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.