Remeber the referendum as a whole cost $364.6 million taxpayer dollars.
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Completely unnecessary when the govt could have just reinstated "the voice" like we used to have
There is 364.6 million things they could have done and chose not to.
This is a lazy argument.
First, because the comment stands alone, it invites the ridiculous assertion that if voting is expensive, then why should we do any voting at all?
But, of course, thats probably not the intent of the comment. I'd guess your intent was to state how much of a waste that particular vote was. Which is likewise how many people probably felt about the same sex marriage plebiscite, or before that the republic referendum, or any other you can think of.
The point is, a large enough portion of effected people across the country were deemed to see this issue as important enough to consider or rebuff a proposed change. It might've meant nothing to you, in this case, but there were people on both sides of the argument that it meant a lot to, and they still needed the rest of us to weigh in.
Anyway, my issue is with the argument put in dollar terms like that, it just misses the point of all these sorts of things we do.
Ur missing the whole point the referendum wasnt a vote on the issue of a voice as many like to say it was. It was a vote to put said voice in the constitution we could have had a voice right now and they could have been given $364.6 million. But instead we had a vote to put it in the constitution and we have neither a voice or 364.6 million dollars to help solve indiginous issues. The vote was unnessasary but instead we had the vote and we have no voice whatsoever the government gambled on putting it in the constitution and lost it all.
No, you missed the point of the referendum. But you have understood the action proposed to be taken, which is half the story.
Essential to the referendim is the previous experience of centralising Aboriginal organisations along the same vein as the Voice was supposed to be. The problem was, from government to government, there was a lack of ongoing commitment, the organisations were subject to the political winds of the day.
The half of the story you've missed:
Putting a requirement for 'a Voice' in the Constitution sets a minimum standard that all governments in the future would have to meet. In whatever form suits them and the political tides of the day, but they couldn't shut the body down entirely without ensuring replacement of that body with another.
The government could, or may, re-establish an authority like the Voice now, but as before, it has no protection from being closed down for whatever reason, without replacement in the future.
It was a really smart proposal. The fear campaign from Advance, and the poor promotion of the case from the YES side, led to the simple and good proposal being lost in trashy scare campaigns and uplifting adverts of no substance. Not to mention the mostly horrible 'debates' that never actually covered the proposal itself and always wandered off into ridiculous areas the proposal didnt cover.
Some of the best speakers i found on the subject were Hannah Mcglade, Julian Leeser, Anne Twomey, but there were plenty more.
ok so heres the timeline for all representative bodies:
1973: The National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC) was established by the Whitlam Government (Labor Party) as the first national body elected by Aboriginal people. Its main role was advisory only.
1977: The NACC was abolished by the Fraser Government (Liberal-National Coalition) after a review found it ineffective. It was replaced by the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC), which was supposed to be a representative body for Indigenous people to advise the government on policy matters and to promote self-determination.
1985: The NAC was dissolved by the Hawke Government (Labor Party), which established the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 1989 as a new representative body2. ATSIC had both representative and administrative functions, and was composed of elected regional councils and a national board of commissioners.
2005: ATSIC was abolished by the Howard Government (Liberal-National Coalition) after allegations of corruption, mismanagement, and lack of accountability. It was replaced by a network of government-appointed advisory bodies, such as the National Indigenous Council and the Ministerial Taskforce on Indigenous Affairs.
2010: The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (NCAFP) was established as an independent and representative body for Indigenous people, with funding support from the Rudd Government (Labor Party). The NCAFP aimed to be a national voice for Indigenous rights, interests, and aspirations.
2019: The NCAFP ceased operations due to lack of funding from the Morrison Government (Liberal-National Coalition). The government instead supported the development of a new representative body, called the Indigenous Voice, which would provide advice to parliament and government on matters affecting Indigenous people.
2019: The National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) is a government agency responsible for Indigenous affairs. created following an announcement by Prime Minister Scott Morrison (Liberal-National Coalition). This is currently the only governmental active representative body Since the voice was never implemented.
2023: A referendum on whether to enshrine the Indigenous Voice in the constitution was held on October 14, 2023. This referendum was rejected but does not necessarily mean it cannot still be enshrined in legislation (which I and I think many other people are in full support of).
Seems that both parties have continuosly created and destroyed said represntative bodies since their inception 1973. None of these bodies had any protection from being closed down for whatever reason but all where replaced with something else reletivly quickly indicating that said need for constitutional enshrinement was and is complete bullshit.
Im gonna go listen to these speakers then listen to the people who dislike them the most and then form my own opinion about whatever the hell they gonna say.
I'm not sure why you're not understanding this. The 'possibility'of a representative body is a very different proposition than the 'requirement' of a representative body. Both for practical purposes (the guarantee of continuance), and in negotiating when the pollies decide they aren't happy with the old body.
An example,
I'm not sure about other States, but my State (WA), changed the law a few years ago to a mandatory jail term for people who assault a police officer. Before that, i'm sure it would have been very likely you'd go to jail for assaulting a police officer. But, it was never guaranteed. The change to a guaranteed minimum jail sentence, while functionally might not have vastly different outcomes for the perpetrators, the guarantee does give the police officers an added psychological barrier from assault in highly charged situations.
Note: This is one among other reasons the law was introduced. Eg, One punch assaults leading to deaths come to mind.
So, i hope this finally explains why, said need was not bullshit. And the wiser decision at the time, even in failure.
I disagree still seems like a lot of money to acheive absolutly no difference of the outcome based acheivables. If a bill passes in the woods and never effects the existing outcomes did it really pass?
Be careful with outcomes based achievables. Its a nice sounding phrase, but as the Abbott government, and their successors found out when they introduced and favoured the Indigenous Advisory Council, (to the detriment of the National Congress).
Without the buy in from the people themselves you get no where fast. A body and decisions about your life foisted upon you by a distant and obscure leadership leads to poor putcomes and decision making.
A different example, to illustrate my point:
I and my peers were once forced to learn Indonesian when the school had other subjects available and a notional choice. The Principal decided the enrolments in Indonesian weren't high enough. So all students from the primary school who'd learned Indonesian were told they must carry on with Indonesian while the rest of the year could pick. Suffice to say little Indonesian was learned in the years following, and few teachers stayed due to their inability to control a student body who were made an enemy in their own education. I'm not saying the student body were right in how they acted, but the source was an out of touch decision by a distant leadership.
Back to the Abbott decision:
In the case of Abbott's direct outcomes based solution all the money spent seems largely wasted, as the larger population indicators over the period have all deteriorated quite dramatically.
This is a key reason why the structure of the Voice was so important. The model proposed in the calma*, langton report went a long way to ensure fair representation of all Aboriginal nations across Australia. (notice i say nations, not people. There was a glaring omission by both sides about the guarantee of personal democratic rights that was never addressed in the campaigns).
Anyway, here i've gone rabbiting away again. Suffice to say the 'involvement' of stakeholders in the research and decision making process is key for a trustworthy and effective governance. This is largely why the failure of the referendum hasn't blown back on the Labor party, as evidenced in the Dunkley by-election, with a minor 3 point swing to the libs and a Labor retention.
Thats more about the implemwntation of a represntative body not if it is in the consatitution tho. Any hope of this system being implemented wich im in full support of got killed by the gamblw on putting it in the constitution which would have ensured none of these things.
But we're back again at, putting it in the constitution lifts the negotiating position as a, 'this will happen' we just have to work out how, from 'this might happen, convince us that we should'. The bargaining positions fundamentally change.
Give it a few years, another of these commissions will be implemented, or expanded etc. And the cycle will continue. Perhaps it'll even resemble the Voice proposals, but they'll never have the constitutional backing. And they're weaker for it.
The money spent on the referendum was worth the risk of failure. And the residual benefits ameliorate the cost of failure to a larger degree than people give credit.
Why should one particular race have a position of power with more bargaining power than any other race or represntative body. Im a firm beleiver in equality sounds pretty anti equallity to me.
The silent majority where always going to vote no anyone with half a braincell could have told u that.
Ah, 'race', always dangerous ground to take the discussion to.
The constitutional change wasn't about 'race'. It was about giving a group of people with a similar context an irrevocable minimum base of contact for the wider community to engage with, and build upon.
I don't know that calling all aboriginal australians a single race is well thought out. I defer to 'nations'. The important distinctions between people, especially where policy decisions are concerned, are their contextual groupings, not ambiguous 'racial' groups. This is demonstrated in no better place than the population of Australia, we are many races, and they aren't what defines an 'Australian'.
To say one group in a society, who is identified as having particular impediments to their prosperity, getting particular attention is anti-equality means you misunderstand the point of the Australian, and Western, model of social welfare states. Instead of demanding equality for all, which has been tried and failed through many different types of governance structures its more practical to demand minimum standards for all. And thats really what we attempt to do in Australia, we equalise to a minimum standard. If you want more, go for gold.
Your comment reflects a confusion about the 'apples to apples' comparison, (say white to black) but the focus on race is the comments problem. So far as you can ever distinguish a specific 'race'.
The real 'apples to apples' comparison is with other contextual groupings of people in Australian society who do, or do not get much attention from the government. These groupings are diverse and overlapping they include, disabled people, the oil and gas industry, farmers, immigrants, Tasmanians, retail workers, retailers, the Swedish diaspora. These are all groups of people based on all sorts of significant contextual and cultural, geographical characteristics that aren't based on the ambiguous term race.
Read the calma langton report, and you'll see their approach to a Voice representative body never treated the Aboriginal people of Australia as a single entity. They have a plan for a broad spectrum of geographic and nation based representation.
race /rās/ noun
- A group of people identified as distinct from other groups because of supposed physical or genetic traits shared by the group. Most biologists and anthropologists do not recognize race as a biologically valid classification, in part because there is more genetic variation within groups than between them.
- A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution.
Im pretty sure the definition of race covers exactly what u described.
Still even using your language i disgree with giving a specific group of people an irrovocable anything of power with the only prerequsite being that u are of that specific group.
Sure give disadvantaged a represntative voice but u really need to be carefull with making something irravocable eg the americans where given irravocable guns to fight the british and now they have to live with the consequences of that decision.
I'm happy you've looked up the definition of race. My comment was about your use, not the definition.
Now we are on the same page, i'm sure you can see that the use of the word 'race' didn't meaningfully capture the kind of group we're talking about.
Unfortunately you've applied my use of the word irrevocable too broadly. Fair enough there was no explicit mention of group. I was inferring the ability of Parliament to remove without replacement, not the general populace, who always have the referendum option for constitutional change open. We had previously discussed the need for parliamentry restraint as a key reason for the Voice, therefore i didn't feel a need to re-establish the notion. Nonetheless, now we understand each other on that point also.
Your last point is good, and i largely agree with the sentiment. The problem with the US constitutional example is that its not an example of an irrevocable law, and no law should be thought as irrrevocable in the broad sense. They could and probably should amend their constitution.
Lack of gun reform in the US is actually a problem of their legal and political systems losing the essence that makes the Western legal system strong. Our legal systems are supposed to slowly react with the changing world, be it a local Magistrate interpretting common law, or the Constitution, these legal instruments are built as changeable entities. Because as you rightly point out nothing can be truly irrevocable. (And this is why i am personally worried about the increasing codification of laws, like the police assault offences i highlighted earlier).
With my clarification of parliament being unable to revoke a Voice power, i hope you understand the misunderstanding between our positions.
Another quick aside, you say its wasted money, but if you're a Classical Economics fan, who puts stock in a nations yearly GDP, then that money probably contributed to "Grrrr0wtH!!" :) /joke
After re-reading your comment here, your suggesting putting the $364.6 million into indigenous issues directly. Thats a fair discussion to have for budgetary matters. Directing the funding to where it may have the largest impact is an important consideration.
I think this makes the argument for holding a referendum stronger. There are a number of effects this referendum has had:
- education of constitutional law
- normalisation of holding this thing called a referendum (something younger generations had never done)
- a year of aboriginal issues being central to national debate. No matter how toxic it was, everybody will be a lot more familiar with the challenges that group face.
- the Aboriginal community now know beyond any doubt that a 1/3 of Australia have an understanding and want to help in a truly meaningful way. That shouldn't be dismissed lightly.
- politicians understand the electorate on this single issue more clearly. A general election could never deliver this. Take Bill Shortens 2019 failure at election as an example, they still don't quite know why they failed, all they can say it was likely to do with their tax policy. Its one of the reasons they're so gun shy about tax changes in our current national debate.
Sure theres other things the money could have gone on, (there always is). And they might prove to be a better investment. But there have been short term and long term benefits from this referendum even in failure, and even if a voter didn't support the proposition itself, there are still recognisable benefits.
So you don't like democracy? Nice to know
I love democracy and democracy spoke. Democracy did not speak on the voice it spoke on putting it in the constitution an expensive and pointless gamble that killed the voice from existing in a form not within the constitution.
We've had similar things in the past but governments removed them when they became inconvenient.
I blame the referendum failure on the fear mongering and straight up lying committed by the Coalition for political gain at the expense of Indigenous Australians.
It would have been completely useless if not included in the constitution
The last one was removed essentially because they misused funds to try fight gang rape and assault charges
Democracy spoke, but through it spoke the lies, the deception, the disinformation and the fearmongering that was blasted through all available channels by the no campaign. Facts didn't matter. Fact-checking didn't matter. Telling the truth didn't matter. The liars won.
There have been numerous legislated forms of the voice in the past decades. All of them ceased to exist when the government of the day didn't want to put up with them any longer. The only way to guarantee a persistent body is by enshrining it in the constitution. Frankly, it wouldn't have cost Australians anything to vote yes. They chose to believe the lies and to fall for the FUD.
There have been about 8 or 10 versions of a legislated or regulated voice-adjacent body since the 1970s. Precisely which one should they reinstate?
Up to them, just like every other bill
Remember governments past and present piss away this and more routinely for far less social benefit