenous peoples and their culture to the history of Australia. Regardless of what the advisory body looks like or achieves, constitutional recognition would be a clear positive outcome in the result of a Yes vote. It is important to many Indigenous Australians, but it should also be seen as important to all Australians as we continue to mature as a nation and move forward from our bloody colonial past.
Dude
That website us exactly what I’m talking about. It lists all these great things but if you actually look at the wording of the actual referendum it doesn’t include the majority of these points.
I’m looking over your replies and I’m feeling very confused. Something I wonder is if you are expecting constitutional changes to be more specific than they are.
I’m sure like most sane Australians you haven’t actually read the constitution. It’s not exactly particularly relevant to most if us. Let’s have a look at it now though to get an idea of how it’s worded. For example, lets look at provisions on electing senators, that seems important!
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/chapter1/Part_II_-_The_Senate#chapter-01_part-02_09
Huh… that seems vague? now there’s a little more there interspersed between a few sections laying out the 6 year term and elections as an entire state but that’s pretty much it.
Crucially this isn’t about laying out exactly how it should be carried out because things change, it’s about laying out what the government can and can’t do in broad strokes.
Now imagine we didn’t have that section “shall be uniform for all the States” and we’re holding a referendum over it. The text of the referendum would just be like “should blah section be ammended to add ‘shall be uniform for all the States’ yes or no?”
The yes side would be making grand proclaimations about equality, fairer society, less vulnerability to governments dominated by party members from one state with rivals in another etc. There are no concrete details yet about how elections will change etc, just that they’ll have to be fairer.
That’s kinda what we’re looking at with the voice. The broad strokes are vague because times change and needs change, but what doesn’t change is that people need to be heard if they’re going to be respected and helped. We haven’t been hearing the indigenous people very well, sometimes deliberately maliciously as when bodies are abolished, sometimes because people were just massively wrong about who knew best.
The yes campaign is saying “look at all this good stuff that’ll happen” because it’ll mean there’s a requirement for there to be a body which can’t be completely ignored or abolished, and that’ll force a record of what was said even if it’s totally ignored which can help make people accountable.
I think that’s a bit disingenuous because if you look at the page you link there’s a lot more detail than just the excerpt you provided, including at the very top that they are voted upon by the people of the states. It has provisions for different cases as well.
The voice proposed change has none of this detail.
I would like to see some accountability included in the proposed change and I think that’s why a lot of people are skeptical. The way it is now still leaves a lot of room for political sabotage at any future point as long as there is a “body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice” that exists. There is nothing in the amendment that even specifies who makes up this body, how many people, how they get chosen, term lengths, etc. These details are at least considered in our current constitution for senators.
It’s not that any of this would make me vote no. I do support this type of cause and I’m glad that steps are being made. It’s just that, as far as I can tell, there’s no constitutional protection that would stop, say, PwC from being assigned the role of “the Voice”.
Sorry, I was trying to focus specifically on the means by which they are elected. Not trying to mislead, I think there’s parallel because like the voice just says it has to be a body and not how it’s made up and senate elections more or less just say “you have to have them, figure out how”.
So there’s a lot of leeway in the constitution in general, like to my knowledge there’s nothing stopping senate electing laws being like a 2 hour window in the state capital except that if a government tried to do that presumably they’d be challenged on either going against the intention of the constitution, established practiced, or worse case there would be revolts. There’s a few risks to making something too specific, what if things change and you need to like have another referendum to say hire a new person?
It certainly is vulnerable to say appointing the board of PwC as the voice, except of course that’s the status quo now (inasmuch as advisory bodies on indigenous affairs go) although nobody could argue that the government was going against the spirit of the constitution doing so. So this can really only be thought of as massively strengthening the situation we have now.
If we look at how divisive even this change is, you can imagine the sort of polemic criticism a more prescriptive change might apply. If the voice fails to be satisfactory and vulnerable to being hijacked then we can always go to referendum again, we wouldn’t be worse off than we are now. Legislation is a lot more flexible, which is a weakness and a strength but in general keeping systems flexible helps us fix things and keep them relevant as times and goals change. If the people want this, then the people have an interest in it working correctly after all.
Excellent points. Thank you for putting in the time to discuss this with me. You, and others here have been invaluable to me. It’s too hard to find quality information like these replies through searching. I’m the kind of person that likes to understand things in an extra level of detail so when I discuss things with people I can know what I’m talking about. Knowing only the bullet points makes it hard to back up opinions when talking to people of differing opinions.
You are welcome.