Still Searching For A Reason to Vote Yes. Operative Word "Searching"

I just want to paint a picture of the obstacle between me personally and voting yes on Saturday.

1) I need to be confident I can exclude all parts of a possible interpretation of the proposed law as:

"The recognition of Aboriginals and Torres Straight Islanders as citizens of the commonwealth of Australia is through the provision of the Voice, Parliament shall have the exclusive right to dictate the composition, function and powers of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, and they are not bound to listen to the Voice."

I think I'm most persuadable by a legal argument, that "Australia" in the proposed law, can't be interpreted as "The Commonwealth of Australia" but given, the implied effort, and for I concede, complicated but good reasons the language does nothing to recognize First Nations sovereignty.

2.) That enshrining, and this is hard to word, these bodies is a good idea. Because we aren't enshrining one permanent incarnation of the voice. Success or basket case, over time legislation will transform the voice. So it's enshrining an ALP voice, a Coalition voice, a Greens voice, a One Nation voice and all the future governments that might revisit the legislation. It's a Voice when parliament has under-representation of indigenous members, and a Voice when parliament has overrepresentation in parliament.

I didn't get very far, largely because I've relocated myself half a planet.

So let me get to the new stuff I considered, though returns diminished.

Getting On The Ground

So, I think in every possible way, the insulation living in Mexico provided was advantageous. Wandering around suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne...

Let me put it this way, there's a certain vision of Australia embodied by Telstra, Qantas, Channel 9, Bert Newton etc. Qantas is in that list, they make these in-house productions for their safety videos generally with the Australian youth choir singing "I still call Australia home" and shit and hamming up Qantas is Australia, Australia is Qantas type vibes, and like "we Australians suck tea through a Tim Tam biscuit" and ran their current "feels like home" TV campaign where downsizing mum's sons get together and fly gay son back business class from Japan for her birthday and she cries and my inference is that this ad is pitched toward, you know, white Australia, negative gearing and low interest rates Australia.

Australia that reads about how their trips to Europe a coffee is now $8 AUD stories in the news, the Australia that leaves the AFL Grand Final at 3 quarter time to beat the traffic. That is Qantas and Qantas is Australia. Much moreso than I ever will be.

And then when our plane came into land at Kingsford Smith Airport the pilot did the acknowledgement of Country, which I understand has started to spread round the world, but it stretches my credulity that a fucking Airline respects the traditional owners of the land that was converted into, to quote Australian independent film "The Castle" "a bloody big driveway". It just seemed beyond performative into stark hypocrisy.

It's something to ponder for the autopsy, should the referendum fail, but in the widespread adoption of acknowledgement of country, particularly the corporate zeal, it wound up spoiling the nation's appetite for a Voice. 

Once on the ground, obviously, a no campaign exists in some capacity, but speaking relatively, there is no "No campaign" I've seen reports on things said by maybe two to three No voters, and maybe one op-ed, but the Yes campaign is easily at least 10 times the size of any No campaign.

That said, in my current suburb, home turf of AFL team the Hawthorne Hawks, I guesstimate that there are more "Magpies Premiers 2023" posters in windows than "Vote Yes" or "I'm Voting Yes" posters and placards. 

Apparently, celebrity endorsements of campaigns don't actually help a campaign. I suspect that if you live in a Mansion with a lookout tower, a pool, a circular driveway, a tennis court with views of 3 different elite private schools and you put a poster on the fence declaring your intention to vote yes, I at least get suspicious. 

What I'm getting at, in a similar vein was expressed by Tyler Austin Harper recently on an episode of the Glenn Show:

Harvard can come out vocally in support of diversity and vocally in support of anti-racism and DEI while sitting upon billions and billions of dollars, then we should wonder to what extent are those ideas of the ruling class or to what extent are those ideas really about radical social upheaval. And the way that the administrators at Harvard claim you know um so I think if they you know if they care if they would throw money at it and I think the fact that they don't and the fact that they can support diversity and so on so vociferously um points to the fact that these are ideas that have totally been co-opted by the American Elite

I was walking to an Office Works to buy a keyboard and mouse and crossing through the park I saw a gaggle of Yes campaign volunteers holding a bbq, and I took a photo:

The photo won't tell you much, and we would generally expect that campaign volunteers will be amiable collections of mostly white elderly and students. I contemplated taking my concerns about how the High Court can interpret the proposed ammendment to the constitution, and you know, maybe I chickened out, but it certainly felt like asking would be trolling because nobody there would be able to actually argue the case. At best just assert that my concerns were unfounded.

I find the Yes campaign, highly unserious. An impression being on the ground has just reinforced. Okay, this is seriously the best thing ever:

"A meaningful step in the right direction." and "A simple, positive and practical step"

Stirring and persuasive stuff. My impression of the Yes campaign, is an unflattering one. It looks and feels to me, like a bunch of wealthy White people just itching to start using Aboriginal designs as symbols of status. The implied no campaign slogan to counter this poster sufficiently would be "A potential misstep costing us decades"

My previous post went through how all the Yes campaigns arguments are bad. I feel they can just all be lumped collectively under "intentional fallacy" with the Yes campaign pinning everything on the Voice doing exactly what they assume it will do, with sufficient confidence they don't even have to talk about the content of the referendum as if everyone knows what the Voice will look like and what it will say and do. Which if true, would render the Voice redundant. 

Anyway, to put it bluntly, the Yes campaign look, talk and act like untrustworthy losers and the No campaign is conspicuously absent. 

Following the Flip Floppers Trail

So while I dedicated significantly less time and energy as I packed up and shipped out to this referendum, I did try to scan trash broadsheet rag "The Age's" most read stories to see if anything about the referendum cracked the top 9. I saw that the state of public discourse was so bad, that the media covered the flip-flopping of Malaysian born 88 year old singer Kamahl who flipped from No-to-Yes for like 12 hours and then Yes-to-No after those 12 hours expired. 

Now, I don't give a shit what Kamahl thinks about the referendum, but the coverage put me onto Yes campaigner and constitutional law scholar Eddie Synot, who was on a podcast that briefly convinced Kamahl to flip, before he flopped.

Seemed worth a google and I found this article, that at the fucking least actually addressed the wording of the constitution. Something the Yes campaign I have found, is good at avoiding. My overall impression being that most people assume the proposed law says what they assume it would say.

So here's the article, that should you wish to cast an informed vote, I encourage you to read. 

I'm not going to break it down, read it, think for yourself. If you can't think for yourself, you should vote no. It was helpful, but not sufficient to dissuade me from my impression that the Yes campaign, is predominantly based on an intentional fallacy - that being, the Yes camp, appears to believe that the constitution shall forever be, interpreted as the authors intended it. Which also presumes we know what the authors intended, which I am not persuaded of.

It did cause me to flip again on something though - 

The sequencing of Voice, Treaty, Truth has been given significant thought.

Voice precedes Treaty because fair, modern treaty negotiations require first the establishment of a representative Indigenous body to negotiate the rules of the game with the state. It can’t be left to the state alone, and the state must have a group of people with whom to negotiate.

In Victoria, this was achieved through a specific representative institution – the First Peoples Assembly.

So my first post on this topic, documents how much weight I gave to my dislike of the proposed design, with its quotas and "cultural legitimacy" and what not, how much it had the stink of the times on it, and why I'd reject that for myself under a kind of Rawlsian original position.  

My second post documents how I flipped saying I'd put too much emphasis on the proposed voice, because it is just short term and largely inconsequential given the expected longevity of the constitution.

Having it pointed out, by this article, that at least some party intend for "The Voice" to handle treaty negotiations, means I do have to weigh the risk of putting together something bad to handle such a monumental duty, it also effects other risks. 

And I just included the sentence about how Victoria managed to assemble "The First Peoples Assembly" without needing some kind of state referendum, or the constitution to recognize it, as an example of how to defeat the point you just tried to make. 

3AW also interviewed a constitutional law expert, though not to argue what is in the referendum but to reassure me about all the details left out. I can see her point, because in many ways, it is mine. That the voice will be defined by the government of the day is precisely my problem, because we have had some shit ones, and I wouldn't let Tony Abbott legislate what my voice is. Ironically, I could go for less detail in the proposed ammendment so it doesn't restrict Voice representations to "matters relating to" since I assume this means Parliament could censure the voice for say expressing solidarity with Hamas as "not relating to" but I feel the Voice is probably better governed by simply letting them make representations about whatever they fucking want to represent on.

So the thought of the proposed Voice handling treaty negotiations, gives me, at least a compelling reason to vote no. Not in isolation, I'm also considering the First Nations Sovereignty argument, that the indigenous parliamentarians cannot have "indigenous voices" because they serve the commonwealth, and this referrendum will, by my I think lucid reading of it's content stipulate that the commonwealth only recognize as the indigenous voice, one that has been defined by Parliament.

Regarding Constitutions, Context Shrinks to Insignificance

So this is just to point out, that for me, I haven't really looked at the No Campaign. What little exposure I have to it, I will say, while they can spew out some absolute garbage points, they generally do mix in, good reasons to vote No. Where I have not received a single "good" reason to vote Yes. 

This is just to highlight the issue of like the US 2nd Amendment, being intended to keep the King of England out of your face, but has wound up making it extremely difficult to deprive mentally ill kids of the ability to take assault weapons into schools and punch holes in students and teachers.

Or that the 13th amendment, would come to protect the property rights of corporations, even though we can infer with some confidence, that the writers of the 13th amendment, meant it to protect the rights of former slaves. Not legal "persons" who are in fact, immortal abstract entities designed to limit the liabilities of their shareholders.

Which is all to say, I shall not be distracted from the words. There's a few more articles I found that actually address the wording:

This explainer from the ABC is a good way for anyone to ground themselves with the actual limits of what they are voting on and for if you have been bamboozled with all the peripheral shit of what polls show, and what the Yes and No campaigns are saying and what Kamahl had for breakfast vs what he shat out.

And deserving a spot on the journalistic wall of shame, is this opinion piece from The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald which threatens to address the wording of the proposed law, but is exclusively for subscribers. It is probably, a trite op-ed, but for me the headline reads like the piece is intended to be a public fucking service, so why the fuck make it "I'll tell you why to vote yes, but first you're going to need to subscribe to our piece-of-shit newspaper." Which I won't do and it should be noted, that The Age decided to potentially ensure "our nation's greatest day of shame" by selling out the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander's for $2 per week.

Identically, Ross Gittins, who I don't mind, he certainly wouldn't crack the bottom 30 staffers employed by The Age/Sydney Morning Herald has an economic argument for voting Yes that is also behind a paywall. Again someone's advice on how to save the Australian taxpayers millions or bajillions of dollars in closing the economic gaps between Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders and the rest of Australia, is held ransom for $2 per week.

So again, I get the impression that the Yes campaign isn't very serious, and doesn't take the issues seriously, which explains how we got this bullfuck wording that isn't certain to be rejected but in my opinion, deserves to be.

From Here On Out

So what I'm going to do, is try to clearly explain what I need to get past to vote Yes. I'm going to break down what the referendum says, line by line, to try and make it as obtuse as possible. I do not care, what people think it means nor how they think it will be interpreted. I need reassurance that it can't be interpreted how I fear it can be interpreted. 

As at writing, the referendum hasn't taken place, but I will get ahead of myself and do some more autopsying which I guess, pre-mortem is vivisecting, as to what went wrong. Because if I didn't look at the words of the referendum and go "yep, cool" something went wrong. What is now well documented is that I read the words and said "I don't know what this fucking means." and I still don't.

Don't Trust Me

Read the words for yourself.

First Line of Content: Recognition

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

Okay, so what I want it to say, is something to the effect of "The present territories of the Commonwealth of Australia, were not found uninhabited. They have been continuously occupied by people for some 60,000+ years. Terra Nullius was horseshit."

Now, would it be nice to to specifically name Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander's as those people? Yeah, and I personally don't have a strong objection to mentioning it. I do feel though that it is a reasonable argument amongst those of the No campaign, to be touchy about singling out races and ethnicities in a constitution. I must begrudgingly admit, that Kamahl might have a point, and many other immigrants that may have dealt with explicit legal privileging of ethnicities or say a religious caste system, that the idea of naming any ethnic group in a constitution is not a good idea.

That aside, it doesn't say something as simple as recognizing that Terra Nullius was horseshit. It instead specifies how the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia recognizes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the "First Peoples of Australia".

This is something else I flipped on since my last post. And I'm going to bring in Casey Affleck now [booooo]:

He lied to me. I can't think of one reason big enough for him to lie that's small enough not to matter. ~ line delivered by actor Casey Affleck in "Gone Baby Gone"

 Similarly, I found myself stuck on what I thought was a far-fetched hypothetical, where this addition to the Australian constitution is employed to overturn any possible future treaty. Last post, I assured myself by definition 2B of the Australian constitution, that the word "Australia" referred to geography, not the Commonwealth of Australia. 

But it stuck in my craw, to paraphrase now, I can't think of a reason big enough to word "First Peoples of Australia" so ambiguously, that is small enough not to matter. In my second post, I detailed how the language now appears deliberately scrubbed of all notion that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are a sovereign people.

I grant, that it is a sticky situation. How do you acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and Australia's actual history of colonization absent a treaty, while preserving them as citizens subject to the laws of the commonwealth of Australia in the Australian constitution. 

That's a fine line. Acknowledge their sovereignty, and an indigenous person in custody is now a prisoner of an unresolved war of conquest, or civil war. 

I have lost my confidence that some future High Court, won't look at section 9 of the constitution, and rule any treaty null-and-void because:

"It says, in return for recognizing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as citizens of the commonwealth of Australia, we gave them this Voice body. They get The Voice and in return become subjects of his majesty King Chucky"

And for me, it is simple. I vote no, and you go back and rewrite this as "Terra Nullius was horseshit, these lands have been peopled for 60 millenia." and have another referendum, and on this point, I'll vote yes. Otherwise, I need assurance that this cannot. possibly. be interpreted. as "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders cede their sovereignty for a representative body subject to the designs of Parliament."

I hope that is clear. I can't vote for this, without that reassurance from someone qualified to give it.

Second Line aka i

there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

This is the only clear and specific part of the proposed law, for me at least. There will have to be a body, and that body, has to, now and forever be called "the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice." 

The bad news is, that given that this. This. This is the only thing that is really getting enshrined, it is such a bad idea that I would not want for myself, that it is sufficient to vote no. To put it in context, this is the specific "how" that the Commonwealth of Australia recognizes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It doesn't just plain recognize their existence and history, it does that through what Parliament can legislate to be an interpretive dance troop, or a sandwich shop. 

It shall be called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice" and any time, any indigenous person says "I demand recognition!" the high court will say "but we do recognize you, through the provision of a body called the voice. Now shut up and enjoy a delicious Voice Tuna Melt."

What is important, is that the constitution shall recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the original inhibitors of the Australian continent and surrounding islanders through one means and one means only. 

Somebody photoshopped an old sci-fi cover, and when the dust settles and an autopsy that resembles my vivisection is conducted it will hopefully sniff its way back to the Uluru Statement from the Heart's call for an enshrined First Nations Voice in the constitution and conclude:

Constitutional recognition through a body, was in hindsight, a Shit Idea.

 It seems many people in the no-vote camp, though I have no real authority to assert this, are just like "why would I enshrine a body what I don't know what it is." and that to me, is actually a reasonable objection. Like, presumably the Yes campaigners are out trying to assure people "it'll be fine" through a reasonable argument, largely they appear to be arguing that research shows when you consult more stakeholders you make better decisions. How much better that argument if they could point to the functioning of an existing body that demonstrated that it did indeed make better decisions.

Ironically, I guess I would be reassured the stakes are lower, if I was assured that parliament could legislate the voice into a food truck that sold delicious grilled cheese sandwiches on the lawns of parliament, and staff members were able to "make representations" by speaking to any parliamentarians that bought a grilled cheese sandwich off them.

Third Line aka ii

the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

So again, everything, and I mean everything I've seen from the Yes Campaign appears to be an intentional fallacy, and here specifically it acts like "on matters relating to" is clear and specific language that couldn't possibly become a shitshow. And like "representations" is clearly, meaningful language. 

Even the article by the legal scholars advocating for this ammended law, I suspect is because they've looked at precedents of how say sensible countries like Sweden have set up bodies for the Sami people and shit, which should be reassuring, but I feel they are so blinded by the tree they've been looking at that they cannot see the forest of possibilities. 

 "May" I will grant, makes it clear that this body wont have veto powers. But I need reassurance that it cannot also just be completely ignored at all. Again, a lucid reading of the history of the Commonwealth of Australia can be expressed as "you don't need to worry about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples" and that appears to be literally what we are here enshrining in the constitution.

I will also grant, this allows for a representative group to consult with the government and improve decisions made that relate to them. I get that that is what is intended, and could even happen, for a while, or frequently. 

It also allows for an antipathy breeding annoyance, and constitutional grounds for Parliament and the Executive Government to ignore the Voice completely.

So, you know, it could protect the Voice from politics...

except. That even if Parliament and a Dutton government don't return the Voice's calls, they will probably mostly be producing press releases and tweets on "X" and other social media posts that can be reported on by the news. Which brings me to the significance of:

Fourth line aka iii

the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.”

I remain confused and ignorant as to what "subject to this constitution" means. All I'm confident on, is that they can't rename the Voice officially. That's the only thing the proposed law specifies, and they can't get rid of a body called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice" but they can change it's composition, functions, powers and procedures.

Meaning, to me, they can legislate it into a sandwich shop, and make representations through an esoteric code of how many slices of bacon they put in Peter Dutton's egg and bacon sandwich, but we'll burn down and dynamite and salt the ashes of the Kimberley region, if you spit in his sandwich or coffee.

I literally need reassurance, that in a convoluted and arse-backwards way, this amendment doesn't give Parliament the exclusive right to define what/who the constitutionally recognized voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is. 

That after a series of unfortunate interest rate rises in an election year that sees us with a double majority Dutton government, that Dutton doesn't have the constitutional right to determine who the official voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People is, and maybe, even negotiate a binding treaty with that voice.

I cannot in good conscience vote for such powers, and those who argue it is purely symbolic, that's like saying I should vote for something pointless. No sale.

All Together Now

I need reassurance that no part of this reading of the law, is how the High Court will view it:

"The only way Australia is obliged to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who are citizens of the commonwealth and subjects of the British Crown, is in the provision of a body called the Voice and Parliament says what that body is and what it does and is free to ignore it should it wish."

That seems to be a step into a dead fucking end, should I vote for it.

Vivisection: Arse Backwards

The sequencing of Voice, Treaty, Truth has been given significant thought.

Voice precedes Treaty because fair, modern treaty negotiations require first the establishment of a representative Indigenous body to negotiate the rules of the game with the state. It can’t be left to the state alone, and the state must have a group of people with whom to negotiate.

In Victoria, this was achieved through a specific representative institution – the First Peoples Assembly.

Truth follows Voice and Treaty, because, as Torres Strait Islander political scientist Sana Nakata explains, Voice ensures Truth will matter more than just “continued performance of our rage and grief for a third century and longer”. Voice establishes the power for Treaty, and Treaty establishes the safekeeping of Truth.

As historian Kate Fullagar explains, truths about Indigenous history in Australia are well-known – there have already been royal commissions into colonial violence, the stolen generation, and Black deaths in custody. But they have been too easily forgotten, and they have not led to change. ~ From UNSW Article by Gabrielle Appleby, Eddie Synot

I mean, this excerpt is coherent. I feel, strongly, that the assertion it makes is arse backwards, and that hopefully will come out in the wash so another referendum becomes feasible. Not just another referendum but process. 

I think the point they are making is because say, a Royal Commission to determine the capital t "Truth" didn't fix everything, that a body is needed before a treaty and then finally can the truth be told. The sequence remains, arse backwards for me, and a better argument is that much of the truth telling work has been done. At least in removing it from the pure legal fiction of Terra Nullius.

Much of the work to be done, is probably decoupling society from the idea that we need to have childishly idealised conceptions of our identity as Europeans or Asians or Indigenous Peoples. I feel a great text to assign a largely Anglo-European culture like Australia is a biography of the proto-Machiavellian prince of Wallachia Vlad "Dracula" Tsepes. Or maybe even David Mitchell's "Unruly" a history of the badly behaved British Monarchy from William the Conqueror through to the Magna Carta or something.

A mature westerner doesn't need to have a rose tinted conception of clean cut ANZAC Diggers fighting the Caiser but should be able to conceive that the boys in those trenches are more or less, identical to the people that now drive them into an impotent homicidal rage when they cut them off in traffic.

That the people now lauded for reducing the taxable income of the wealthiest 20% of Australians back in the day would have been lauded for dispossessing the indigenous. Maturation to me, is a process of accepting who we actually were and subsequently who we actually are. 

With that, our populace could be in a position to perhaps actually make sacrifices, the public is nowhere near the neighbourhood of "Truth" and that really should come first. You know, like reading a contract before you sign it. (Which can be forgiven if it's a standard terms of use agreement or something, but this referendum is nowhere near a standard contract.) 

Then I think you do treaty, because that's the real act of unification where we go from awkwardly superimposed nation on top of the world's oldest living culture, to an integrated nation and signing a treaty should justifiably involve some kind of goodwill payment to get us all on one team. 

Then it is safe for indigenous sovereignty to be recognized by and as part of the commonwealth.

The idea that the commonwealth need to decide who they want to negotiate with, enter a binding treaty with a group that is part of itself and then tell the truth, I get the rationale but I just don't buy it. 

I'd be more persuaded if the nation had united to identify Bruce Pascoe's "Dark Emu" as racist pseudo history. Instead, it seems everyone wants to ignore they agreed with colonialist notions that man stops being an animal when he becomes a farmer.

Vivisection: Bubble Trouble

I suspect the people who are for this referendum passing, a large chunk of them live in a bubble, or echo chamber. They should be aware that the polls say the referendum is likely to fail. I'm not sure it will. 

The nation seems roughly 48% against, 12% undecided and 40% for. I ran past an early polling station today, and again, there are only Yes campaigners out. Admittedly, all I thought was "you're kidding me, you are handing out How-To-Vote-Cards for a Yes/No ballot?" But some 20% of No and Undecided voters may walk into the booth having given this referendum no thought, and ask the question I was a fortnight ago "Am I an arsehole?" and decide to play it safe and vote Yes.

Like, Canadian Television made a show and released it this year called "Robyn Hood" likewise "The Exorcist: Believers" was recently released and both have been shit canned by audiences and critics, but it seems the institutions making these shows have not clicked that general audiences hate this shit of dredging up old properties and tokenistically diversifying them and filling them with trite lectures about social justice. 

I posit, that it is a very sane response to be sitting in a room full of white people at a real estate office as the boss reads an acknowledgement of country and question whether anyone acknowledges "traditional owners" as meaning anything of significance at all, like would the consult the Wurundjeri on the next planned awful apartment subdivision, or whether this is a tedious performance by people who have no intention of ever making any reparations to the descendants of the original inhabitants of the land taken by force that is now speculatively traded for profit.

 The real damage potential to flow from the referendum will be in bubble residents telling themselves that it failed, not because it was rushed through with heavily compromised wording into a process where lay Australian's were asked to enshrine a never-before-seen government body, but a narrative that actually everyone outside of gentrified progressive communities are horrible racists that want their kids to die.

In 2020 I witnessed many lefties fail to parse certain details of the election that deposed Trump after 1 term, Biden secured the necessary electoral college votes before the outcome of Georgia was determined, thanks to states like Arizona and Michigan going blue, yet sufficient people basically credited the Biden victory to Stacy Abrams efforts to enrol black voters in Georgia. They also ignored the gains Trump made with Black and Latino voters the latter of which are likely tired of white people calling them "latinx" and ignoring both their voices and their heritage. Many on the left also ignored that Blue state stronghold California voters resoundingly rejected Proposition 16 which would repeal the Californian Constitutions ban on affirmative action in public office appointments. 

So most people in a far left bubble, I observe tell themselves stories of evil people lurking behind every tree that are as comforting as any conspiracy theory and ignore that many memes pushed be the far left are not only unpopular but also bad. 

We live in an unfortunate time where not only is the left uniquely unqualified to tackle issues of bigotry and discrimination, but they are uniquely emboldened to do so as ideologues.

Conclusion

Whatever happens tomorrow, I'm confident the result will be largely determined by bad reasons. I would prefer the referendum not pass, because if our constitution is a silly document that nobody really takes seriously, then we shouldn't have a referendum at all, and if it's serious we should give the government of the day the power to dictate what the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice is. 

Whatever manifestation it takes, I can pretty much guarantee it won't be able to speak from the heart like the Uluru statement. Nor is a constitutionally recognized body necessary for a treaty though bipartisan support likely is. If you are worried a failed referendum will stop progress in its tracks, I invite you to look up the achievements of the EZLN in a far more violent and hostile nation, albeit one that miraculously could produce competent leadership. 

Progress will depend on whether the relevant parties take responsibility, or opt for blame. I've hated this whole process and won't be happy regardless of what happens tomorrow.

Feel more informed, more likely to vote "no" to "The Voice"

New TL;DR

(Edit: overall, I'm happyish with this post, but I felt I could do a better summary:)

I am only concerned with how I vote, and on that front, I am only concerned with what the referendum says, though I'm taking in people's opinions about what it says.

I made a bunch of mistakes in my first post, I wrote it in one sitting which is very rare for me these days. I can defend that post though, if I had my time again, I would have spent less words on the design principles for the Voice. My interpretation of what the referendum says now boils down to:

"The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia shall have the power to decide who and what the constitutionally recognized voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are and is. The Parliament will have ultimate say on what matters concern Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders."

Or even briefer: The Aboriginal Voice to Parliament, belongs to Parliament.

It's this interpretation of the referendum, that I predominantly will vote no to. I cannot in good conscience deprive the Indigenous people, whose sovereignty I already recognize, of that sovereignty. There then is a secondary reason, and that is that due to poor wording, our constitution will be open to interpretation as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders having ceded their sovereignty as "the First People of Australia" that wording is too risky to sit right with me.

The common theme of every reason to vote yes that I have found and been exposed to, can I feel be fairly characterised as an "intentional fallacy"

the insistence that the ultimate meaning of an expression must be consistent with the intention of the person from whom the communication originated (e.g. a work of fiction that is widely received as a blatant allegory must necessarily not be regarded as such if the author intended it not to be so). ~ Wikipedia summary, full explanation here.

It is my opinion that while the High Court of Australia is likely to consider the context in which the new law was written, ultimately will consider what the words say, if a future government legislates the Voice to be made up of political appointees.

My gut instinct from my first reading of the referendum, that this was a package deal, stands - recognition will fail because it comes bundled with the voice body. I have changed my opinion on whether a body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should be enshrined in the constitution at all. I can't see a feasible way to do it without enshrining Parliament and the Commonwealth's power over it.

Tony Benn's 5 questions for power I find a useful framework for evaluating the contents of the referendum. That is why I think an ultimate autopsy of this referendum needs to go back to the Uluru Statement of the Hearts call for a "First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the constitution" an Australia with buyers remorse will not be able to undo the Voice without a referendum, and the Voice is how the Australian Constitution recognises First Nations people (without sovereignty) meaning we would need a question to scrap the voice, and a question to recognize the Indigenous in some other way, making for complicated "yes, no" campaigns, "no, yes" campaigns, "yes, yes" campaigns and "no, no" campaigns.

Paling in relevance to the content of referendum, between my first post and this, I read the Uluru Statement from the Heart - which close to fully explained to me how we got here. I think we got here to the wording of this referendum with something Frankie Boyle referred to as Co-Pilot syndrome on BBC light-entertainment show "Taskmaster", that is, though I can't read minds - the draft wording of the referendum came out and was endorsed, despite being scrubbed of all suggestion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignty, because so much had been invested just to get there. A phrase mentioned repeatedly to me was "it's not ideal" my interpretation remains that the proposed law is "bad".

TL;DR

I did further research in an attempt to inform myself, and have significantly updated what I think the referendum says/means. 

I'm also grateful that I had friends present their reasons for voting yes. Down the bottom of this post, I go on a bit of a rant about my frustrations with the politics of the times, and I want to say, none of my friends closely resemble the "fools and fanatics" I am ranting about, though they may incidentally align.

Speaking candidly, I am as yet, to come across a good reason to vote yes in the referendum, and I make my case below as to why I haven't. The yes campaign is the only campaign that actually need to furnish a reason to vote for them.

There's time remaining, and if I find that good argument, I will commit myself now to sharing it, but as yet, I don't have it. 

I am less confident now than four days ago, that the good argument exists. My present impression is the Yes campaign is based entirely upon everything but the content of the referendum.

Preramble to the Update on the State of the Sentiment of the Lay Voter on the Referendum to Amend the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia.

I have been unable to source the artist & writer that created this image, due to the sloppiness and callousness of those who shared it before me.

The past, I don't know, at least 3 days have been a mixed bag for me. My mind has certainly been occupied by the central question of Australia's forthcoming referendum: "Am I an asshole?"

It would be nice if it were as simple as many people make out. For example this situation from 1994:

Image sourced from here.

If in 1994 you were the kind of person who was all like "Um, that's not the official Australian flag, and she is representing Australia in an official capacity hnnnnnnnnnnnnn..." then you are an arsehole for denying someone self expression and a host of other reasons. Simple, and clear cut. 

Unfortunately, there's another kind of arsehole that has one standard for the above situation, and another for things like statues of Christopher Columbus, the Confederate Flag etc. the situation becomes more complicated, and you can be a different kind of arsehole that is incidentally correct on the easiest cases of self expression - those cases that you happen to like.

"We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us." ~ Francois de La Rouchefoucauld McFancyPants describing another kind of arsehole.

Unfortunately, with this referendum it's not as simple as if you vote "no" you are an arsehole, though it's likely a bunch of people will think you are.

There's at least two types of arsehole's out there. There's a "fuck you" kind of arsehole, and a "okay you asked for it" arsehole. After hearing some arguments for voting yes, and bending my mind like a pretzel looking at the contents of the referendum for sufficient reason to vote yes, I am still inclined to believe that this referendum carries a greater risk of "okay you asked for it" by voting yes, than a "fuck you" by voting no.

Where the left has degraded itself, in my opinion, has been its embrace of double standards and rejection of universalism. That is the most common theme of bad ideas originating from left-wing identifying people I come across. Bad ideas like ad hominem fallacies, slippery slope fallacies, all-or-nothing thinking, affirming the consequent, appeals to emotion, conspiracy theories, revelation as sound epistemology and an abundant overconfidence in their abilities to read people's minds. etc. 

I had a brief exchange of messages with my sister who hasn't followed along, and she shared with me her impression on the ground, that the referendum was most likely going to fail, but for none of the reasons I was leaning towards no. "The discourse" isn't apparently, thinking like I do.

Australian Referendums make Thomas-Fucking-Jeffersons of Us All.

The amendment process crafted during the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention was, according to The Federalist No. 43, designed to establish a balance between pliancy and rigidity ~ from wikipedia. IMO Australia's process is imbalanced toward rigidity.

I've seen Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" that depicts the Lincoln Administrations campaign to pass the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in the United States. While it is no trivial thing to amend the US constitution, it seems a lot easier than Australia's referendum process - which requires a vote that only passes with a "double majority" which is a majority of the states and territories need to get a majority "yes" vote.

Contrasting the two systems for changing a nation state's constitution, I'm now increasingly of the opinion that Australia needs a referendum to change the process by which we alter our constitution.

Under the US system, amendments to the constitution can be made entirely by members of legislative bodies. Career politicians and legislators with staff with expertise to read proposed amendments and hash out what it means. The US system is much closer to deliberative democracy than Australia's referendum process. Granted, there are characters in US politics like Margery Taylor Green who think the moon is made out of cheese and it's coming for your guns and your babies and your babies guns or whatever.

But the Australian system makes a fucking founding father out of me when they call a referendum. 

I do not take that civic duty lightly. 

They also make a founding father out of my anti-vax friend, my young-earth creationist friends, my crypto-bro friends, my antifa friends, they make a founding father out of the people who went panic buying-hording toilet paper, pasta and lentils.

I care about the content of this referendum, and its lasting repercussions. Caring about that, I really just care how I vote, because I have to live with my own conscious.

Recognizing how small my vote is, even how small my influence is that my reasoning could persuade others to vote contrary to me, my ability to say "don't blame me, I voted for Kodos." is of tremendous import, in any vote I can participate in, because I have to live with myself.

I'm not a legislator with access to constitutional legal scholars to inform me. Unlike a deliberative democracy process, it's on me to try and inform my own vote. There's no judge and no legal counsel. Just a million arseholes each with their own opinions. 

I elect, except when absent, people to represent me in the legislative branch. Fortunately, I don't have to accurately anticipate future legal challenges to the amended constitution and the likely High Court of Australia's opinions on them, to cast a vote that I can live with.

Some Simplifiers

Because of the Australian referendum system, requiring a double majority of lay voters to approve a change to the constitution, it needs must be incumbent upon whoever words a referendum that it be both clear and precise. The simplest way to cast a vote in good conscious, is to read the content of the referendum and gauge your confidence that you understand what it says. 

If you read the words, and couldn't explain to a six year old what they mean with any justified confidence. You vote no. For any Australian referendum. Ever. I basically covered this in my last post on the subject, so just remember - tie goes to the status quo/if in doubt don't.

A second simplifying rule is to actually draw upon the hive mind. By this, the foundational rule is: "people generally lead with their best argument." A prosecutor doesn't begin their case in a murder trial be presenting the defendants cryptic fb post "omg, I feel sick" as exhibit A, when they have footage of the defendant murdering someone, followed by their prints on the murder weapon.

A very big data set that I believe replicates the rule, is 15+ years of call in show "The Atheist Experience" (ASX) where mostly theists call in to present their reasons for believing in a god, usually the Christian god, frequently Allah, occasionally the Pantheist god or some other wishy washy content.

What never fucking happens, is someone calling in and the hosts of the week asking "okay tell us why you believe in god?" and the caller says "Because the bible says..." and the hosts interrupt with "why should we care what the bible says" and here's the part that never happens the caller says "oh right, well that's my weakest reason, let me make a cosmological argument..." that. never. happens. What happens is the caller usually says with confusion "but the bible is the word of God?" and if you feel callers who are general members of the public with no particular qualifications beyond expertise on what they think, the same is true of professional debates between Atheist Sceptics and Theologians and members of the priest class. You generally don't have to listen beyond the opening statements to determine if the side with the burden of proof (Theists) have any good arguments at all.

Relevant to Australia's referendum debate, is that if you haven't heard a good argument from the yes campaign (who for me, carries the burden of proving I should vote yes) yet, then I can adjust my confidence upward, that a good and sufficient reason to vote yes does not exist.

I'll share my thoughts on the arguments I've heard thus far, just as a simple example here's an op-ed piece by Geoffrey Robertson:

Headline: If the No wins, the world will think we’re racist anyway

Excerpt: It will also open Australia up to charges of hypocrisy when its government complains of China’s discrimination against Uyghurs.

This is a bad-terrible reason to vote yes, made by a highly intelligent, highly qualified public figure. That reassures me, that the Yes campaign do not have a compelling reason I should vote yes. Like why the fuck would you argue something as tenuous as "think of the Uyghurs" as if Xi is going to say "yabba dabba doo" and crank up his oppression if this referendum fails.

but first let's talk about things I fucked up early on:

Uninformed, Misinformed, Stupid - I made mistakes.

Least impactful first. When I read the contents of the referendum, which I didn't like in terms of the language employed, I placed the blame on botching what could have been a referendum that recognized Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders and passed - something I wish to see happen - squarely on the ALP, the presiding government.

A friend made the argument that Indigenous Australians had asked for this referendum, and this is what they want, and that is why I should vote yes. I committed myself in my response to inform myself of the consultation process.

My impression of events has now completely changed and I feel even if only to myself, by being uninformed, I embarrassingly misrepresented who was responsible for this referendum. I was completely ignorant as to the contents of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart which called for enshrinement of the First Nations Voice in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. 

PM Anthony Albanese is still responsible for translating this call to the referendum we have, but he is ultimately responsible for his commitment to listen to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Coming to understand this, has no real impact on my decision making process, but it relieved all my frustration and even anger at the ALP as I now understand why we are having a referendum and why pretty much the only detail it specifies is what the body is to be called. Much of my own negative emotions dissipated. because understanding what happened made sense out of how we got here.

The more impactful thing I have come to understand through informing myself, is the contents of the referendum and why acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders comes packaged with "The Voice". 

My initial take was skewed by memories of the '99 referendum, which had two questions, only the question regarding the constitutional preamble was relevant to recognizing Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, and on my initial read of this coming referendum I really didn't understand why it was a package deal.

The key for me, was scrutinizing the word "in" as in "in recognition" and even the punctuation ":" initially I had thought that the first sentence of the proposed law was the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders as pre-existing the Commonwealth of Australia, and then there were 3 (iii) lines that detailed the creation of "the Voice" body, which I treated almost as a non-sequitur.

I was wrong in my initial reading, and only picked it up by reading the Uluru Statement of The Heart, which was only a result of having friends engage me. 

The Voice is the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, this change to the constitution does not simply recognize the indigenous peoples, it specifies how they are recognized. Like "we recognize Steve is coming to dinner by the place we set at the table for him."

Taking the referendum in isolation, it was hard for me to parse that it says "We recognize them through the provision of this body."

It's most impactful, because for me this packaging would be ground zero for conducting the autopsy on a failed referendum, and more to the point failure to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders in the first 122+ years of the Commonwealth of Australia. I'm currently of the opinion that this process most likely failed at the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, I'll get to that later.

Scrubbed of any suggestion of sovereignty.

Hearing reasons from friends to vote yes, focused my attention on the acknowledgement aspect, previously and I assume it comes through in my last post, most of my attention was on the words contained in i, ii, iii.

My first sticking point was capital "A" "Australia" because I'm a fucking unbearable stickler, and I was concerned the words "First Peoples of Australia" was treating Australia the nation as synonymous with Terra Australis the land mass, or "Country" as my interest in Aboriginal philosophy and religion understands it, such that it would be open to interpretation as a backdoor way to steal sovereignty for the Commonwealth and make subjects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

I invite you to notice the language used in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which is an excellent document, and also the Welcome to Country as compared to the contents of the Referendum.

Anyway, long tedious story short, I'm 100% confident that given the definitions in 2B of the constitution that "Australia" in the referendum refers to geography, not the Commonwealth of Australia, and this is a mere example of how the wording is "not ideal" rather than bad - in this example only.

This also had me scrutinize the above mentioned "in" and ":" to actually for the first time understand overall what the law is saying...and I got curious as to "First Peoples" as in, why is that capitalized? What's the significance.

Because there's two big changes to the language in the long process leading up to this referendum that near as I can determine came quite late in the process. "First Nations" becomes "First Peoples" and "First Nations Voice" becomes the only specific detail in the referendum: "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice"

This had me go and inform myself of the referendum's timeline - where did it come from and what is the significance? 

Well, I couldn't quite figure out how the wording came to be, Albo announced the draft wording of the referendum on 30th of July, 2022 and that wording has not changed in any significant way from what's on the referendum. The wording has been endorsed by the referendum committee so, there is that. (*edit, I should also mention that the two polls conducted by Ipsos and Yougov that are the basis for 80% of indigenous voters support... were conducted after the draft words were released. Which checks out, however the core of my position that only the contents of the referendum matter, belabour me to make the point it is more accurate to say polls indicate 80% support what they think the referendum says. Like 80% of Democrat voters in 2008 approved of what they think "Change we can believe in" means. Then discovered over the next 8 years what that meant and switched their vote to Bernie Sanders or Trump.)

But that near as I can tell, is where all the names appear for the first time. The Uluru Statement from the Heart for example states:

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

Now it is called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice" no "The First Nations Voice" for which I am speculating, they got some advice that the High Court would have too much fun, if the constitution acknowledged sovereign nations and sovereign people prior to the foundation of the British Colonies that then became the Commonwealth of Australia. 

Similarly, we get this change from recognizing "First Nations" to "First Peoples" which explains the capitalization, again, it probably being advised that our constitution acknowledge no sovereignty of these people, but I am left unsure as to what "First Peoples" capitalized, means. It's certainly a-historical to suggest that they were the first people to be recognized by the Commonwealth of Australia. My impression of history is that Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders were among the last to be recognized by the Commonwealth.

Grammatically, the capitalization means "First Peoples" reads as a brand, like "Qantas" or "Channel Seven" or "The Grand Old Party" which the Republican party of the US call themselves, even though the Democratic Party is older. It certainly implies, just as the historical method tells us, that Aboriginals and Torres Straight Islanders were in Terra Australis first, but falls short of actually stating that, being grammatically akin to "In Recognition of The Republican Party of the United States is also known as The Grand Old Party:" near as I can determine.

This though is just the tip of the iceberg.

For me - The All Important "May/Shall" distinction

When I noticed none of my friends were addressing my concerns with the content of the referendum, dealing exclusively with peripheral arguments, I inspired myself to do further due diligence and try and search google for anything that indicated that the language was actually clear and precise and that I am subsequently, just a doofus.

Nothing has changed with words like "representations" usually in a legal context, it appears "representation" refers to something like a legal council, it remains unclear what does and doesn't constitute a "representation" though.

But pretty much everything is moot, because of the word "may" as distinct from "shall". That I did get clarity from a google search. "May" in contracts generally means it is discretionary. 

I think the intention of the wording is to emphasise that the Voice's "representations" are non-binding, as in they don't have veto right, or legislative power on matters that concern Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders. 

As it is worded in the referendum, it reads as the Australian Parliament and Executive Government are not constitutionally bound to receive those "representations", they don't have to answer the phone or return calls, open mail, let Voice members on the premises, or allow them to make submissions in policy discussions. 

For me, I've been following via email updates from Adrian Burragubba, Wangan and Jagalingou peoples opposition to the Adani Coalmine, the precise kind of issue a body like the Voice is intended to be could make a big impact. I'm not 100% on the details despite the email updates I receive, but my impression is that the opposition lost their legal challenges to overturn Adani's approval to build a mine and other necessary infrastructure, and the strategy changed to peaceful protests obstructing Adani's attempts to build the coalmine, like unending ceremonies on crucial bits of land and stuff.

That's all to say, that even though I'm aligned with resisting Adani's coalmine, and generally any further investment in coal that is not directly reducing the environmental impact of burning coal, AND that I would vote yes to a referendum question that the constitution stipulate "We shall not touch a company as shady as Adani with a 500km pole" in a heartbeat, I was actually thinking if the wording of the referendum allows a new body an effective filibuster option because it would allow, for example a 365 day long ceremony to take place on the floor of the lower house.

In other words, does the discretionary "may" go both ways, where delegates of the Voice staging disruptive protests can appeal to "the constitution says we may make representations." And my estimation is "no" they could be ejected, or refused entrance because iii pretty UNclearly stipulates: 

the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to  matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

Incidentally, my overall impression of arguments for the "yes" vote, are all based on what they think (iii) says and not what it actually says. (iii) is the big blotch, nobody seems to want to talk about.

I think, the words "subject to this Constitution" means nothing can override i and ii, which is that they can't rename the Voice without another referendum, and they can't change the powers of the Voice so they can make binding "representations" or guarantee their representations will be acknowledged. The discretion as to whether "representations" are received at all, lie with the Parliament.

Unintended Consequences and the Future Hypothetical Voice of a Coalition Majority Government

The short term consequences of passing this referendum, are inconsequential to the point of being almost unworthy of consideration. I'll expand on that later. Suffice to say, the government of the day will most likely pass legislation implementing the Voice as intended by the long consultation process you can look at an info graphic here.

On yes campaign website Yes23.com.au/vote_yes one of their arguments reads as:

Protecting the Voice from politics and bureaucrats by putting it in the constitution, giving it the security it needs to provide meaningful and honest advice.

And by my lay, determination. This is straight up about as opposite of what the referendum does as it gets. 

My lay opinion of what the referendum actually says in plain language is:

i) There will be a body that must at all times be called THE Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. (THE Voice)

ii) They can speak, but Parliament and the Executive Government doesn't ever have to listen. ("may")

iii) Parliament gets to say what THE Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice IS.

Again, I must emphasize DON'T TAKE IT FROM ME read the referendum for yourself, preferably before you get to the booth.

What I cannot see excluded from this wording, is a future Coalition government getting the political clout to change the legislation such that the Voice's budget is gutted and it is composed of political appointees. Such a body, would be constitutionally recognized as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. 

The Voice will always be vulnerable to being unpopular with the Australian public. This is somewhat of a protection against a likely outcome, for any public institution, of becoming ideologically captured or otherwise corrupted. Like, if the Voice somehow becomes tedious raging flat-earthers, Parliament could unanimously decide to end the term of the current incumbent representatives and replace them with white academic appointees or even lobbyists from the mining industry who would then be the constitutionally recognized voice of Indigenous Australia.

I had people argue that I need to largely consider the symbolic value of this bureaucratic body, and largely ignore what this bureaucratic body is. To which I say, I am. And by my honest attempts to understand, I can see it backfiring in a major way to enshrine this in the constitution.

Nothing in the constitution prevents Parliament from dispossessing the Voice of its assets and replacing it with a single underfunded political appointee who can afford to hold the position by virtue of the generous wages he receives from his main employer - the Australian Economic Group for the Promotion of Agriculture and Mining, who will be able to say, by enshrinement of the constitution that as The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice "fuck the reef."

How likely this extreme outcome is, I would put at very unlikely. More likely is some other way to undermine the Voice that can be legislated quietly. For example, the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Act was legislated loudly, and one of the situations a well designed and protected Voice could have I'm sure, improved, whereas the 2012 Stronger Futures Policy was legislated relatively quietly. 

Given that this FUCKING REFERENDUM struggles to get more attention in the media than sports and property sales, I think a future Coalition government would be able to gut the Voice under this referendum with nothing more than a few deluded intelligencia writing duelling op-eds for page ten of the local newspapers.

A lay guy's tier list for the Yes Campaign Arguments

Yes23.com.au/vote_yes lists the following broad bullet point reasons for voting yes.

• Recognising
• Listening
• Protecting
• Over 80%

That last one refers to the broad consensus and is a reiteration, or quality control statement of the "Listening" argument, it's the websites words not mine. Let me see if it complies with "strongest argument first" heuristic. I'm going to rank them on a power-level tier list, and should they conform to a fallacy I'll, as a lay sceptic, denote the fallacy.

ALWAYS KEEP IN MIND THE FALLACY FALLACY, JUST BECAUSE AN ARGUMENT IS MADE BADLY, DOESN'T MAKE THE CONCLUSION INCORRECT.

Recognising and respecting 65,000 years of Indigenous culture for the first time in Australia’s 122-year-old constitution. 

I rank this argument C-tier, it's hard to diagnose, because it is for example a true dilemma that "yes" will be the first time in 122 years. The referendum says nothing about respect however, that part is a false dilemma if you are arguing that a failed referendum therefore means the public don't recognise and don't respect 65,000 years of Indigenous culture. There are more ways to do this than just voting "yes" on the referendum. I rank this as high as C-tier because recognising and respecting Indigenous culture is a good thing to want to do. The question is, does this referendum actually accomplish that? For which this actually isn't an argument at all. Just an assertion. It deserves it's C rating because it accurately reflects the likely short term interpretation of the significance of the referendum. For reference, compare the perceived significance of Obama's election in 2008 relative to it's perceived significance in 2015, 2020 etc. Or a more recent example, the perceived significance of the Matilda's advancing past the group stage in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, and the perceived significance of the Matilda's performance in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup after being eliminated by the Lionesses.

Listening to advice from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people about matters that affect their lives, so governments make better decisions. 

I rank this D-tier, it would be a good argument, if this was what the referendum said. I actually don't know what the fallacy is, when the premises of the argument are just wrong. Upon consideration, this D-tier argument is definitely an intentional fallacy and a straw man fallacy, it is "refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction." This is an argument for the Voice the ALP plans to legislate should the referendum pass, as distinct from what is actually under discussion, which is the content of the referendum people will vote yes or no on.

People need to fucking understand that the High Court won't be able to call Anthony Albanese to testify "what he meant" when the constitution says "on matters relating to..." nor should they, because they actually need to read the minds of millions of voters and try and figure out what they meant when they voted yes to the wording of the referendum. Only the words will be enshrined in the constitution, not what the authors intended them to mean.

Protecting the Voice from politics and bureaucrats by putting it in the constitution, giving it the security it needs to provide meaningful and honest advice.

F-tier, and if there was a lower tier, it would go there. This is absolutely a straw man, because the referendum, if anything at all, stipulates the opposite. This is misinformation, the wording of the referendum all stinks of stripping the Voice of all security bar its existence and name. It's ability to provide meaningful and honest advice is undermined by "may" and the entirety of iii gives Parliament the right to define it's powers composition etc.

Over 80% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community support this proposal. It has been designed and agreed on by Indigenous leaders over many decades. 

F-tier again, but actually not as bad as the previous reason. It is, at least, likely factually correct, I certainly have no reason to disbelieve the claims. It is however a bad reason. It is an  Argumentum Ad Popularim, it also reads as a Fait Accompli and I do think it explains the present situation as an escalation of commitment. 

It does support an argument for listening...if the gap between what is and what was intended were not an issue. It is certainly necessary for me to vote yes, that somebody wants the change to take place, but it is not a sufficient reason to vote yes, because in general, we don't just give people what they want.

This last one also is potentially a straw man fallacy because for me at least it is indeterminate whether at some point in the process the content of the referendum went from the proposal 80% support to something else. I will assume it's 80% support the final wording of the referendum and not everything up to the draft wording of the referendum. (*edit, this assumption appears correct.)

Precise language for me demands the reason says "...community support what they think this proposal is." That somewhere in the crucial 20% that don't support might be all of the respondents that scrutinized the wording and thought about it, rather than assuming it basically says what the Uluru Statement from the Heart called for.

All The Yes Campaign Arguments Are Bad Arguments

When we listen to people about the decisions that affect them, we get better results. For the past 250 years, we haven’t properly listened to the people who have been here for 65,000. It’s time we did. ~ Yes23.

I can agree with everything above, and vote no. A lack of listening will also likely be why this referendum fails. 

I'm agnostic as to whether a good reason to vote yes exists and I just haven't heard it yet. I fully acknowledge that people are and can be persuaded by bad arguments. I'm not confident in my ability to interpret legalese, I am confident in my ability to spot the bad arguments I know, and crucially the no campaign has no burden to provide arguments at all. 

What I will say, is that from one speaker for the "no" position I read, though I disagreed with much she said, had better arguments than any I have seen for "yes" and I am looking actively, for a reason to vote yes, because it would be nice to recognise the Indigenous people of Terra Australis in Australia's constitution. 

So here's some more that aren't on Yes23's short list:

There are already lobby groups that can make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government, and they are privately funded, often by economic rents so where's the harm in creating a permanent publicly funded lobby for Indigenous voices?

I rate this C-tier, because I made it to myself. It falls down on two-wrongs making a right. It's a very cynical argument that doesn't get me over the line. It is bad that lobbying undermines democracy and promotes oligarchy. From all the research I've seen, cashed up lobbyists can have more impact on policy without a vote than voters do.

The thing is, enshrining what may in practice be, a lobby group in the constitution creates a permanent condition. To be swayed by this argument, one has to be a pessimist that an Indigenous Voice will never become redundant, never fulfil its mission. That it is still necessary even when there are elected Indigenous People serving in Parliament, that it will still be necessary after a Truth and Treaty process, that it will be necessary even with other indigenous bodies making representations. This argument can, but shouldn't persuade anyone.

It's not about you or what you want.

This is just a reiteration of 80% of the community supports..., and there's been a lot of consultation. All the iterations I've heard are F-tier. I know, people making it have double standards, like if I were to ask them if they found Justice Bryan Kavanaugh's testimony that he was really really upset that an investigation into allegations of sexual assault might jeopardize his confirmation to SCOTUS compelling, they would of course say that that's different because "power" AND an unflattering comparison and I understand why these concepts are hard to parse.

Too many people agree with the statement: "The only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination." I disagree, discrimination of the kind intended, needs to just stop.

The people who want this, for the most part, have their own vote. It is the unfortunate reality of the Australian process that if you want something put in the constitution, until such time as I die, you've involved me. What I'm hearing, is that the Indigenous Community want something in the constitution and subsequently they need a referendum and they need people like me to vote yes.

What I feel I am witnessing, is a large scale demonstration of Francois de La Rocheafoucald's Maxim:

"One must listen if one wishes to be listened to." ~ A No Doubt Infuriating French Noble to Cite.

When the Uluru Statement of the Heart called for a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the constitution, at that point an 80% consultation of 3.5% of the population becomes insufficient to accomplishing the goal stated. I would look at that and say "okay, that requires a double majority to vote yes to pass. The Indigenous vote won't carry by itself."

In my own experience, I was told "just vote yes" and "you're overthinking it" and "I read your piece but it’s still unclear to me what difference a Yes vote will make to your life, as a White Australian living overseas." I don't think there's malicious intent. There is definite hypocrisy in people advocating that I listen to others, being told what to do, being dismissed and being minimised through an argument from personal incredulity.

The stakeholders in a referendum, are all people present and future subject to the constitution. Where this campaign went wrong, was conceiving the stakeholders as only the people calling for the change.

As an Australian, I want more than anything, a treaty. I view Australia as a nation projected on top of an older largely unrecognized one. Having said that, I can imagine numerous treaties that could never be agreed to.

If someone wants me to recognize they have a PhD. in Anthropology, and they do, it is on me to acknowledge the fact. If they insist that the only acceptable recognition of their PhD. is that I refer to them with the title "Dr." when I don't refer to my doctors as "Dr." nor do I use titles in general, and my refusal to do so upsets them, that is on them.

Nobody would buy the idea that the only way to respect other people's belief in Catholicism, is by abstaining from red meat on Fridays, and the media doesn't not publish images of the Prophet out of respect for the tenants of Islam, it's out of fear that they can't protect people they have a duty of care to.

This F-tier argument that I should deny my own agency, acknowledging that I am not being asked to vote, I am being asked to vote yes is asking me to take responsibility for the feelings and beliefs of others, which I cannot do.

A failed referendum is not proof that society rejects you, all it proves is that society is not at your service. If your conclusion from having the Prime Minister, leader of the elected government of the Commonwealth of Australia resolve to support in entirety the Uluru Statement from the Heart, stating that he wants something "Done with, not done to" and puts forward a referendum to vote on a proposal based on what you asked for and approved in consultation with your representatives, that you don't have a voice and you don't have power, that is a denial of the facts.

We have a chance to vote on it.

This argument is D-tier, "it" being the subject of debate. It is arguing that opportunities are scarce to actually get this done, therefore hold your nose and vote yes.

It's the second time in 25 years Australian's have had an opportunity to recognize the Indigenous in the constitution, the other being the referendum on the '99 preamble, of which recognition were the few words contained to commend it.

It's D-tier, because again, it's shifting the blame. Those who proposed this referendum did not take seriously the gravity of getting the words and the timing and the process right, but I have to overlook this and be thankful for crumbs swept off the table. Okay, the wording might not be that bad, but it is not good enough to vote for.

The ALP/Albo have staked a huge amount of political capital on this. / punishing the government will punish indigenous people. / It will be a win for evil potato head.

This argument in my opinion, is so bad, that I urge people to stop making it. It is Machiavellian, and I reject this as someone who respects The Prince (and Frederick II's Anti-Machiavelli response pamphlet published by Voltaire). You should only make it to people who neither care about nor respect indigenous issues, and just care about the 2025 election.

This argument asks me to take responsibility for that which I can't. Well, I can respond, and am therefore responsible, I can do so with my vote. If it is the case, that the National Convention that produced the Uluru Statement, and all subsequent consultants and the ALP government fucked this referendum straight out the gates, to vote yes would be to not respond, and abrogate my responsibilities, instead rewarding bad and irresponsible behaviour.  

If you do genuinely think that this is a good reason to vote yes, then take responsibility and defeat my objections to the content of the referendum. Deal with the words "First People" "Australia" "may" "make representations" "matters concerning" "including its composition, functions, powers and procedures."

My overall impression of yes voters, is that they do not want to talk about the contents of the referendum, suggesting they do not possess a valid argument to vote yes, and that it is not an unfair characterization of the yes campaign to describe it as "vote for the vibe."

one of the most extensive consultative processes they've ever undertaken

 As distinct from "80% of the community" this point, or sub argument, I take is meant to mean quality assurance is bad because it is ultimately irrelevant. Yes, it boosts my confidence that indeed this is what the Indigenous people of Australia want. It doesn't validate those wants in totality, but I have to vote in totality because I only get yes/no. 

Now, there is just the content of the referendum, and if anything defeats it or passes it, it should be literacy. 

In the finance world, there is a thing called "Efficient Market Hypothesis" which basically regards the market as a hyper-efficient super computer calculating the value of things. I somewhat believe in this theory in so far as it is largely pointless to try and gain advantage in the market by reading the Wall Street Journal etc. It would be a massive fallacy to think that EMH guarantees that LTCM, Enron, The GFC, the Bitcoin collapse, the second Bitcoin collapse couldn't happen so they didn't. 

Big data sets get things wrong all the time. I am generally pro consultation, but I am also very wary of consultants. In the systems engineering world, there's a principle "Garbage in, garbage out" and many consulting processes I've participated in, in my life have had us break up into groups and do craft activities and brainstorm ideas with pens on big sheets of paper and report back to the group. 

I don't know what the consultation looked like. I just know that while it's something to say it was long and extensive, that gets me nowhere near where I need to be. I just need to be confident I understand what the referendum actually says, and I'm not, and I'm not convinced anyone is.

The Political Fashions of the Time are Lime Polyester Flares, Wide Collar Mustard Shirts and Corduroy Ties.

You can quit now, because I'm moving away from addressing the content of the referendum. One of my friends wrote me:

That it is susceptible to "fashion of the day" politics is a red herring in my view. That's an argument for waning into obscurity just as much as becoming a bureaucratic drag on legislation (which could be changed with the fashion).

To which I think I agree. However, in my defence, I was responding to arguments to vote yes that were short term peripheral red herrings themselves. The same friend made the ALP have staked political capital argument in the same post.

How I initially read it though, was that I was coming across as making a bad argument against the proposed first incarnation of the voice, that it reflected the fashions of the moment, and I would make that argument again in a different moment, permanently objecting on the grounds that everything was too "now".

I just want to clarify the fashion analogy, as there are generally recognized good periods of fashion - the 60s, the 80s, the 90s for example, and generally recognized bad periods of fashion - the 70s, the 00s, the 10s and now.

The political fashions of the times, even if the boomers retain an ironclad grip on power, amongst the lay public are some of the worst I can even imagine. It's a time in which I don't trust anyone to do anything regarding civil rights, because bad ideas abound.

Identity politics functionally is "ad hominem is okay", Greg Lukianoff and Johnathon Haidt have done valuable work documenting how cognitive distortions have gone main stream. The left are all about all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophising, mind-reading. We are going through a dark age, akin to the pamphleteering era that produced "the protocols of the Elders of Zion" and "The Witches Hammer" 

Speaking of Haidt, he has a great rule, regarding where the fashion is to block people, protest their platforming etc:

If you want to know who's wrong, look at who shoots their dissidents.

People are taken seriously, who have picked up "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill, looked at the impact attempting to put it into practice has had on the plight of marginalised people everywhere and said "nope." Then picked up "Das Capital" by Karl Marx, looked at the impact attempting to put it into practice has had on the plight of marginalised people everywhere and said "let's give this another crack." Those people are taken seriously, and they should never be until they answer their case.

Winston Churchill said:

'Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm'

And I have watched the left go from one unmitigated catastrophe to another unmitigated catastrophe with no loss of enthusiasm and tragically for us all, have succeeded. They've been remarkable at spreading bad ideas and before you know it, people are calling Martin Luther King someone with internalized white supremacy.

Fashionable ideas that are impervious to feedback that they are wildly unpopular. While the people that adopt them tank their own mental health and diminish the mental health of others.

There's a quiet day coming, I don't know when when so many nice people who just want things to be nice ask themselves "wait a minute, are we the baddies?" and will I think, quietly forget that they used to be cheering for retrograde racist, sexist and oppressive ideas because they didn't think about it and they didn't want to discuss it because life is supposed to be simple, not complicated.

If it's difficult to accomplish things, why wouldn't we just give up?

The Inherent Risk of Arguing Badly

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

[roll eyes] "Quoting Nietzsche? The Nazi Philosopher?" [checks out] 

The short, one line play above^ is an example of the "ad hominem" fallacy. Just as I'm aware that Nietzsche has for many a disqualifying reputation, I'm aware of the bad reputation enjoyed by "keyboard warriors" who just point out fallacies on twitter/X threads.

See my thing about fallacies, is that they are demonstrable. It's easy. Stalin says "2+2=4" Stalin is bad, therefore 2+2 does not = 4. That's clearly false, and it's false because 2+2=4 no matter who says it. Just as 2+2=5 is incorrect no matter who says it. Anybody who tries to operate a business on the premise that 2+2 does not = 4 is going to get exploited.

In an as yet unpublished piece I wrote, I defined "Activism" as "encouraging people of no particular qualification to be active in a cause."

To be clear, I am not anti-activist per se. An example I can go to, is the activism that recently brought to an end Vic Forrest, who have been illegally logging old-growth forests and ignoring environmental regulations for years. (At least that's my understanding).

Those are perfect circumstances for activism. The law says this business shouldn't be operating, and you don't need anyone of particular qualification to disrupt their operation. You can get a 23 year old barista willing to chain themselves to a bulldozer or sit in a tree to stop works until a barrister secures a stop-work order from a judge until the legality of the logging can be determined. 

I may not be up on all the facts, but Vic Forests attributed their collapse to all the legal actions causing delays which caused them to have to pay massive penalties for not fulfilling their client's orders and they are done. It could be because they could only sue some 23 year old barista for legal damages, and they were actually compliant with environmental regulations. I don't know. But I feel confident that it's more that they lost almost all legal action because they tried their hardest not to find any Greater Gliders.

My opposition, or rather suspicion is that the attitudes of the day seem to think Activism is just an unqualified good. People can't comprehend that through action, they could harm causes they care about. Particularly incompetent action, galvanizing people against them.

People seem to think Activism is like Michelle Wolfe's parody of a good-guy-with-a-gun. Where so long as there's goodness in your heart, you will only hit the bad guys when you fire.

There's nothing I can do to convince people I am arguing in good faith. The best I can manage is to use the time remaining to find a way to vote yes, and keep doing my research and trying to inform myself.

The Dunning-Kruger effect keeps me up at nights, and in any disagreement, it will always be opaque as to whether you disagree with me, because you haven't considered something I have, or whether I disagree with you because I haven't considered something you have.

Most likely, it's both. Hence the importance of listening. 

Yes. One way to persuade me to change my vote, is to ignore my reasons for voting no and try and present me with a reason to vote yes that outweighs that reason. 

Some of my initial arguments were bad. All the yes arguments I've been exposed to, and found, are bad. In doing so, people who want this referendum to pass, have hurt their cause, because I am left with the impression that they will be voting not for what the referendum says, but what they think it says and they think it says what it was intended to say.

I Will Most Likely Vote "No" To "The Voice"

When approaching a constitutional referendum like the Australian Indigenous Voice to Parliament, whatever it's official name is, heretofore referred to as "The Voice" here is how I would go about it:

• The default position on any referendum question is "no" which is to say, if I have not considered the issue at all, if I feel myself completely uninformed the responsible thing is not to toss a coin and abide by the results, but to vote "no".
• I subsequently have an all-or-nothing stance on voting "yes" all my concerns would have to be satisfactorily dealt with to vote "yes" meaning that the yes campaign have a very onerous task courting my vote where a complete fuckwit like Dutton doesn't really have to campaign for my vote at all. Thems the breaks in this case.
• I am always concerned about fait-accomplis. For example, if I asked a women if she'd like a pizza and a root, and she pulled a face and turned away from me in disgust, to which I inquired "what's the matter? Don't you like pizza?" Like I want a solution to the problem that indigenous people are too small and too distributed to get representation in Parliament, the proposed voice however is being presented as a solution to that problem and I am not convinced it is.
• Specific to the voice to parliament, I would have concerns about tokenism and handwashing, for example, the proposals to move Australia day I view as a purely symbolic gesture that would achieve no long term benefit in the elevation of the status of indigenous Australians but might make well meaning left leaning white people feel better. By contrast I do not view the Rudd governments apology for the stolen generation tokenistic, purely symbolic etc. An apology is a meaningful reparative act in and of itself.
• I would have concerns about the proneness to corruption of any new publicly funded body.
• I would have concerns about fashions of the moment getting enshrined into the constitution.
• I would have concerns about the indigenous communities view of the proposal. This doesn't mean I would necessarily be swayed, just I would take pains to disabuse myself of the notion that "the indigenous" are one homogenous group. For comparison, I read arguments during Australia's marriage equality plebiscite from queer groups that I should "vote" "no" (in a survey) because if given equal status in the eyes of the law, many LGB persons will cease their activism. I'm glad I heard this argument, it was not persuasive.
• I would have concerns about implementation.
• I would have concerns about long-term repercussions.

Now, to wrap up this preramble, during the Melbourne lock downs of 2020 I among many got into it on facebook with a libertarian friend who was "concern trolling" the Victorian governments handling of the pandemic (ie. the lockdowns). I was not persuaded by any of their arguments, and determined them to be a dishonest ideologue interlocuter, however, to their credit they did prompt me to do my due civilian diligence and read the legislation of the expanded emergency powers act that I may be actually informed. 

Reading it was most reassuring, basically every section clearly detailed the limits of governmental emergency powers including the timeframe in which emergency powers expired. With that in mind, this morning I decided to actually look up what the proposed voice was, rather than having journalists or whoever, tell me about it.

Now I want to stress a concern I do not have:

• That uninformed people will think that the referendum not passing = racism. 

Let me give you an easy example - when Australia had it's referendum as to whether to leave the Commonwealth and become an independent nation, you couldn't conclude that most people who voted "no" did so because they love being royal subjects of the House of Windsor. My overwhelming impression was that most people "didn't want to become America" there was too much confusion as to what the nation would look like and how it would function to vote "yes". 

What it actually is:

Don't trust me, go to the horses mouth.

  In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

(i)  there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

(ii)  the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

(iii)  the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

So this was helpful, because my first port of call was the Wikipedia page, that I will actually describe as misleading (rather than misinformation) because I read the proposed design principles as what would be enshrined in the constitution.

The proposed design of the voice, for me is instantly disqualifying. But it isn't fair to base the referendum decision on what would likely, inevitably be a flawed first iteration, however you slice it.

 My impression as a voter

i) "there shall be a body" is my favorite part of this proposal, there is currently no indigenous body that is publicly funded. When ATSIC was disbanded, rightly or not (I have no opinion), it was replaced with nothing. So thus far I would vote "yes" we should be constitutionally bound to fund some kind of body for indigenous Australians. I do not understand why would oblige it to be called "The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice". That's too specific for a constitutional obligation, it would block for example a counterfactual history where ATSIC was scrapped and replaced with ATSIA (changing commission to authority) which would allow for a discontinuity between a failed model and a replacement model.

ii) "May make representations" this would be the literal voice, and it denotes access basically. What's a representation? Does this mean they can enter the lower house and pose questions during question time? Or does this mean there will be a parliamentary inbox somewhere that they can drop petitions and suggestions and the like into? Does it mean a delegate from the voice can sit in on a closed door meeting between a prime minister and visiting president for life Xi? "On matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people." Okay, who decides that? What is the line of dilineation? Does all mining and management of Australian resources relate to ATSI or not? Will we see the voice "make representations" on for example the Adahni coal mine in QLD and the impact on the great barrier reef? Does that relate? Or will it be confined to the autonomous management of indigenous communities. The wording is too vague to the point of why include ii at all.

iii) So this is basically saying that while the constitution guarantees a body to be called the voice, and guarantees it's ability to make representations to the public on matters relating to ATSIs, the government can legislate it into anything it wants. This should be reassuring, because it gives the power to completely marginalize the voice into obscurity, should any iteration prove badly designed. I feel, that subject to the constitution, there is nothing to stop the voice manifesting as a single person, with a budget of $30,000 per year of no aboriginal ancestry constituting the voice to parliament.  That's what "including its composition, functions, powers and procedures." means to me. 

What isn't reassuring is the notion that instead of using this feature to gut the voice to parliament, that parliament could expand the voice's powers to become highly costly, like Ibram X Kendi's idiotic idea for a department of Anti-racism. I would imagine that the constitution would prevent the Parliament from ever legislating the voice to have the power to veto any parliamentary legislation, but maybe it requires all legislation to have attached an "indigenous impact statement" and a pre-clearing process where all draft legislation has to go through the voice. 

That's why I'm so sensitive to the fashions of the moment. Across the political spectrum most proposed ideas at the moment live somewhere between stupid and deranged. I would need reassurance that the voice not be turned into a costly bureaucratic body. I'm not afraid of it, under this wording becoming some overpowered authoritarian entity, I'm concerned with people being forced to deal with an idiotic body that needs everything to be written in incoherent postmodern language.

...

So just as a voter, I am not sufficiently reassured that this can't drive race relations backwards. The process seems arse backwards to me. It would be better to legislate this voice body, have it run for a few years, modify as necessary and then when we have a body that we know what we are talking about, do the referendum to constitutionally guarantee it.

Into the campaign: A voters impression of the design proposal

So, this is a kind of "here's what we're thinking" thing that just serves to confuse the referendum question, because nothing in the proposed constitution stipulates anything beyond the name, I mean, I'm not sure if our constitution currently defines what Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders are.

So looking at this I'll cut straight to a disqualifying criteria of the proposed voice:

Principle 3 states "the voice will have balanced gender representation at the national level." So this is automatically disqualifying, as what I feel is a classic example of a dumb idea slipping through. 

It is now really dumb, because "gender" is an undefined term. But even if we took it to mean "both sexes" the only administrative solution would be that each community must elect both a male and female representative to ensure balance. When they say "at the national level" though I envision a situation where an aboriginal community, based on the makeup of the incumbents are informed they can only elect a male from their community as the female representatives are at full quota. 

Of course, there are no incumbents, so I envision a scenario where the various communities by various means come forth with their chosen representatives, and there's 13 more female reps than male. What process then determines which communities have to go back, discard their chosen representative and elect anew. 

This principle stinks of the hubristic current fashions wanting to be put into practice. It suggests that whoever is designing the principles for the draft voice legislation, are already ideologically captured.

I for whatever reason, do not need a voice to parliament to represent me, or my people or my demographic, to make representations, even though given the address at which I'm registered, my representative to state and federal government in no way represents me. Frankly they have been embarrassing. Be that as it may, there just isn't a history of abuse and exploitation by the state that could possibly warrant an additional body to represent me.

Having said that, were it me that we deemed it necessary to have a body to represent my interests, I would want to in principle be able to vote for whatever representative I fucking want. Under the Australian system, I am actually okay with the government saying "you don't get your first preference, who is your second preference, okay you don't get them either who is your..." all the way down my ballot, because it at the least gives me some reassurance that if I don't get who I want, I will at least get someone I can live with.

But the government doesn't dare (as yet) to condescend and throw out my first preference because the genders don't balance out. And while there are some stipulations like presumably I can't vote for a candidate who does not actually have the citizenship status to live in the electorate for their term, there is nothing to stipulate that I as a white man have to be represented by a white man. Which brings in principle 3's sub stipulation that any voice representative has to be Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander by the three way test. 

Unlikely as it might seem, I can use my cognitive empathy to imagine a scenario where I was living in a remote community, and I was getting regularly harassed by the cops, the pigs, the filth, the fuzz etc. and routinely helped out by a white woman from the big city with a law degree who was very articulate and had been living in our community for a decade and I was like "that's who I want representing me!" and the legislation says "no." I can only be represented by a member of my community, who in my circumstances is a superstitious elder that actually is a big part of my problems.

As a white man I am free to be represented by a Rhodes Scholar and MBA student who happens to be of South Asian descent, or even Aboriginal descent. For representation to the voice, the indigenous will only be able to send the indigenous to represent them under this principle.

Barely worth mentioning is that the principle states the voice will "include youth." Youth probably isn't hard to define, it'll be something like 18-25, but this is clearly impossible to administer across diverse communities Australia wide. I can only conceive that they will budget like 5 "youth" positions, and then the actual voice body will pick them from across the nation based on community recognition or something. I cannot imagine that every community will have to select one male, one female represantive plus one male youth representative and one female youth represantative to ensure this outcome.

All this design has to stipulate is that representatives have to represent the interests of the community that selects them. If they do that, it literally doesn't matter who they are. You need a clear schedule of misconduct (like taking bribes etc.) and a clear procedure for removing representatives. The most likely scenario all people face whenever there's a government job on the line, is that they will fill that position with somebody useless that collects a pay check, and enjoys catered lunches.

These are somewhat addressed by principles 4 and 5, which I wouldn't object to, beyond vague wording, which I guess is okay when talking principles. I imagine what most communities would do with the voice, is send along someone who is already in a position of authority like an elder or counciller or head of a local indigenous charity or ngo, which makes principle 4's "including the experience of those who have been historically excluded from participation." interesting wording. I'm guessing it is intended as identarian, like you have to represent disabled indigenous or LGBTIQ+ indigenous etc. but to me, it would include the experience of personality types that don't typically get involved in the community. All the non-activists, and indifferent persons that don't want to sit through Robert's Rules chaired meetings where the first hour is spent voting on accepting the minutes and treasurers reports and at some point 15 minutes before 10.30pm on a Wednesday night they reach "any other business" and rush through or roll-over all the interesting and consequential stuff.

I cannot see a way however to have both principle 4 and principle 2 co-exist. As Principle 2 states "To ensure cultural legitimacy, the way that members of the Voice are chosen would suit the wishes of local communities and would be determined through the post-referendum process." I have to plead ignorance here, but what I can be certain of is that I cannot use this document to inform me as a voter, the implication of principle 2 is that "cultural legitimacy" ellevates above a principle like "representative governance" Yes, I'm aware the Voice is an advisory board with no legislative or executive power. But this suggests to me that if there's a community out there that has a hereditary patrilineal elder system (the oldest male of a certain lineage has the final say, like the Saudi royal family.) That means Steven Ashmore 25 year old tiler saving up to study programming full time doesn't get a voice in his community because "voting" would violate "cultural legitimacy" his designated representative to parliament is going to be the elder's son (unless the national results force the elder to send his daughter).

Like I do not know if any indigenous communities operate on a hereditary basis as opposed to some form of election process. Again, I plead ignorance. What I know happened for certain, was that in 2015 a group of Aboriginal Elders presented the "Uluru Bark Petition" to voice their opposition to marriage equality. Which prompted another petition to "Reject the Uluru Bark Petition" as "not in our name" because presumably the signatories of the bark petition were speaking on behalf of their people's/communities.

I came across this researching and writing my "decolonize my bookshelf post" and found it moving, it is a response to the bark petition published in New Matilda:

“There are several reasons I am incensed to see this petition… first and most … it's because the Arrernte are named as being one of the groups of which support has been derived for this petition.

“I am Arrernte and I say plainly and clearly that THESE PEOPLE DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME. Indeed, I strongly doubt that they speak for many, if any, of the groups they have named and the fact that they have named these groups is a rude and despicable act.

“They have not consulted, they have not polled and they have certainly not discussed widely.

“They have claimed authority on this stance while having none and I am so offended by their actions that I am calling it out."

I know these feels from when fucking Australia joined the "Coalition of the Willing" for the invasion of Iraq. Part of the design flaw of Australia where you vote someone in because you want interest rates to be low and then they feel they have a mandate to activate the ANZUS treaty and send troops and resources to anybody the US President of the moment wishes to attack. But you know, I'm glad they use those same powers to help out Ukraine as they get invaded.

So there's a knight-fork here somewhere. "Legitimacy" probably needs no prefix. There's no such thing as "cultural" legitimacy as distinct from "legal" legitimacy or "popular" legitimacy or "religious" legitimacy etc. Something is either legitimate or not, and figuring that out is likely an ongoing project. 

This principle as outlined, does not however, sound legitimate and represents the inherent self-contradictory nature of the political fashions of the moment.

Principle 2 leaves the door open for Australia discovering that by-and-large Aboriginal Australia is pretty Christian Culturally conservative, maybe patriarchal or any other sobering surprises that may await metropolitan left-wing white people and the zero indigenous people they know. At the same time Principle 3 seems designed to try and ensure that if the indigenous people of Australia get a voice, it will be a left-wing progressive voice.

Because of the historical absence of an indigenous voice in Australia, I genuinely have no idea what that voice may be, but the proposed principles for generating that voice sound like I wouldn't really be hearing it anyway.

An Unfortunate Conclusion

I will be waiting for a referendum that asks me: "That Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders have a minimum of one publicly funded national representative body to make representations to Parliament and the media on any issue they so choose, in operation at all times." I would vote yes to that.

I am also okay with the incumbent Labor government establishing their proposed voice to parliament, even though I feel it describes a shitshow likely to follow the lead of ATSIC, though to be honest I'm not sure what ATSIC did. 

I don't trust them to establish a constitutionally enshrined body, because of the hints it follows the politics of the day with undertures to intersectionality and alternate ways of knowing. In which case, because it comes about via a referendum, it involves the white majority of Australian's putting upon the indigenous people's of Australia conditions that we do not suffer ourselves. If I can live day-to-day free from deference to Kimberle Krenshaw, so should my indigenous brothers and sisters.

The criticism of the US's founding fathers is that the wrote a bill of inaliable rights for White Land Owners and everyone else had to live under...I don't know, fucking feudalism and chattel slavery. Well this sounds like democracy for whites and anything for the indigenous be it holder of the magic stick, to hereditary titles to who dies last to anarcho-syndicalism, provided that the end result is intra-indigenous equity based on immutable characteristics like sex and age.

Having said that, I fear it does not go without fucking saying that I do not trust "the coalition" to create indigenous representation at all. I wouldn't have trusted Howard or the almost a-political Turnbull to do it, and the depressing parade of coalition leaders being Abbott, Scomo and now Dutton not to neglect Barnaby Joyce. Fucking, I don't trust those guys to fucking talk to an indigenous person let alone preside over the legislating of a representative body.

And fucking obviously, I don't trust academics from the humanities, people drafting interesting but authority-less near-incoherent documents like this are well positioned to have undue influence over the construction of any representative body.

There may be a guiding principle that the voice be transparent and accountable, but the document itself isn't transparent and accountable.

So unfortunately, pending changing facts that could change my mind, this one is an easy "no" for me.