Why I Can’t Support the Voice Referendum

Sometime this year, Australians vote on the following question: “A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?” In this video, I’ll explain why I cannot support it. Noting that I don’t care either way how you vote. If you support it, great. If Australians vote it in, so be it. I’m not going to be upset with anybody over it.

Now we don’t know much else about this change apart from the proposed constitutional amendment: “There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice who may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”. Which to be fair, could be anything, right? Who are we to say what matters or doesn’t matter to Indigenous people?

It’s funny, if you search for “The Voice Australia” in Google, unsurprisingly, you get the singing contest rather than the upcoming Indigenous referendum. You’d think they would have chosen a name that didn’t clash with the name of a reality TV show. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

So why can’t I support this proposed amendment? Well, the overarching goal, at least on paper, is equality. Ultimately, this is about everyone having equal access to the same rights and opportunities. Well, how is creating a body that is only open to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people bringing us closer to equality? How is a body that excludes membership based entirely on one’s ancestry or ethnicity bringing us closer together? Isn’t it doing the opposite?

A simple argument would be, do Chinese Australians get their own Voice to parliament? Actually, Chinese-Australian history predates the first fleet. They’ve been in Australia for many generations. Do Ukrainian Australians get a Voice to parliament? What about Russian Australians? Do they get a Voice? If not, why not?

What about convict Australians? Almost 20% of modern Australians are descendants of convicts that were forcibly transported from Great Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia, often for very petty crimes such as stealing food to feed their hungry families. These people were essentially used a source of slave labour. Do they get a Voice to parliament?

Many of you might rightly be thinking, but hang on, all these people already have a Voice to parliament! It’s called our local MPs and senators. All eligible Australians get to vote who they want to represent them in parliament. I’m not saying that it’s a perfect system. I’m not saying it hasn’t got its flaws. But on paper at least, we all already have representation in parliament. I mean, that’s the whole point of Parliament – to represent Australians!

The current government pride themselves on equality. Current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese proudly proclaims that two-thirds of all new jobs went to women in the last year. If equality is your goal, surely 50% females should be the goal, not two-thirds. But isn’t that what always happens? Here in Queensland after the recent cabinet reshuffle last month, you can clearly see that we’ve become more equal than ever before!

Only a couple of weeks ago, the same government renamed the world’s largest sand island from Fraser Island to K’Gari. Personally, I don’t care either way, but I don’t remember being consulted? We’re supposedly a democracy here in Australia, but the government can just rename entire islands whenever they feel like it?

Australia’s biggest companies are also getting behind the Voice. The local university had a sign up saying, “We support an Indigenous Voice to Parliament”. Did they survey all of us workers? Did they survey all the students? No! They’re just claiming that the university support the Voice without any actual evidence.

And that’s the problem with this Voice vote. We’re being told by certain groups that if you don’t vote yes, you’re a racist. The same on social media. It’s a tactic that you’d see in the school playground. “If you don’t agree with me, I’ll resort to calling you names”. It’s not even worth responding to these sorts of people. They should be politely ignored.

No matter which side of the debate you fall into, I think we can all agree that this upcoming vote is divisive. It’s causing disagreement and hostility between people for no other reason than the Government are trying to set up a special Voice to parliament for only a single ethnic group, essentially, which only make up a relatively tiny fraction of the Australian population. In a time when many Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are struggling with cost of living pressures and housing woes, shouldn’t that be what we focus on? Legislation that helps ALL Australians, not just a select few?

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn