Prime Minister Albanese has formally announced the date for the Voice referendum to be October 14, 2023 to unctuous applause from a compliant audience and delivered a speech full of his usual sophistry, virtue signalling, and fissiparous rhetoric.
The Prime Minister promised the ‘Yes’ vote is for a ‘better future’ and we must vote ‘Yes’ ‘in recognition of 65,000 years of history’.
The speech by the Prime Minister was short on facts, detail, and accurate information. Of course, those elements would only interfere with the true agenda of the Voice which is to win the ‘Yes’ vote. Nothing else matters according to the Labor-Green alliance.
The ‘Yes’ campaign door-knockers are intending to door-knock on peoples’ private residences in order to explain the Voice.
The question is, what they are going to explain to people when the whole premise of the ‘Yes’ campaign has been to not give any detail as those details are to be left to Parliament afterwards?
It’s bad enough that they intend to invade the privacy of people’s homes, but now they also think it’s okay to withhold details on issues such as treaty, sovereignty and reparations. If the ‘Yes’ campaigners spoke about treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, giving them co-sovereignty and paying a percentage of GDP as reparations for invading this country 250 years ago, most people would be unlikely to let them through the gate. Those that did let them through would have been voting ‘Yes’ anyway.
When the ‘Yes’ volunteer door-knockers arrive, will they refer to the Uluru Statement from the Heart? Will they mention the Makarrata Commission and how the government has allocated $5,000,000 in the Budget for its commencement, but refuses to say what its terms of reference will be and whether it will apply English Common Law or Traditional Aboriginal Law which currently has no place in our legal system?
Will they refer to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full as a one-page document or 26-page document and if so, will they refer to it as a militant manifesto or as a modest reform that will have no significant impact on Australia’s way of life and leave it up to the voter to decide?
Will they remind the householder that Prime Minister Albanese wants them to bring into the law the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full even though he has admitted on a Melbourne radio station to not having read the full 26-page statement and never intends to read it, but encourages all Australians to accept blindly enshrining it into the Constitution because it is the right thing to do?
Will they refer to the fact that the members of the Voice are not elected by the Australian people but appointed through some process not yet made known by the Albanese government? The only thing that is certain is that the members of the Voice can only come from a particular race of people, namely Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. Will the ‘Yes’ campaigners then leave it up to the voter to decide whether it is a race-based amendment, or will they attempt to reinforce and continue to mislead people with the lie that it is not a race-based amendment?
I’m guessing they will talk about how this will help underprivileged Indigenous people in regional and remote areas even though they have no idea how this constitutional amendment can specifically help them and especially that true assistance can be done now.
They will no doubt impart on the unsuspecting hospitable homeowner that, as Prime Minister has said ‘this is a gracious invitation by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’ and then leave it up to the by now perplexed residents just how a group of people can graciously invite themselves into a legal document.
I suspect it will be impossible for the door-knocking campaigners to prevent themselves from criticising the ‘No’ campaigners as disseminators of misinformation and disinformation.
Will the ‘Yes’ campaigners continue the original claim that the Voice is an advisory body, even though nowhere in the wording of the amendment does it say the Voice will advise the government? Will they read the proposed amendment which says nothing about advice, but rather says, ‘… the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth…’ and that such representations can be for any laws affecting all Australians?
Will the ‘Yes’ door knockers impart to the occupants of the households they approach that over $30 billion per year is already paid by the Australian taxpayers to Indigenous groups, trusts, and corporations every year with the express intention of improving the lives of Indigenous people in remote and regional areas, but due to the almost non-existing auditing of these funds they rarely, if ever assist those Indigenous Australians living in poverty?
Whilst it is difficult to surmise what they will talk about when crossing the thresholds of houses of prospective voters, it is very easy to predict what they will most emphatically not say.
The ‘Yes’ campaign door knockers will never say the referendum is not about Indigenous people, but that the most important issue not discussed is primarily whether Australians of all cultures want their Constitution amended at all.
They will not say that all Australians have equal agency in the debate, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. They will especially not say that currently in Australia all Australians are treated equally under the law and the Voice will change that the first time a group of people can make representations to Parliament by a constitutional right, because of their race. No other Australians because of their race has the same constitutional right.
Vote ‘No’ and preserve equal rights before the law for all Australians.
