While standing in line at the bank (the Bendigo Bank - our community shifted $100m in capital away from the big four after they closed branches in the area) and watching t'telly, I noticed Rowan Dean from The Spectator and Sky News Australia, spitting bile about the level of discourse surrounding The Voice To Parliament and the upcoming referendum on same.
His complaint was that the level of discourse was both nasty and political; which I can only assume was argument by demonstration because his own argument was also nasty and political. His tirade basically amounted to demanding that Aboriginal people be grateful to the nation for what it has given them, before making the usual kind of argument that "we are one" while deliberately trying to other those same people he wants to be grateful.
I absolutely understand the reason for The Spectator and Sky News Australia's opposition to The Voice. If all that Aboriginal people were demanding was token recognition in the Constitution, then quite frankly The Spectator and Sky News Australia, would probably be fine with it. But the fact that Aboriginal people are asking to be heard and have a say on decisions which affects them, makes the collective blood of The Spectator and Sky News Australia boil.
The very idea that anything stands in the way of the rich and powerful either making profits or maintaining power for power's sake, is offensive to them. The idea that there might any kind of voices or anyone else to stop these ends, is offensive to them. The idea that nation states and subnation states might be responsible for what they have done in the past, is a secondary issue but the idea that those nation states and subnation states might have just claims for things like taxation, and the legislative ability to stop the extraction of profits or their maintenance of power, is offensive to them.
Of itself, the existence of Aboriginal people is a non-event to The Spectator and Sky News Australia. The fact that they have legitimate claims of justice upon both the nation state and the various subnation states of the country they operate in, is a problem that must be extinguished. Officially that was also the stance of both the nation state and the various subnation states of the country for a while. My suspicion is that had The Spectator and Sky News Australia been around in the late 1890s, they would have also been fine with the proposition that Aboriginal people themselves were problem that must be extinguished, through creative apathy.
The basic premise of the Yes camp is pretty simple. There is an underlying injustice to do with the creation of the nation state and the subnation states which exist in Australia. The persons of the Crowns are responsible for that injustice. No formal treaty process has been undertaken. After many years of formal dialogues, which consulted more than thousand people groups, the instrument put forward was formal recognition in the Federal Constitution and a new instrument called The Voice To Parliament; which were both consequences of the Uluru Statement From The Heart.
The previous Turnbull and Morrison Liberal/National Governments who received this advice, did nothing with it and the Albanese Labor Government had the enactment of policy with regards this, as part of its manifesto for government. As part of its responsibility, the Albanese Labor Government is more or less obliged to put forward the question of The Voice to a referendum, as part of meeting its obligations of being given the right to govern.
And so exists the relentless campaign from entities like The Spectator and Sky News Australia. They hate the idea that The Voice exists because it might interfere with their advertisers' and backers' ability to extract profits and maintain power. Profit and Power are really all that's at the bottom of this. All notions of equality magically disappear like the morning mist, if you were to put forward the suggestion that profits might be a moral bad, or that equality through the ballot box results in governments they don't like.
The basic premise of the No camp is roughly fourfold.
There are hard racists who genuinely think that Aboriginal people should have died out and that the Commonwealth won the nation through the act of conquest. Sure, they may use words such as "settled" but when you have the Royal Navy show up with 11 ships, and then enact its claim through the use of active clearance at gunpoint, then really "settling" is a lie. Australia was started as a penal colony and then martial law was enforced via the New South Wales Corps until semi-autonomous government and then responsible government arrived. We know that active clearance at gunpoint amounting to genocide occurred because we still have the receipts and account books. The very first deposit to the Bank Of New South Wales, which was three days before the bank even opened, was by Sergeant Jeremiah Davis of more than £50, which he was paid 1/6 for the head of every Aboriginal person that he killed - which is personally more than 660 people.
There are the soft-core racists who don't actively wish harm on Aboriginal people but who still don't want the Commonwealth to do anything about the past. Again, they buy into settler narrative lie and then want to paint some rosy picture about how hard it was for the settlers and convicts who arrived. They see this story as the consequences of work and that Aboriginal people have not worked hard enough with what they have been given. These people will often point to a range of whataboutism type questions, including the whatabout question of another colonial power arriving, or the benefits of modern society arriving upon Aboriginal people, in complete apathy to the price of dispossession and genocide.
Then there are the casual racists who think that because they are not personally responsible for what happened, that nothing should be done. This is racism through creative apathy. The central lie here is that based upon the truth that they are not personally either the Commonwealth or the six several States.
Ever since 26th January 1788, with the proclamation of the colony of New South Wales (argue about the ins and outs of the dates) there has always been some corporation sole which claimed ownership by force. In the first instance it was the Crown of the United Kingdom. In the second instance it was the Crown of the several states when responsible government arrived. In the third instance it was the Crown of the Commonwealth, enacted by Constitution and starting at 1st Jan 1901. The Crown is a separate legal person from the Monarch, from the Governors, from the Governor-General, and from all the people who claim that they are not responsible. The lie here is that because these are not personally responsible for what happened, that nothing should be done; despite and actively in spite of the fact that the several Crowns are very much responsible.
The fourth case is that there are those people who fear what voting Yes will do. I have sympathy for this kind of argument but it still happens to rest upon a pillar of casual racism through inactivity. Unless people can make a case of what should be done to address the issue of equity, then the fourth case is nothing more than a restatement of the third case but a bit more florid.
The argument here is that because we don't actually know what final form that The Voice will look like, that it should be rejected out of hand. This relies upon the lie that the referendum is over a Constitutional Amendment and that the Constitution almost never spells out the details of what the various Ministries, Agencies, Departments, Quangos, Offices, et cetera, actually look like.
Every single argument without exception when discussing the No case falls into one of these four cases. There might be different colours of nuance within the position but boiled down to its basic elements, this is all that exists.
Whilst it is true that not everyone who votes No is racist, it is also true that everyone is racist will vote No. The open racists will continue to be racist but they can hide behind the casual racists if they want to.
I personally don't like the instrument of The Voice because I think that it is the wrong answer to the fundamental question of equity. However, given that I think that the proper answer involves treaty, dialogue, truth-telling, and and actual say on legislation through seats in the Senate, then my preferred proposal (which wouldn't even involve a constitutional amendment) is about as likely as Satan ice-skating to work. The Voice might be a first step but at the moment, it's the only first step that we're likely to see while people like Rowan Dean have a nasty megaphone through which to spit bile into the discourse of the nation.
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