‘Albanese is convinced the Voice will pass,’ writes Dennis Shanahan in The Australian. If so, the consequential conclusion of the Voice, should it come to pass, may have taken some people – like me – a while to fully comprehend.
I woke up in the middle of the night and, while having a gulp of water, it dawned on me: the Voice would, in effect, become the new legislative power in the land. Its arrival would be comparable to a backdoor revolution, with our elected representatives made bit players by a selected, unelected committee at the levers of power.
And that is perhaps why vocal supporters of the Voice think this is an exciting time… While they don’t say it out loud, replicating the mission brief of the National Indigenous Australians Agency with a budget of $4.5 billion annually, only makes sense if that mission statement is incorporated in the Constitution, with the rider that the Voice ‘advise’ Parliament and the executive.
Every piece of legislation can be drawn into the Voice’s ambit. Yes, even defence and foreign affairs. Every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is as invested in these matters – and literally, too, as taxpayers or potential taxpayers – as every other Australian. All Australians have a direct interest in these matters.
Looking at the prospect of an Australia operating under a Voice, it is hard to see how the country could be governed without the de facto approval of the Voice committee. That is real control and power. The referendum will be a contest for the levers of government, but it is also a social power tool. Constitutional recognition would be benign enough on its own, something everyone would welcome. Loaded up with the power over laws, the Voice would cement the demands of a racial minority wherever the Voice looked, as it were, which runs contrary to our understanding of equality for the individual citizen.
The route from intolerance to tolerance to acceptance to prominence can be fairly short, as we have seen in the social barometer for LGBTQ+ rights, for example. Indigenous Australians are already well along that route, with favourable conditions in many walks of life and work. Welcome to country and welcome to preferential treatment are both manifestations of prominence.
Australian history, already corrupted in the public mind by activists reworking it, is likely to be further tortured into a degrading shadow of the truth that serves a political narrative rather than historical fact. Then there are movements such as the Blak Sovereignty Movement gaining prominence within the Voice debate. Black is a colour: blak is a political label. What does this group want? Where do their demands stop?
Curiously enough, the claim to victimhood would be turbo-charged by the Voice, giving a minority a majority in power. The guilt-generating narrative would acquire a second rail: the power narrative. Grievance weaponised…
Yet for most Aboriginals, especially those who have assimilated and succeeded in trades and professions, the Voice would be the manifestation of the activist lie – except for the notion of constitutional recognition. Most Indigenous Australians probably sense that reconciliation is in the hands of the Indigenous community, not the political ideology of blak.
In a post-Voice world, Australia would be challenged by executing its role in foreign affairs. Would the Voice demand a shadow minister and would there be room for a seat at international gatherings? We can see from this example how it is thought that the Voice is like a third chamber of Parliament.
Picture the Foreign Minister Penny Wong sitting beside a nominated Voice representative at a meeting with, say, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, sharing whispers as the talks progress. Conferring with the Voice.
Talk about a farce!
