If one thing is
certain in terms of the voice, most Australians do not really understand what
it means, how it will work and how it will be set up. You could be forgiven for
thinking that neither do those promoting a Yes vote. The reason for that is
because the Government which is pushing the voice has not explained in clear
and coherent detail such critical factors.
When has trust me, I’m from the Government ever worked? Who would buy
anything on the basis of, don’t you worry about how it’s going to work?
Neither is the Government presenting Yes and No positions as it is required to
do under regulations pertaining to a Referendum.
Section 11 of the Act requires the Australian Electoral
Commission (AEC) to distribute a pamphlet with a written argument for and
against the passage of the referendum. This pamphlet should be received by each
household with an enrolled elector not later than 14 days before polling day.
These written arguments (no more than 2,000 words each) are to be authorised by
a majority of parliamentary members who voted for or against the Referendum
Bill, respectively.
Now, clearly the
Government still has time to create and distribute said pamphlet, after
battering Australians with the guilt-waddy for months, and playing the
emotional card which was used, along with a lot of lies, now called myths, to win the 1967 Referendum. Advertisements promoting a Yes vote are now
being used by the Federal Government. Then again, the Act is hardly what it
once was, where previously, “it allowed the Commonwealth to only spend money in
relation to preparing and distributing the pamphlets and prohibits any
Government-funded referendum education campaign or advertising. However, in
1999 the Government legislated to allow additional expenditure, such as for
advertising, in relation to that specific referendum, and the recent history of
public funding of referendum campaigns has been relatively ad hoc.”
So, the public is presented with a pro-Yes campaign from the Federal Government
in the months leading up to the Referendum, which hardly seems right, let alone
fair. And that leads most people to rely on what the media offers. Unfortunately,
in the realm of mainstream media, with some noble exceptions, there is more
promoting a Yes vote than making a case for a No vote.
And given the lack of clarity on the voice and its structure, function and powers,
there is little basis for the average Australian to gain perspective. From what
is presented we have a suggested position that the voice is going to resolve
the problems in aboriginal communities, which it seems dozens if not hundreds
of groups and consultations, billions of dollars and decades of time and
attention have failed to do.
How many live in such communities? A small minority.
Based on projections for 2022, among Indigenous Australians:
38% (344,800) live in Major cities. 44% (395,900) live in Inner and outer
regional areas. 17% (155,600) live in Remote and very remote areas combined
(Figure 2, ABS 2019b).
So, a small minority
live in the troubled communities and the guess of how many are fully Aboriginal
in ancestry is around 1%. The data is hard to find because one presumes in this
age it is a no-no to enquire into such ancestry percentages, given the prevailing
view that Aboriginality is something spiritual and there is no relevance
between 100% of such spiritual ancestry or less than 1%.
But, the most common presenting position suggests that Australians owe those
with Aboriginal ancestry special treatment because, they have been here a very
long time, 40,000 years, pick a figure onwards and upwards. Or rather, they
believe they can trace back their ancestry furthest and that makes them unique
and deserving of special treatment and what amounts to a louder and extra voice
and in essence, their own chamber in Parliament and an additional vote.
How is any of that fair, constitutional, democratic or not racist? The
basic premise with longevity ancestry is that the further back someone can
trace some of their ancestry, the superior they are as a citizen, i.e. they
deserve special rights. This means that someone with 100% Aboriginal ancestry
is top of the ranking, although we don’t actually know if any of those here in
1788 were descended from the first Homo Sapiens to arrive on this land, and
someone who became a citizen last week is bottom. None of that is democratic
and all of it is an insult to Australians in general and migrants in
particular.
We also have the insanity that someone like Senator Jacinta Price, if the voice
gets up, is a superior citizen along with her mother and her sons, and her
father and husband are inferior citizens, despite the fact they all live the
same sorts of lives. Would a Yes vote
mean that in divorce situations the parent with some Aboriginal ancestry gets
greater rights over any children? It could, because nothing has been spelled
out. And it is an important question because most Australians with aboriginal
ancestry are in mixed marriages. In fact, we have more than two centuries of
intermarriage which is why most Australians with Aboriginal ancestry are more
Anglo-European than anything else. This fact alone is a testament to the lack
of racism in Australia.
Analysis of the 2006 census reveals that 52% of Aboriginal men and 55% of
Aboriginal women were married to non-Aboriginal Australians. In Australia's
larger east coast cities, the intermarriage rate was well above 70%; in Sydney,
as many as nine out of 10 university-educated Aborigines had a non-indigenous
partner.
But, with the shocking dysfunction and violence in Aboriginal communities, that
position also raises the question, since the entire group is deemed to be in
need of this voice, of whether or not any amount of Aboriginal ancestry
predisposes to serious dysfunction or inferior function at best. We know that
is not the case because the majority of Australians with aboriginal ancestry,
now numbering around 900,000 because we allow people to register as ‘native’
even with truly trivial amounts of Aboriginal ancestry, are doing fine. They
have the same sorts of lives and outcomes as other Australians, experience no
Gap and are as successful as the average and often more so. We see it in the
fact that with the inflated numbers for Aboriginality, those with such ancestry
make up around 3% of the population and yet are represented in State and Federal Parliaments at
nearly 5%. These are the minimals who are fully assimilated into the modern
world and broader community and who have been for generations in most cases.
They have absolutely nothing in common with those struggling in tribal/clan
communities for the simple and tragic fact, they are the least assimilated into
the modern world, and instead remain trapped in backward and violent aboriginal
tribal clan systems. This group of urban elites do not speak as one because
they are descended from different tribal/clan groups. In fact their only
capacity to speak as one is in English as Australians. Neither do they speak as
one in communities, riven as they are by familial and tribal/clan divisions. As
far as many in tribal communities are concerned, these Aborigine Lites are
whitefellas. Anyone who thinks that Linda Burnie, Marcia Langton, Ken Wyatt,
Lidia Thorpe or Noel Pearson live the same sorts of lives as those in
Aboriginal communities needs to think again.
So, we do not have one voice among those who have been elected to Parliament
despite them all having some Aboriginal ancestry. We do not have one voice in
each Aboriginal community and we certainly do not have one voice from all
communities, let alone from every single Australian who has registered
themselves as native. And yet we are being asked to change our constitution,
betray our democracy and introduce racism into our society by voting for a
voice which does not exist and which will never exist.
How could it? In 1788 there were between 350-500 different groups, most not
even big enough to be tribes, but instead, family clans, without a common
language and generally at war with each other. They were descended from waves
of migration across 40,000 years with the most recent thought to be the arrival
of colonists from southern India, who brought their native dog with them which
became the Dingo. Did those stone-age peoples eradicate anyone they found in
their path, apart perhaps from a few useful females? Probably, for that was the
way of it in the times. In a modern democracy 40,000 or 4,000 years are no more
important than 40 years or 4 weeks, for that is the nature of the system.
In Aboriginal communities the clans are still at war with each other and as
Noel Pearson recently demonstrated with his attack on Mick Gooda, there is infighting even with the elites. If
the urban Aborigine Lites are at war with each other what hope is there of a
voice even from this mob?
And there are many notable Australians with Aboriginal ancestry like Senator
Jacinta Price, Anthony Dillon and Warren Mundine who are firmly in the No camp.
There is no unity even among those who are well educated and highly successful
in Australian society. And yet we are being told that Australians with
aboriginal ancestry, codename indigenous, need to speak with one voice and this
needs to be written into our Constitution, a document which is meant to
represent each of us equally. It would not even represent Australians with
aboriginal ancestry equally because there is no unity and there is no one
voice. Never was, never will be.
Meanwhile, with nothing clarified or spelled out in terms of this voice, Australians can only sift through the
propaganda and snippets of information, apply common sense and try to avoid
making a serious error of judgement which our children and grandchildren will
inherit to their terrible cost.
On something as important as our Constitution and our democracy, ‘she’ll be
right mate, ’just doesn’t cut it. When you don’t know then vote NO.
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