Voice to Parliament 'No' movement is missing the point

As a progressive society, Australians should consider the historical importance of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and recognise that it's long overdue, writes Dr Lee Duffield.

*Also listen to the audio version of this article on Spotify HERE.

MUCH DEBATE being kicked up about the Voice to Parliament misses the point, that it is being done to make a historic settlement with Indigenous Australia, set in the Constitution.

It is not being done primarily, or of itself, as a remedy for the very bad conditions of life found widely across the Indigenous community — a dramatically important task that can follow from the recognition.

Cunning idea: put welfare first to dodge recognition

There is a wrong assumption, an insistence that the referendum is just to set up a bigger-than-ever campaign to provide economic and social support, and a welfare project.

“No” sayers are finding that to be a useful notion for creating distractions, changing the argument away from making amends with Indigenous Australia, towards treating the Indigenous community as in the main a giant problem. It can be reminiscent of the decades when Americans talked about their divided society in terms of the “negro problem”.

Voice to Parliament: 'Yes' vote has many enemies

Australia is moving towards defeating a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, because it's lacking the support traditionally needed for “Yes” to succeed.

The country that was Indigenous Australia

“Indigenous Australia” is a good term for describing Australian society as it had come to be, by January 1788, when it was suddenly imperilled.

The historical record has become fairly coherent. The continent was occupied by peoples who possessed a strong culture and had an economy; sustainable systems for using the resources of the land. They had settled boundaries among nations or tribes; patterns of life would be different in different regions, according to what the land had to offer, in parts extending to early-stage farming and settlement. Or elsewhere, a semi-nomadic pattern within the bounds of familiar and dedicated country.

Getting a picture of that civilisation has been hard because of the tragedies and conflicts that took place, arousing distortions. Historians, for example, have been attacked from all sides, seen alternatively as unsympathetic White supremacists whitewashing colonial history, or as “black armband” wets.

The history Professor, Geoffrey Blainey, in the 1970-80s made prodigious efforts in books to see how it was, exposing to many the capacity of the early Aborigines for engineering work, as with construction of the permanent fish traps on inland rivers. He was also prepared to probe excessive use of fire by Aboriginal hunters, with possible permanent impacts on the bush — an issue that had him under fire from Left-wing students at the time.

He remarked on the active and skilled diplomacy needed within Indigenous Australia, including capacity with languages, to conduct relations across the territorial borders. Clearly, with its good or bad, it was a viable and true civilisation at the start of 1788. In this century, Indigenous scholars have taken on much of the “heavy lifting” in setting the record straight, on issues like the establishment of early-stage agriculture or the frontier wars.

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The take-over after 1788

As is known, after 1788 the colonial power, its agents and European subjects literally moved in and appropriated resources of the country in the way of conquest. It inflicted devastating and lasting generational damage across the Indigenous population. Was it not like the invasion of Ukraine at the present time?

Together with the “White Australia” policy, It became a part of history that conferred a bad reputation on the Commonwealth of Australia internationally: wilful ignoration of the Indigenous population, facilitating cruelty, insult, denigration, humiliation, exclusion, appropriation, incarceration of whole communities and attempts at genocide by neglect. It brought an imposed and widespread degeneration somehow survived by the Indigenous community, to the point where they have come up with the insistent yet reasoned terms of the Statement from the Heart.

Members of the settler society who saw the horror in that history as it unfolded did what they could in the face of belligerent conservative political resistance, by setting up paternalistic, “protective” state government laws, or getting budgets for rudimentary services and relief of poverty.

What might, or should have happened instead, was at least recognition of the national community and culture of January 1788, leading to treaty-making. If a credibly representative Indigenous leadership body offered terms for a settlement, such as a permanent place in a joint national decision-making arrangement, then that might have been taken on — under democracy best put to a referendum of all eligible voters in the country.

It is happening now, in 2023 and further, once the Indigenous population gets that recognition, a treaty can be negotiated. That is the plan.

We can deploy imagination; think forward say two generations, 50 years to when, it is hoped and expected, such restitution work might be completed. There we will have a high-status community within the Australian population, through being the original population, and bearers of an ancient and dignified culture, in leadership at all levels.

Many Indigenous Australians, in the mature and constant way they have been pursuing the plan for a referendum, have demonstrated the great potential for such an outcome.

First the Voice, then the treaty

With progress being made towards the implementation of a Voice to Parliament, the next step is a treaty to unify Australia for generations to come.

Remedial and compensatory action

Accepting that idea in itself recognises the Indigenous community as valuable. Such an act of imagination requires only a moment, putting aside ideas of help on the ground, aiding people in great trouble right now. For that, the remedial and compensatory impacts of a “Yes” vote this year can be easily understood and will be applied where, for decades, many other efforts to improve things have faltered.

Marcia Langton, the dedicated Professor who co-wrote most of the main arguments for the Voice, explains it simply:

“We know... that what improves people’s lives is when they get a say.”

Proponents of the “No” movement so far have tended to characterise the Indigenous community and culture as mainly a problem, a disaster needing to be fixed up through practical action “on the ground”. Do they respect the Indigenous community and culture as valuable? The approach being taken, the disinformation and propaganda, looks to be much about welfare and a clean-up, not respect, certainly not empowerment.

It is a replay of the Howard Government position, which was firstly to abolish the then representative organisation, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), as soon as a credible premise for that arrived, in the form of some racketeering. And secondly, to stage a clean-up involving the Army, the fixed-use credit cards and the like — a government-driven crash program that in the end, broke down like other schemes before it.

Pipe down on The Voice, your White privilege is showing

Peter Dutton and his media cabal notwithstanding, The Voice is a well-considered and "detailed" proposition put forward by Indigenous Australians — just respect it.

Canberra Voice

The Voice in the Constitution could not be extinguished by any government that happened to come along. Both “Yes” and “No” say they want representative bodies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in the regions. The “Yes” side wants that to go further, to the highest level, with a national body in the national capital, alongside the national Parliament — a Canberra Voice, seen as a very good thing.

The idea, as articulated by Professor Langton, is clear: national leaders, coming through the regions, able to go directly to the Federal Parliament and the executive of government, getting at least a hearing by right and by law; that is set to achieve more than all previous projects for rehabilitation and restitution. The main point in that is for Indigenous Australians to have the recognition and then the respect, power and prestige that will go with it.

We can analyse the motives of the “Nos”, why they are putting up all kinds of talk, trying out this argument (such as better to work “on the ground”), that argument (lawyers and the High Court will dismantle it anyway), or the other (it’s just for “elite” Indigenes in towns). But is it worth the bother to do that analysis? Conservative opinion can be brittle; if challenged they may be expected to act wounded and defensive, then resort to new efforts to confuse the whole referendum idea — turn it into a “pig’s breakfast” to put off more voters.

The decision this year is proposed as just a matter of “Yes” or “No” — to go back to what might have been started in 1788 and give Indigenous Australians due recognition and a very fair go. Or not do that, and to blazes with the consequences.

*This article is also available on audio here:

Among his vast journalistic experience, Dr Lee Duffield has served as ABC's European correspondent. He is also an esteemed academic. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Pacific Journalism Review.