The grim afflictions plaguing Indigenous communities — whether it be the unacceptable rates of child mortality and removals, suicide, homelessness, incarceration or life expectancy — are the direct consequences of genocide and the unrelenting violence of settler colonialism.
There is nothing passive or accidental about the past 235 years of systematic subjugation and oppression. Yet, I’m told by proponents for the Voice to Parliament that the apocalyptic state of our affairs can be reduced to the unintended byproducts of well-meaning governments.
These are the same governments that imply they’re unable to secure our input on the laws they impose on us until after a successful referendum. Forget that we have been the necessary collateral damage for building and maintaining empire — the real problem is apparently that, until now, we’ve been mute.
After millennia of vibrant human expression and sophisticated methods of communication, it seems we lost our ability to speak. And because we chose to become silent sapiens and camouflage into the flora and fauna, governments have simply been unable to find us, let alone determine what it is we want.
What’s the proposed antidote to this? A toothless advisory body that provides non-binding advice to the same institutional machinery that continues to sell our lands, steal our children and strip us of our cultures. And it is you, citizens of settler Australia, whose eerie acquiescence and exceptional thresholds of tolerance have both permitted and perpetuated our misery, who will decide whether or not we can now speak up to the overlord.
Once you generously permit us to articulate ourselves, and only if you decide to do so, those same overlords will then determine how the newly unmuted voice of the “First Peoples” works, what we get to speak about and whether or not they listen. What could possibly go wrong?
The problem with kicking truth further down the road, instead of, say, embedding it into every step of the journey, is that we remain confined to the realms of fiction and fantasy. And it’s because of this romanticised commitment to reconciliation, instead of ushering in the long-overdue reckoning, that an incremental base hit is being sold as a home run.
“But a Voice ensures that we can provide advice on the laws that affect us”. Not exactly. The solicitor-general’s advice is clear: the proposed constitutional amendment does not impose any obligations upon the executive government to follow representations of the Voice, or to consult with the Voice prior to developing any policy or making any decision. More importantly, we have the right to self-government, just as we have successfully done for tens of thousands of years. As hard as it might be to fathom, it is we, not you, who are best placed to determine our futures.
“But it’ll be more powerful and permanent because it’s constitutionally enshrined”. Again, not exactly. As Richard Lancaster SC and others noted throughout the joint select committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice referendum, the proposed amendment doesn’t require Parliament to maintain the Voice. Also, abolition isn’t just binning the body entirely, as the government did to ATSIC; muting, constraining or ignoring the Voice to the point of total nullification is equivalent to abolishing something altogether.
“But this is what Indigenous people have asked for”. Sure, within the context that we were permitted to propose something workable within the framework of Australian public law and governance, but also something that is accepted by constitutional conservatives. Let’s not pretend that a blank canvas was put in front of us — the Voice to Parliament is born out of white appeasement, not Black ambition.
“But a No vote means you’re on the same side as racists and bigots. How is that a good thing?” You’re right, there are lots of racists and bigots campaigning for a No vote. For them, anything for the pesky natives is too much, and their reductive approach is as disgusting as it is predictable. But you’ve conveniently forgotten that the left wing still belongs to the same bird.
The idea that moral purity resides on the left side of the political spectrum is insanity. In this term of government alone, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “non-racist” Labor party has reformed cashless welfare back to its racist roots, making income management an almost exclusive feature for Indigenous peoples, just as it was initially designed to be. It has refused to raise the age of criminal responsibility under federal law to 14, and chosen not to implement all recommendations from both the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Bringing Them Home report.
It has left the condemned and derelict Don Dale Youth Detention Centre open, where Aboriginal children as young as 10 — most of whom are on remand — continue to rot, with some detainees having been placed in solitary confinement for more than 20 hours a day. It has allocated $1.5 billion to a petrochemicals plant in Darwin’s harbour, and has greenlit a Texas tycoon-owned company to frack the Beetaloo Basin.
It has sacrificed the world’s most prolific outdoor art gallery at Murujuga for a $6.4 billion fertiliser plant. It posthumously began litigating against the late Yunupungu’s historic compensation ruling, taking him back to court just months after hijacking his passing to promote the referendum. It has expended the sacred grounds and pristine habitat of Lee Point in order to build defence housing, and rammed through pro-market and anti-science policies like the safeguard mechanism scheme to further enable its donors to destroy our living lands, water and skies.
All of this under the winds of change and with a referendum as their primary initiative. But hey, did you hear what Pauline Hanson and Peter Dutton said? Or see the full-page, Jim Crow-esque advertisement that Advance Australia published in The Australian Financial Review?
This is what Anthony Albanese means when he says, “We have been doing things for and to Indigenous Australians with the best of intentions for 122 years since Federation.” But who can blame him or his noble peers for ramming through these policies and undermining the whole premise and promise of the Voice? Like he said, Labor’s actions come from a place of love, not incurable contempt.
We also can’t expect pro-Voice proponents and campaigners to stand up and say anything about Labor’s rancid hypocrisy and unfettered racism until our voice box is sewn back into our throats. As it stands, anyone that speaks out against the ongoing war that Labor is waging is apparently standing on the wrong side of history.
In the words of Kerry O’Brien, the Voice is “simple, unambitious and unthreatening”. No peoples have risen out of centuries of oppressive subjugation through simple, unambitious and unthreatening piecemeal proposals. So please, stop telling us that the Voice is the answer when it’s designed to dance around the problem.
Is the Voice to Parliament the way forward, or built on broken foundations? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
