If the confused and slippery claims of the right’s No campaign have taught us anything in recent months, it’s that conservatives of this ilk have a hard time speaking plainly about power.
Nowhere has this so clearly manifested than in the collection of views grounding one of their principal objections to the Voice, which broadly turns on what we might call the spectre of democracy’s demise.
Writing in The Australian Financial Review three months ago, for instance, Louise Clegg, wife of Angus “fantastic” Taylor, declared the Voice a “radical” proposition, and one that in all seriousness “looks like a fourth arm of government”.
Sheeting home the point, the Sydney barrister told readers the expert recommendation to place the Voice in a new and separate chapter of the constitution showed, once and for all, that the Voice would prove “a novel advisory arm of government” that “could have a say” about any law or policy.
Some weeks later, former prime minister Tony Abbott was of a similar view, likening the Voice to an almost eschatological force that would — as opposed to could — have input in all forms of government decision-making.
“All the arms of government,” he penned in The Australian, would be required to “seek early advice from the Voice”, meaning that “almost nothing could happen without substantial Indigenous input”.
From that vantage point, he arrived at the heroic conclusion that the Voice is destined to give way to a future in which Indigenous peoples forever exert a special influence “over the governance of everyone”.
Naturally, these are large claims, and ones savaged by several of the country’s leading legal minds in recent weeks, including Commonwealth Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue.
Distilled, and in reality, the one and only power conferred on the Voice is a potential, if not limited, “power of influence” to help the government fashion better laws that affect First Nations peoples in some material or distinct way.
Potential, in a sense, because neither the government nor Parliament will be constitutionally bound to listen to, much less act on, the views relayed by the Voice. And limited, because the power promised to the Voice — to make representations to Parliament and the executive — may ultimately fall short of consultation, depending on the legislative framework Parliament establishes to enact the Voice.
Indeed, one of the central reasons the Voice is to sit separately from the three chapters that deal with legislative, executive and judicial power owes to its political nature, which sits so uneasily with these powers.
All of which throws into sharp relief the pointy contradiction that resides at the heart of the No campaign’s “special rights” argument. At its most basic, it’s an argument predicated on the spurious idea that ours is a democracy that takes equality of political power as a fundamental organising principle, when plainly the converse is true.
Stepping back, the relevant contradiction sits between the No campaign’s insistence that the concept of the Voice is inherently undemocratic, and its corresponding refusal to see the role played by lobbyists — including those unnamed orange pass holders — and political donations in the same manner.
As Bret Walker SC put it recently: “Have you ever heard these people complain about the mining council being able to get a voice with ministers? No. Have you ever heard the Business Council of Australia being denounced as an unfairly special group? No.”
Indeed, it’s a contradiction that begs the question: how do you suppose the likes of Abbott and the right would describe the power wielded by such political lobbyists and powerful sectors? Perhaps the simplest and most obvious answer, if you were to put yourselves in their shoes, is “normal” — even necessary — in the context of our democracy, notwithstanding the manifold problems of transparency it inspires.
Why? Because the right has always seen its worldview, interests and the political power it wields as synonymous with the natural order of things. And that is why its political strategy is so dependably bent on framing or “othering” any countervailing political force — like the Voice but also unions and environmentalists — as an almost existential threat.
So much, in this connection, finds reflection in Abbott’s overarching argument against the Voice, which he labels a “Trojan horse” disguising the true aim of Indigenous leaders: to regain the “sovereign power over the future direction of the country that they think was wrongly taken away two centuries ago”. The same holds for long-time columnists with The Australian Paul Kelly and Janet Albrechtsen, who have collectively described the referendum as a “profound risk for Australia” and one that beckons a democracy more akin to “co-government” that does violence to Crown sovereignty.
The point is the right is fond of projecting the political power they wield as somehow neutral and unassuming, when in reality it is a faux-neutral force resistant to any change that runs contrary to the interests and worldview it protects.
And that is why Bret Walker SC was probably correct when he suggested the “special rights” argument was born of racism.
“Unpacked, [it’s] one of the most depressingly unkind, anti-social views of this whole [debate] — don’t let’s have a Voice because it might give blackfellas some [political] force. Really? Really? Is that what we think?” he asked.
The only alternative argument, of course, is that proponents of the “special rights” argument know their argument is contradictory and probably racist, but they see a wealth of political capital in the exploitation of racial animosity.
Perhaps it’s a combination of both.
