Australia Says 'No'

Fear And Loathing In Maranoa

As the pollsters have been predicting for some weeks, the referendum failed to garner the 'yes' vote. 

I happened to catch a Youtube video of Sky News hosts gloating about it and I've wondered if they inhabit the same reality I do - everything they said in celebration of the outcome sounded like Australians came together to thwart a massive conspiracy the likes of which has never been seen. I mean, come on, how much more disinformation does Murdoch's people need to spew about, even after 'winning'. 

The ABC put together this analysis which is informative. 

The journey to the 2023 vote was set in motion in 2017 when Indigenous leaders and community members “from all points of the southern sky” met at Uluru and wrote an invitation to the Australian people to walk with them on a path toward “constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country”. 

That letter asked Australians to listen, and urged us all to support structural reforms to overcome the “torment of [First Nations] powerlessness”: 

“Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.”
Neither side of the Voice debate denied the need for Australia to create a better future for First Nations children. 

But, by majority vote, Australians have made clear that a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament is not how they want to respond to these crises. 

An urgent question emerges — what is?

So  the last rhetorical bit got me thinking about the whole exercise. 60% of the population voted no. It's nothing to be sneezed at. Within that context there's an electorate out there that voted 84% 'no'. I hope I never go there. 

Unlike the plebiscite for same sex marriage a few years ago, the outcome of this referendum was more in line with the 1999 referendum for the Republic. As was then, the great unwashed decided the Monarchy was fine enough thank you very much in the same way they decided the very idea of Indigenous people having a say in the laws put forward about them was not acceptable. This country has not come very far since then, and dare I say it was miraculous that the '67 referendum to recognise the Indigenous people as citizens got up. 

A Question of Civility

There's a Japanese politician Taro Aso, who got into trouble for saying something undiplomatic during the pandemic. He was asked about how well the Japanese people responded to government directives to wear masks and exercise social distancing compared to other countries. To what, he asked, would he attribute this difference? Aso replied the level of civility is fundamentally different between those countries and Japan. 

He was asked for an observation and then was pilloried for his off-the-cuff opinion. I get it - it sounds like he's saying other countries and populations that don't behave like the Japanese are somehow inferior. What he may have meant was the Japanese were superior, which is not better, but a different proposition. It's not that they/you suck, but we just do things better, is different to "you all suck". 

But when I look around me, what I feel is that the gulf lying between the 'Yes' and 'No' voters is exactly that characterisation: There's an absence of civility in wanting to vote 'no'. Are they inferior human beings? No, but their civility is pretty low if they want to vote to keep the status quo in Australia where the indigenous population is impoverished, incarcerated, disadvantaged and alienated at every turn. I'm not the one that's being churlish in suggesting that it's an utter lack of civility that made them vote 'no'. 

I'm Used To This Feeling

The Republic Referendum of 1999 felt pretty much like this, but that one happened way before Blogs, let alone Social Media so I suffered that in my own headspace more than anywhere else. In retrospect, I think I took that defeat on the chin too, although in the years since, I've sort of backed off the Republican position. Maybe it's that old age brings a certain kind of cynicism about other human beings, that in turn makes you fearful for their lack of civility. In which case a Republic would open doors to any number of executive hour stories, as many republics around the world have found out, including the United Staes of America on the 6th of January 2021. 

That leads me to suspect we with the higher sense of civility should perhaps stay our hand at casting condemnations at the low civility 60% of this sorry nation. After all, there was once an organ called ATSIC and it was abolished because of the corruption allegations it managed to accrue in its time. That experience alone should temper the notion of any political organ that purports to represent the indigenous voice - and in turn, maybe there is a kind of wisdom in the base (and I mean, bottom feeding base) conservative impulse to just saying no to enshrining body that could go the way of ATSIC. 

After all, it was never answered who was going to sit on that advisory body and how they would come to be. Maybe that was a discussion for another day once there was a referendum consensus that we would have such an organ but... it does the beg the question. If roughly the same consensus that didn't want a Republic also don't want a rewrite of the constitution, with some humility, we with the high sense of civility should take that on board more seriously. Is it really intellectual arrogance for the inner city types to want to change the constitution? No. Just the hope that we thought we were better than this. 

So there you have it. Our nation is split into haves and have-nots. It's not about having money or property - it's about having a conscience. 

Referendum Coming Up

The Voice, The Voice

The referendum for The Voice is coming up on Saturday. No surprises, I'm voting 'Yes', so let's just get that out of the way. The choice is pretty stark. There's really no confusion except those points-of-confusion spread about by 'No' vote campaigners. If you want to side with people who think outcomes for indigenous Australians are going swimmingly well, you vote 'no'. If you want to side with the people who don't think things are working that great when it comes to outcomes for Indigenous people, then you vote 'yes'. The fact that you might be lining up with the woke, the sanctimonious, the inner-city-latte-sipping urban elites, and the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup people is actually by-the-by. In turn, if you want to be on the side of conservatives, red necks, racists, conspiracy nut jobs, and other assorted bloody-minded personality-disordered types, you vote 'no' and wear the opprobrium. Society is binary (gender, is less so) in 2023.  

There was that scintillating observation made by an indigenous MP that things were working out great for indigenous people because European colonisation brought running water, got ridiculed a lot. She's only right if you ignore all the suffering otherwise - and we are trying to address the suffering. The "what have the Romans ever done for us?" gag from 'The Life of Brian' is now coming up to almost 50 years old. You would think that our political classes would have digested it a bit better by now, but clearly they have not. Nobody siding with a parochial 'cultural' mindset (as per David Graeber) is not going to accept the merits of civilisation. It's interesting that the best argument in favour of continuing the status quo is history as seen through the prism of civilisation and technology. 

Conversely, it is equally notable that the there are a number of indigenous groups saying they want to vote 'no'  because they didn't get a say, or it doesn't get enough of a bite out of what mainstream Australia possesses. Some even argue if it's not the treaty, they don't want to know about it. Others have said they weren't consulted, while yet others more have said they don't get how it's going to make their lives better immediately - so 'no' thank you. The defiant poses struck by these indigenous leaders arguing for a 'no' vote is also reminiscent of the argument made by David Graeber that the heart of culture is defiance. That in the face of encroaching civilisation, some would defiantly say no to it, is deeply cultural. 

All this has me thinking that this referendum is largely symbolic for a reason. The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants us to waste our energy on something trivial, patronising, and somewhat idiotic for the sole reason of distraction. He would like us to expend tremendous amounts of energy arguing the pros and cons of something that is largely without economic or climactic impact. The nation has spent a good deal of time talking about this, while exercising very little scrutiny of just what this government is doing about housing, energy policy, climate change (read "GLOBAL WARMING") and healthcare after the pandemic. He has basically given us this idiotic shibboleth with which to beat over our own heads. It is government by the patronising, for the patronising of the patronised. 

In other words, we are the idiot marks for putting up with this so-called debate.