Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.
Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.
American here, what does it mean to recognize a class of indigenous people in Australia?
Because we have a very different understanding of the word lol
There’s a good breakdown on the whole thing here: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/13/what-is-the-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-australia-when-referendum-2023-explained-yes-no-campaign-wording
The recognition aspect was basically the creation of an advisory body to the government with members selected from indigenous groups. The idea being that the govt has historically poorly managed indigenous issues so by having them directly advising govt there should be better policy outcomes
Oh dear, thanks for the link. I would have voted no, too. It does not sound like a great institution. (Although I’m German and reading about it for the first time rn, so…)
From what I read in this article, I’m not even sure it would be properly democratic? Reads like a government advisory body which claims to represent the interests of a specific heritage - pretty strange.
The context is important here - Australia had a continuous indigenous population for over 60,000 years before white settlement. White Australia never had an agreement with indigenous peoples at large, and through relentless expansion of colonies, spreading diseases like smallpox, introducing alcohol and drugs, forcibly abducting and schooling children, heavy incarceration and a slew of other typical British colonial shit ended up leaving them disenfranchised, alienated, and excluded. Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation had a deep affinity with the land and tended it like custodians, but because they didn’t build towns or farm like Europeans, they were just swept aside without ever really being acknowledged or addressed.
The Voice was asked for as a product of the Uluru Statement of the Heart - not long, worth a read- https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/
It was really first and foremost about having an acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, the settlers cocked things up and that it’d better to fix things together. It’s not asking for anything “more” or extra, it’s about correctly telling history and reframing our national dialogue to be coming from a place of partnership, instead of colonialism, so we could fix some of the very real issues modern Australians face as a result of hundreds of years of callous racism. It was a chance for white Australia and government to really listen and maybe find better ways of doing things.
But now instead we get to try to explain to our kids why 60% of the country don’t think representation or inclusion matters while indigenous Australians will continue to struggle without a government that can listen to them.
Why would context be important here? Institutionally it is a bad idea, even if an indigenous population ten times as big would’ve been mistreated ten times worse. The hard question would be: How would anything happening in the past improve this specific policy proposal?
It seems very lacking on a legitimacy level, appears to be functionally questionable and has evidently led to increased polarization prior to even being enacted.
I like that it’s very prosaic and well crafted. I don’t like that they fail to make the case how past and current tragedies relate to the specific proposal. There’s also no evidence, benchmarking or any other kind of reference indicating the expected performance of their proposed setup. I’ve yet to find a paper outlining how the “voice” is actually supposed to work.
That’s cool. Why didn’t they do two proposals, one with the acknowledgement the other one with the suspicious institution?
It’s asking for the creation of a permanent advisory body. Are we on the same page here?
I do think representation and inclusion matter a lot and, as said, I’d strongly oppose this advisory body. Do you think it’s a black and white issue? One needs to like this specific thing or be a bad person?
I don’t think that is a productive take on this referendum. There are certainly many loving and caring people on all sides of this referendum.
You are correct except for calling the white colonizers “settlers”.
Settlers in this context typically means immigrants who came over after Australia became a British colony. Usually non-white but there are plenty of Scottish and Irish families who are settlers because of the whole British enslaving them part.
Yeah I don’t get it either. I know a lot of Natives hate the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but is that what Aus is trying to get too (within the Constitution)?
There are essentially two parts to what was proposed, the first is that having mention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island (ATSI) peoples in the constitution is recognition.
The second part, which is actually the exact mechanism which was proposed, was a permanent advisory body made up of ATSI representatives with constitutional power to give advice to the Government on issues related to or impacting ATSI people.
The exact details of the advisory body were up to legislation which we will probably never see.
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
A few of the arguments or concerns voiced by Australian’s included:
-A Voice with no power is pointless
-Lack of detail in the proposal
-Separating Australian’s by race is divisive (note there’s already constitutional race powers, which I disagree with and hope will be scrapped)
-ATSI people would have more representation than others (they actually have proportionally higher representation in Parliament today than their percentage of population)
-Leaving the exact details of the Voice to legislation means any future government could gut it without violating the constitutional amendment
-concerns this is the first push on a path to treaty and reparations as a percentage of GDP (which WAS discussed as a possibility by the people who worked on the Uluru statement)
I’ve left out the outright lies, though I guarantee someone will take issue with me simply mentioning the talking points to give you context.
Just as long as we’re all aware that while those are all reasons put forward, they are all false / lies / misleading.
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The exact details of the legislation were released on the 23 of March. As in, 6-7 months ago.
The exact wording of the Constitutional amendment was released 6-7 months ago.
The Legislation has not been, and likely won’t be seen.
If you have seen the legislation somewhere please share a link.
Magic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Australian_Indigenous_Voice_referendum#Proposed_design_of_the_Voice
Design principles are not legislation, it seems you are unfamiliar with Parliamentary process.
The final design being the legislation.
I hope that clears things up for you.
🤦 well done champ. You successfully don’t understand process.
You claimed the legislation had been shown, it has not.
Your misinformation helps no one.
That’s basically why the Voice to Parliament failed. It wasn’t clear what that would mean, and our utter garbage media fanned all the flames they could - raising the fear in people’s minds that we’d be ‘giving away’ some part of our democratic process. It’s not what would have happened, but it’s a not unfounded fear that in this age of doublespeak and militantly progressive movements, ‘recognition’ of Indigenous Australians could be manipulated into something we didn’t agree to. The result - keep the status quo.