'We've been here for 60,000 years!"
That's the claim on the tv promo for Albo's (Waterloo) "Voice"
In 60,000 years, what have they achieved by comparison with all other ethnicities Worldwide?
“what have they achieved by comparison with all other ethnicities Worldwide?
NO VOTE IS A CHANCE TO RECLAIM OUR TRUE VALUES
Polling lastweek showed support for Labor’s constitutionally entrenched Indigenous Voicedropping below 50 per cent for the first time.
For months,the Prime Minister has been pushing his great legacy issue as just a matter ofbeing polite and respectful towards people who’ve been wronged.
For him, andfor the green-left generally, supporting the Voice is a way of atoning for whatthey see as the fundamental injustice of Britain settling Australia (as ifanyone believes we would be unsettled now, 235 years on, if the British hadjust sailed by).
But what ifthe coming referendum turns out to be less a chance for breast-beating andapologising for the remote past, and more a chance for millions of Australiansto reassert their faith in our country by rejecting this needless and franklyinsulting change?
Becausewhatever mistakes and injustices might have occurred along the way, as thepresence of 11 individual Indigenous voices already in the parliament shows,and as the welcome into Australia of millions of non-English-speaking migrantsconfirms – whatever faults we might have as a country and as a people,entrenched and systematic racism is not among them.
No doubtthere’s an abundance of goodwill towards Aboriginal people and a willingness togo the extra mile to help those trapped in a cycle of substance abuse,dysfunction and domestic violence.
But this ishardly the fault of the taxpayers, who fund special services for Aboriginalpeople to the tune of $30bn-plus each year, and is hardly going to be helped bygiving even more say to the same Aboriginal activists who blame all their illson colonialism rather than bad personal choices and the reluctance ofofficialdom to demand the same standards of Aboriginal people in terms of goingto school, going to work and obeying the law as are expected of everyone else.
Since whenhave we been inclined to defer to the political class, big business, wokebillionaires, entitled sports administrators, various legal fraternities with avested interest in keeping the government onside, and celebrities pontificatingon what’s best for us? Australians hate this stuff.
And by tryingto rig the debate by refusing to have a constitutional convention, by rushing aparliamentary committee inquiry that ignored numerous critical submissions fromformer judges, and by trying to bully anyone who wants to donate to the lessfashionable No side, it only fires up our characteristic support for theunderdog.
A lot of whatwe were previously inclined to accept as small acts of courtesy towardsmarginalised people, I think, is now starting to grate. Like the ubiquitousacknowledgments of country, as if our own land doesn’t really belong to us.Like the now-routine flying of the Aboriginal flag co-equally with the nationalflag, as if the flag of 4 per cent is as important as the flag of allof us. Like the irritating habit of broadcasters such as the ABC usingIndigenous place names, as if the names by which places have long been knownare now only provisional.
People arestarting to grasp that the Prime Minister’s Voice project is just the start ofsomething much bigger and even more intrusive, like treaties between the governmentand the 500-plus separate Indigenous “First Nations” that are thought to haveexisted in 1788. And like a wholesale rewriting of Australian history from agrievance perspective.
After all, “Voice,Truth, Treaty” was the demand of the Uluru Statement from the Heart that the PMstated in his election acceptance speech Labor would implement “in full”.
In a foretasteof what’s to come, Aboriginal groups are already starting treaty discussionswith some state governments. Last week, one group demanded veto rights onmining and agricultural developments over an area of south west Queenslandalmost the size of Tasmania. The relevant Queensland government ministeradmitted that treaty settlements could involve hundreds of millions of dollars,per treaty, and there’s likely to be 150-plus of them in Queensland.
It’simpossible to say what will flow from a successful Voice referendum, becausethe government refuses to spell out any of this detail, but it will almostcertainly be much more complexity and much more cost in everything to do withland use.
Start tounpack the logic behind the Voice and it’s quite toxic to any concept of one,equal Australia. If an ancestry stretching back beyond 1788 entitles those withit to an extra say over everything government does, how can we keep tellingmigrants that they are every bit as Australian as the descendants of those whocame on the First Fleet or those whose forebears were here 60,000 years ago?
We can’t,because the Voice sets up two classes of Australian – Indigenous andnon-Indigenous.
And byimplication, it also says the amount of time your ancestors have spent inAustralia determines your “Australian-ness”.
Which, ofcourse, flies in the face of our ethos of multiculturalism that says we are allequal as Australians provided we join the team and love our country and itsvalues.
It’s now manydecades since there has been any institutional discrimination againstAboriginal people. As almost every large-scale social interaction shows, modernAustralians are colourblind.
So why shouldpeople who have never themselves wronged anyone, be expected to make acollective act of atonement towards others who have never themselves beenwronged?
Almost nothingwould be more destructive of social harmony and global peace than this ideathat some must always be making amends to others based on centuries-oldhistory.
Earlier,looking at the weight of money and moral intimidation behind the Yes campaign,I thought the Voice referendum would most likely leave us permanently dividedby race.
Now, I thinkordinary Australians will claim their country back by voting it down.
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