Below is a broad look at the ‘whole issue’ with which I find myself in strong agreement.
Everyone wants to see the 20-35% of Indigenous peoples, who are currently leading dysfunctional lives in remote areas, do better. Many voters want this to happen “now”. But any solution is going to take decades.
The fact that 65-80% of Indigenous peoples live lives that are materially indistinguishable from other modern Australians indicates that colonisation and dispossession are not the reasons for the underperformance of the other 20-35%.
In my opinion, there are two reasons.
Firstly, those 20-35% have lost their aspiration for a better life due to 56 years of “sit down money” which has taken away their incentive to acquire skills and education to enable them and their children to get jobs in the real economy and to be self-reliant. The remote communities where they live have no real jobs (unlike mining towns or agricultural service centres or tourism destinations), along with no hospitals, schools, or other facilities. Only aboriginals are allowed to receive welfare having elected to live where there are no jobs.
Secondly, the myth of the “Stolen Generation”, invented in a 20-page pamphlet by a white postgraduate history student, Peter Read, in 1981, gave aboriginals an excuse to believe that the problems in their own lives do not derive from the failings of their families or the bad choices they make themselves. Instead, they can identify themselves as victims of a terrible injustice. All their problems can be blamed on white bureaucrats driven by racism.
This myth has been thoroughly debunked in Volume 3 of Keith Windschuttle’s book “The Fabrication of Aboriginal History – The Stolen Generations 1881 – 2008”.
The myth does not stand up to scrutiny. Yet, thanks to the determination of left-wing historians and state education curriculum boards, Australian schoolchildren have been indoctrinated to believe this historical fiction. Many have learned to despise their own country and to be ashamed of Australia’s past.
Worse, this historical fiction has created a real-life social catastrophe. Fear of creating a ‘new’ Stolen Generation has prevented social workers, child welfare officials and children’s courts from removing children from violent, destitute and sexually abusive families.
Unfortunately, cynical elite aboriginal and white activists and bureaucrats are seeking to take advantage of the goodwill of the Australian people towards this 20-35%.
They wish to enshrine in our Constitution, by stealth, power and jobs for themselves forever in a $39.5 billion industry that feeds on aboriginal suffering. Depending on the High Court’s interpretation, the 22 people who become members of the voice could effectively control every aspect of our day-to-day life in this country.
We are being asked to give one racial group – and their descendants for all time – constitutionally guaranteed additional influence over all areas of public policy.
The proposed constitutionally enshrined national voice is not the solution to aboriginal disadvantage for the 20 – 35%. For a start, there is absolutely no indication in the 2021 Indigenous Voice Codesign Process Report of how the voice will solve the problem. Indeed, the proponents of the voice depend on maintaining the dysfunctional remote communities to ensure the ‘gap’ never closes, so that they can continue to feed at the taxpayer trough. The proponents of the voice will be guaranteed enormous money and power in perpetuity.
Experience in places like America shows that local voices are part of the solution to getting underperforming indigenous peoples back on track. This is not what we are getting in this proposed referendum. It, and the Uluru Statement from the Heart on which it is based, were designed by the aboriginal and non-aboriginal activists, registered aboriginal corporations and bureaucrats who already advise government and who are the prime beneficiaries of the $39.5 billion expenditure each year on Aborigines. If the problems of dysfunctional aborigines were to be solved, these people would no longer have a job.
The Uluru Statement was not the result of a grassroots movement of indigenous people.
The 250 delegates that endorsed the Uluru statement were handpicked from fourteen community “dialogues”. The dialogues were by invitation only and capped at one hundred attendees. Forty percent of the attendees were non-Indigenous people. The national voice was presented as the only solution with no alternatives considered. Ninety percent of submissions to the codesign group and 80% of surveys came from non-Indigenous organisations, all strongly supporting a national voice. In other words, the process was “stacked.”
Local voices were ignored in this process and will be ignored by the national voice.
The establishment of the voice is coordinated by the National Indigenous Australians Agency which is an executive agency within the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. More than 1000 bureaucrats work in the National Indigenous Australians Agency. This agency has been forced to release, under freedom of information laws in March 2023, documents saying that “any voice to Parliament should be designed so that it could support and promote a treaty making process….A treaty could include a proper say in decision-making, the establishment of a truth commission, reparations, a financial settlement (such as seeking a percentage of GDP), the resolution of land, water and resources issues, recognition of authority and customary law.” In their own words, the voice is to be enshrined in the Constitution and, unlike legislation, it’s permanent; the voice forces Australians into a treaty; the treaty means Australians pay a percentage of GDP to the voice and other payments, in perpetuity.
This radical step could only be implemented by pretending the change was modest and by trying to stifle debate by implying that those with concerns are racist.
Throwing money at the problem has failed. Until the 20-35% take responsibility for their future and their own well-being, there will be limited change.
To make local peoples subject to the consequences of their own decisions, welfare payments should be conditional on recipients making sure that their children are well fed and have a stable, safe and clean home in which to live. It should also be conditional on those children attending school.
This will require development officers/mentors to be employed in every underperforming aboriginal community to liaise with local indigenous elders and parents, shopkeepers, police, magistrates, local government, teachers, doctors and hospitals to ensure that family life is stable, and kids get a decent education. This will take at least two decades.
The proposed voice is not the solution to the current problems facing the underperforming 20-35% of indigenous peoples. To enshrine the Canberra based voice in the Constitution would be dangerous because the proposed wording in the Constitution simply does not sufficiently curtail the possibility that the 22 appointees might abuse the powers given them. If the proposed voice descends into cronyism and corruption (like its predecessors have), the Parliament will simply not have the power to bring it to heel.
The proposed voice is wrong in principle because it gives Australians different rights based on their supposed race. It is certain that the 22 voice members will be selected from of the highly paid activist aboriginal elite. They won’t even be elected by individual aborigines but selected by “aboriginal organisations”, i.e., themselves.
It offends the principle of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” and equality of all Australians before the law.
Australia’s population has grown from 11.8 million in 1967 to 26.4 million now. How fair is it to ask the 14.6 million Australians who immigrated or were born here after 1967 – who have never been responsible for mistreating indigenous people – to pay compensation to current generations of indigenous people who have never experienced mistreatment?
Geoff Travers
22 May 2023
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