‘the voice’

the main event

Disclaimers: the below is an individual opinion and is not intended to be any kind of formal voting advice.

The below will be a combination of Q+A mixed in with opinions.

It should be known before reading further that I think a huge portion of the debate on this topic has been disingenuous and unnecessarily emotional or inflammatory from both sides, which I personally cannot stand. Additionally, whatever billions of dollars & advisory bodies we are currently throwing at the Indigenous issues The Voice proposes to fix, it’s true they clearly aren’t working very well right now.

With that out of the way, let’s get into it.

What are we actually voting on?

Australian’s are voting on whether or not this proposed advisory body should be permanently in the Constitution and as part of that, it enables recognition for the Indigenous. That. Is. It.

Any claims that this is ‘a vote about whether or not the Voice should exist at all’ is political garbage. We elect politicians to create policy - if they think The Voice is a good policy, just vote on it and make it and then. That’s what we pay them for.

The only reason we’re all voting is the goal to have it in the Constitution from the very beginning and intentionally confusing the issue by saying if voters don’t want that, then obviously people don’t want it at all. Or the alternative from ‘yes’ advocates saying if it isn’t permanent, we don’t want it.

Personally, I found this contradiction undermined a lot of the arguments about why the Voice was so important. If it’s going to make such an incredible and positive difference and offer a solution to all of these long-term issues - wouldn’t you commit to creating it anyway?

Do they need to have a referendum to create The Voice? Why does it need to be in the Constitution?

Technically they do not need a referendum to create The Voice. It can be legislated/created by Parliament right now but won’t be in the Constitution. The main argument for why it should be in the Constitution is based on the idea that it cannot be removed by future governments the way previous Indigenous advisory bodies such as ATSIC have been.

Ironically, the removal of ATSIC was a bi-partisan decision that came about due to systemic corruption of the original body that was heavily linked to misuse of funding. You can read more about this here. This is one of the main reasons given why The Voice is proposed to be advisory only, with no access to programs or grants, to ensure people can’t use these previous issues as an argument against it. For this reason, I agreed that the proposed advisory body was more likely to be successful and less prone to systemic corruption if it didn’t have responsibilities such as managing funding and it was a good choice.

However main argument for Constitutional enshrinement is that The Voice is so important that it should never be able to be removed. I perceive this to be a horrible argument in favour of a new-style advisory body that has never existed and every previous attempt at something similar has been, by all accounts, very unsuccessful.

(It is worth noting that some of the most important policy areas in Australia, such as Medicare, are not in the Constitution but most of us would consider it unimaginable for it to ever be proposed to be removed.)

It is often argued by the federal government that amending the Constitution like this is ‘not a big deal’. Realistically we have only altered the Australian Constitution 8 times in our country’s history, out of 44 attempts – a referendum passing is a massive deal. Political attempts to downplay the legal and Constitutional significance of what they are proposing have made me incredibly angry. It’s a big deal or it’s not – pick a side.

What will The Voice look like and what powers will it have?

The communication on this question from voters will go down in the history books as a lesson in what not to do when lobbying and would likely have played a major role in why it failed. If asked to pick the other main factor why it would fail, having an Indigenous spokesperson for the ‘No’ campaign was pivotal. Funnily enough, the middle ground or ‘swing’ voters didn’t seem to react positively to some in the ‘Yes’ camp calling an Indigenous Australian racist. Go figure.

Another frustratingly contradictory argument in the debate has been ‘don’t worry about what powers it has, as Parliament will control those’ – but that means future governments could have the ability to strip the Voice down to being pretty much useless, right? Wouldn’t that make all the efforts to keep it permanently in the Constitution somewhat redundant?

This also infers that we should just trust politicians to do the right thing – they’ll sort it out and it’ll all be fine. Don’t worry about it.

Yes, you should have laughed aloud when you read that. That is the appropriate response.

I also found it odd that those who claim politicians have not done the right thing by the Indigenous community for decades are entirely trustworthy to determine the level of power their Indigenous advisory body should have and that them being able to change that at any time is a great thing.

Is it just an advisory body?

Yes. I think it is a valid question however why people would want to be involved in an advisory body that can, for all intents and purposes, simply be ignored. When looking at the statistical portion of indigenous Australians, they make up only about 3% of the population. Despite their small percent come out they're generally well represented within the Parliament as elected representatives on both sides of politics, across almost every state and territory. They can vote on the changes they want to see.

Why would someone in the Indigenous community want to be involved with The Voice rather than being an elected representative? There are many comments that they would be nonpartisan representatives that are solely there to represent their community - but there is (from what we know at this point) nothing to stop them being members of parties anyway.

A huge body of work called the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process Final Report (which I’ll call the Design Report) was done to see what The Voice may look like. You can view it here. I have found it bizarre and unfortunate that the Yes campaign did not feel as if they could further rely on this report as it contained probably the most comprehensive body of research relation to The Voice. It seemed unusual that there was work that was readily available that could answer, or at least possibly answer, some of the questions being presented about The Voice and yet they seem to rarely refer to it in any of the promotional material.

In going through the Design Report (see image below) the representation model proposed was generally statistical based on state/territory, plus rural Indigenous population numbers. This is funnily enough very close to the way that representation works in Parliament. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the way that the Indigenous population, up until this point has been distributed or governed throughout Australia, of which there are hundreds of tribes many of whom have differing languages, belief systems and interest in integrating in Westernised politics.

It is not often publicly discussed how this conflict will be managed in the context of how The Voice is proposed to work. Similarly, nobody during this process surveyed the majority of these tribes to find out their stance on The Voice and myself and many others perceive this to be a failure of policy.

Image from report page 117

The way the voice is being presented right now, in a way that would sit alongside Parliament in an advisory only capacity, is perceived by some as oddly tokenistic. Like a child given a plastic hammer while the parent uses a power tool next to them, those on The Voice would have very little real power but claim this will fix was decades of research, advisory groups, internal departments, Ministries and billions of dollars a year have not. It is also worth noting that we don’t seem to really understand why these things aren’t working, only that The Voice means ‘we will listen’ and things will become dramatically better.

Will it? At this rate we will never know.

What is likely to happen?

The Voice is doomed to fail based on polling and has been for months.

Taking out the fact the government did not do a good job on the legal proposal itself for the Constitutional amendment, I refuse to believe the ‘Yes’ camp has campaigned as well as they could have and give credit to the ‘No’ as an example of an outstanding campaign. Credit where it is due.

I believe most people voting Yes are doing so because they can see the reality that what is happening now to help Indigenous communities isn’t working well and that needs to change. I don’t think they have any bad intent and I completely agree with this general opinion. I simply lack their faith that The Voice would achieve that, which also comes from a background working inside the public service for a time and seeing what it looks like when shiny promises turn into policy. However, many people vote regularly on the basis of hope for a better outcome than what is happening now and that this mentality should not be treated as being a bad thing. It’s what a lot of democracy is based on.

Obviously, most No voters are not racist (insert eye roll) but instead have concerns that were not addressed, and many were turned off after being called racists if they didn’t do what giant corporates and politicians were pushing them to do. I also think politicians trying to use the line of “just say yes and trust us to work out the details” is remarkably stupid and went about as well as you’d expect.

While The Voice would certainly result in race-based appointments, the argument that this will create a two-tiered society, in my opinion, is a bit late. I would say that the ATSI population is already one of the most ‘othered’ racial groups in the world in modern times. From job applications, government tenders, medical forms, anything – you are usually either a regular person, or you get a special box that says ‘Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander’. They’re already intentionally separated out in almost every area of society, even if it’s for the intent of helping, so to me this would just be another area on the pile that nobody has cared that much about until now.

The next steps.

I assume there will be much screaming and absolute nonsense thrown around.

If the ‘No’ vote does succeed as everyone assumes, it means there is a chance to instead look at why everything that is being done until this point has not worked and in my opinion a thorough review like this is long, long overdue.

If you are a ‘Yes’ voter looking for better news in the event of a ‘No’ win, you should know they created the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) in 2019 that has almost exactly the same purpose as The Voice - it just isn’t in the Constitution - so there is an alternative avenue for them to do the listening work right now if they truly have the interest.

This was (ironically) established under the Liberals and continues to be funded by Labor so there is plenty of reason to believe this agency, should it do the positive work needed on behalf of the Indigenous community, will continue to exist.

“The National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) works in genuine partnership to enable the self-determination and aspirations of First Nations communities. We lead and influence change across government to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a say in the decisions that affect them.” Find out more here.