REFERENDUM FOR AN ABORIGINAL ‘VOICE’

What is this hopelessly confused issue all about?

The “Voice” proposal means that a special committee of the self-appointed Aboriginal Academic Elite(above) will have the power to veto any legislative bill before Parliament, even if 99% of the total population demands this bill, or that it’s passing into law is urgent. This veto can last forever.

So-called “Representational Democracy” means that we elect a representative, who then conveys our constitutional will to the Parliament wherein this is homogenized and condensed into national consensus, to then be implemented by the Public Service.

As it happens, every single adult Australian shares equal opportunity to participate in this highly neglected process, regardless of whether they are male or female, European, Aboriginal, or immigrant.

The “Voice” proposal means that a special committee of the self-appointed Aboriginal Academic Elite will have the power to veto any legislative bill before Parliament, even if 99% of the total population demands this bill, or that it’s passing into law is urgent. This veto can last forever.

In other words, based entirely on supposed race, a dictatorship of a dozen or so people can control the entire nation, purely on ill-informed whim.

Is it unreasonable to describe such deliberation as a “whim”?

Considering the record of the Voice’s architects, led by academic Marcia Langton and hat ‘n beard theatrics clown, Patrick Dodson (Special Envoy for the Uluru Statement and Reconciliation) neither of whom possess any Aboriginal culture, nor speak any Aboriginal languages, and who have never asked the culturally Aboriginal people of the north and centre of Australia about their needs of government, this is a more than fair criticism. They have no knowledge or insights to contribute.

The same criticism applies to Professor Megan Davis, an architect of the ‘Voice’. She clearly has no idea what defines a democracy while promoting the very anthesis of democracy… an extra veto voice in Parliament. Meanwhile, NT Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Price pointed out that the ‘Voice’ is a Trojan Horse for elitism.

Typically, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney has never evidenced any comprehension of issues relevant to Central and Northern Australian Aborigines.

Constitutional law ‘expert’ Professor Anne Twomey outrageously claims it would be inappropriate for the government to release draft legislation details ahead of the vote. She claims that Australia’s most successful (1967) referendum would not have succeeded if details had been provided, which is arrant nonsense because large teams of Aboriginal women traversed the nation in the ten-year lead-up to the vote, explaining to anyone who would listen what the referendum meant to Aboriginal people. That is the reason it was the most successful referendum.

It is significant that ordinary Australians, by then fully informed, were very happy to support Aborigines, yet politicians of 1967 were still hopelessly divided.

A ‘Voice’ to represent… precisely what issues?

Readers of this document are understandably confused about the actual issues of policy failures in the past that the ‘Voice’ is intended to remedy. The author of this document has studied and worked with these for half a century, however, our focus is the Aboriginal-intensive Northern regions and on Arnhem Land in particular. Although we are familiar with southern and eastern state conditions, our mandate is the linguistically defined northern commentariat. Our issues of commonality are:

The all-pervading preponderance of indigenous languages in the north, with not even basic comprehension of English language;

A culture that is in almost every way different from European culture;

Vast geographical distances from information and resource centres;

High expense of basics for survival;

The indifference or even hostility of Government.

Liaison personnel representing government services and funding are profoundly ignorant of Aboriginal languages and culture, even though many profess to be Aboriginal and that such knowledge is their primary qualification, ascertained essentially by fraudulent job application form tick-boxes.

Thanks to failures of government, most NT Aborigines, particularly the young, are now illiterate… in any language. The immediate outcome is that almost no NT Aborigines comprehend nutrition, hygiene, food-toxicity, job accountability, western law, or the role of political representation; and very few have any idea of what is happening beyond their community, let alone Australia or the world. Basically, if it is not a family issue they have no interest, which is what being tribal actually means.

These factors reveal a never-acknowledged reality: that although Australia is one country, it consists of two different worlds. There is virtually no transmission between the two; a profound language and cultural communication gulf that is millennia apart. The urbanite ‘Voice’ cannot even begin to address this.

What is needed is:

Recognition of Aboriginal languages, which means all Government liaison personnel being proficient in at least one local Aboriginal language per linguistic region. Is this possible? I do it every day, badly, in two languages, and if I can do it anybody can do it, better. The ‘Voice’ would actually be a terminal hindrance.

Recognition of Aboriginal law. Can this be done? Yes, validated by an Australian Court, applying Aboriginal Law enabled a ”basket case” dysfunctional community to become famously functional following three months application, precipitated by a mere twenty minutes consultation with tribal authorities. The ‘Voice’ would terminally inhibit Recognition because it would threaten the power base of the ‘Voice’ Elite.

The joke is, none of our elected representatives have any interest in what laws or services we want anyway. No politicians, Aboriginal or European, listen to us.

Vote NO to this absurdity.

From a Northern Territory reader