The Vibe of the Makarrata

The Voice was a will-o’-the-wisp. It was hard to grasp what one was being asked to vote for. The Uluru Statement from the Heart introduced the new arrival briefly as a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the Constitution. Later, with a hint of modesty, it was presented to society at large as a Voice to Parliament. Then, after another makeover, it appeared on the ballot paper in an even bolder form as a body that could make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government about First Nations matters. The irresistible Voice now seemed poised to charm the entire structure of government, accompanied by well-mannered murmurs of approval from social elites.

Professor Megan Davis, a co-chair of the Uluru process and a leading Aboriginal activist, explained her expectations for the Voice:

The Voice will be able to speak to all parts of the government, including the cabinet ministers, public servants, and independent statutory offices and agencies—such as the Reserve Bank, as well as a wide array of other agencies including, to name a few, Centrelink, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Ombudsman—on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In what seemed to be an attempt to allay fears about the breadth of the advisory power to be vested in the Voice, Professor Davis added: “The parliament will be able to set procedures through which the Voice’s representations are received, with the important caveat that the parliament won’t be able to stop the Voice making those representations. It can’t shut the Voice up.”

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, sought to allay fears by suggesting that the Voice was a “modest proposal”, just a matter of good manners. It was simply an advisory body. It wouldn’t be able to veto legislation, so it couldn’t be described as a third chamber of parliament. In the course of the campaign, however, he assured Aboriginal leaders that the Voice was more than a symbolic gesture. It would be a source of real power. He noted also that it would be a brave government indeed that disregarded advice from the Voice.

A brave government? Maybe. The PM’s assurances to Aboriginal leaders suggested, contrary to his earlier blandishments directed to the general public, that the proposed Voice, if not exactly a third chamber of parliament, would almost certainly be viewed in the political arena as an influential parliamentary entity of some kind. With public opinion behind it, the Voice would probably be capable of blocking or stalling whatever it didn’t like and forging links to international agencies.

In all sorts of ways, the electorate was left in the dark as to what might happen if the Yes case succeeded. Very few details were provided as to what advisory representations might actually be made by the Voice. Opinions wavered as to what it could do or achieve. Julian Leeser, the shadow Attorney-General, jumped ship from the No case favoured by his party to reconnect with the Yes case. The columnist Greg Craven, well-known for supporting the Yes case, found to his horror that snippets from his writings were being used in the official pamphlet to underpin the No case. Various supporters of the Yes case didn’t shrink from characterising people with doubts about the proposal as spreaders of misinformation. In the end, most people probably found it almost impossible to work out what was going on or what the Yes case might lead to in reality.

It will be useful, then, to look at why the Yes case failed and whether other facets of the Uluru Statement, such as truth-telling and treaty-making, will still be pursued. Has the outcome of the referendum folly been misinterpreted? If so, will this affect the need for national cohesion?

A successful constitutional referendum in 1967 led to the federal government acquiring a power to make laws for people of any race including Aboriginal people. An initial sense of cohesion led to a growing awareness of historic wrongs, a desire for reconciliation, and possibly some form of Aboriginal recognition in the Constitution. This was followed by widespread consultation with Aboriginal communities throughout Australia.

In 2017, the Uluru Statement proposed “constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country”. An accompanying plea for action contained certain key elements: a Voice enshrined in the Constitution, followed by a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of treaty-making with First Nations and truth-telling about indigenous history.

This plea had prospects of attracting bipartisan political support, but there were still some crucial issues to be addressed, including a process of consultation ranging beyond indigenous people only and the provision of details as to the nature of the proposed Voice. To be enshrined in the Constitution, it would have to be approved at a referendum by a majority of electors in a majority of the states.

In the years that followed, the political parties co-operated in attempts to design a workable model for the proposed Voice, but to no avail. The prospects of a compromise or “settlement” receded when Anthony Albanese indicated, upon winning the 2022 election, that Labor would submit the Voice proposal to a referendum without further consultation and without securing bipartisan support. In its final form, the question put to the people by the new Labor team sought to empower not simply a Voice to be enshrined in the Constitution but now an advisory Voice to the whole of government about a much wider range of matters than previously contemplated. The Coalition parties were not prepared to support a revised proposal of this kind.

Expert opinions and cautionary words were provided by various distinguished lawyers. Malcolm McCusker KC, a former Governor of Western Australia, for example, observed, without committing to one side or the other, that “a decision on this referendum should not be based on feelings of guilt. Emotion should play no part in the making of such an important decision as an alteration to our constitution, only careful thought.”

The Yes case was put by the Labor government and well-known Aboriginal leaders such as Noel Pearson, Thomas Mayo and Professors Marcia Langton and Megan Davis. It was supported by leading non-indigenous academics such as Father Frank Brennan and Damien Freeman.

The No case was put not only by the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, but also by the Aboriginal leaders Warren Mundine and Senator Jacinta Price. The Voice proposal, they said, was divisive, because it sought to give indigenous citizens a special privilege based on race that would not be available to other citizens, contrary to the democratic ideal of equality.

There is no need, for present purposes, to canvass all the arguments for and against the proposal. In the end, in October 2023, the Voice proposal failed because it was supported by only 39 per cent of the electorate and by none of the states.

Some proponents of the Yes case recognised that the proposal’s failure was due to a flawed process and a bad campaign. In a piece in the Weekend Australian published shortly after the decisive vote, Father Frank Brennan said:

At the Prime Minister’s news conference acknowledging the loss of the referendum last Saturday night, a journalist asked: “Why do you think Australians voted No?” Mr Albanese’s answer could not have been simpler: “The analysis will go on for some time, no doubt. But the truth is that no referendum has succeeded in this country without bipartisan support. None”…

There’s really not much need for further analysis than that. We all knew this from Day One. Putting his all into his bold election commitment to implement the Uluru Statement in full, the Prime Minister thought it worth a shot without bipartisan support. Many of us were not convinced, with Labor having lost 24 of the 25 referendum proposals it had put up since federation.

In a recently published book, The End of Settle­ment, Brennan’s colleague Damien Freeman observed that the inability to achieve concurrence resulted in failure. The message was that, if you didn’t agree with the proposal, you were racist. This didn’t work. Campaigners who relied on identity politics were defeated by those who relied on populist politics. A referendum that was supposed to be a unifying moment revealed the country’s division. It only confirmed that trust was declining and polarisation increasing.

On the other hand, in the Weekend Australian of July 13 this year, Professor Megan Davis, who is still pressing for the Uluru Statement to be implemented in all respects, said this:

We can’t be sure that bipartisanship would have changed the outcome. Obscuring everything was a thick cloud of misinformation and disinformation. Throughout the campaign lies were spread from both ends of the political spectrum. Politicians and opportunistic zealots got involved and coloured the national conversation in a way that was divisive. Then they sought to brand the idea as divisive. But it was not one thing. Rather, it was a cocktail of negative influences—racism, politicisation, disinformation, and let’s not forget plain old inertia and fear of change…

The research shows that that the primary reason for the No vote was that people didn’t want race in the Constitution. Guess what. It’s already in the Constitution. It dominated discussion for our Constitution in the 1890s and it shaped the laws contained therein—laws of exclusion based on race.

Professor Davis has chosen to demonise supporters of the No case. Surprisingly, for an advocate committed to truth-telling, she has chosen also to gloss over the reality that many Australians of goodwill, people minded to assist indigenous people as fellow Australians, but with grave doubts as to whether a special privilege in their favour should be enshrined in the Constitution, thought, quite simply, that the proposed Voice was a bad idea. It was too divisive. It was still open to the federal government, without amending the Constitution, to improve things in remote communities by conventional means, via legislation and changes to public opinion.

While accusing her opponents of spreading misinformation, Professor Davis inflated her rhetoric by suggesting that because race is mentioned in the Constitution the Voice proposal was nothing new. Not so. Race is mentioned here and there in the Constitution, true, but the creation of a special privilege based on race, a means of influencing government not open to non-indigenous citizens, is certainly new. It is completely unlike other clauses in the Constitution in which race is mentioned.

Combative rhetoric of the Megan Davis kind, in which opposing arguments are ignored or simply derided as misinformation, might well be viewed by some observers of the scene as a form of misinformation in itself. More importantly, however, even after making allowance for the disappointment undoubtedly felt by supporters of the unsuccessful Yes case, a further question arises as to whether any weight can safely be given to the strident rhetoric of Professor Davis and others like her if she continues to press for truth-telling and treaty-making.

We are at a decisive moment in Australian politics, a moment in which telling the truth will be all-important, for democracy depends on the free and intelligent judgment of citizens, clearly expressed, and based on exact information. The works of George Orwell show that when reality is undermined by twisted language and distortions of truth to foster a questionable purpose, ordinary people will become confused, and eventually ineffectual.

The purpose underlying the truth-telling process envisaged by the Uluru Statement is self-determination and empowerment. Will this shape what is said to the proposed Makarrata Commission? Will it focus only upon stories of maladministration and other grievances? Will its findings be supported by verifiable facts, or will they simply amount to virtue-signalling in a form acceptable to supporters of the Yes case, including some of the big companies that rallied behind the proposal—ranging way beyond their usual remit for reasons that aren’t quite clear?

In Orwell’s novel Animal Farm he outlined the way in which societies can slide downhill due to corruptions of language, as in the commandment approved by the powers-that-be in the final pages of the novel: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. While pondering the way in which “truth” can be reshaped by descriptive ingenuity, it is worth keeping in mind some remarks forming part of Orwell’s introduction to the novel:

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this or that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was “not done” to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.

Business leaders, academics and lawyers are generally accustomed to persuasive arguments being put on both sides of significant issues. In the course of the Voice campaign, however, subject to very few exceptions, major companies, universities, bar associations, law societies and other significant bodies made it clear that in their opinion a Yes vote was the right thing to do, the decent thing, irrespective of parliamentary traditions reflecting the ideal of equality between all citizens.

This conformity of opinion might suggest that the case for constitutional change was so compelling—in law and as a matter of common decency—that it simply had to be approved. On the other hand, within groups accustomed to spirited debate and dispassionate analysis, and where it turned out in the end that 61 per cent of the electorate as a whole opposed the change, this troubling conformity of opinion seemed insidious, as if, in an Orwellian mood, in the senior ranks of the business, academic and legal elites, there was a prevailing orthodoxy that to vote against the proposed change simply wouldn’t be the “done thing”.

This meant that a good many ordinary people felt obliged to keep their mouths shut, well aware, notwithstanding the nation’s frequently expressed respect for freedom of speech, that doubts about or arguments against the Yes case could lead not only to accusations of racism but to difficulties with clients, employers, friends or family members (especially those of the younger generation on university campuses). The topic became undiscussable in various quarters, or discussable only in whispers. Will disquieting orthodoxies of this kind reappear if a truth-telling commission is set up in Australia?

The term “truth-telling” is now usually linked to what is happening in former colonies. My work as Chair of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize over a number of years took me to various Commonwealth countries and led to encounters with journalists and creative writers in these places. Critiques of colonial times were common. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions have been set up in South Africa and Canada. Nonetheless, like Australia, most former colonies seemed to accept that the rule of law, freedom of speech and the Westminster system of democracy were the best available means of government.

I was reminded also in these places of the importance of literary works. Novels and plays allow room for wide-ranging responses to controversial issues—independence in the face of conformity. Works of fiction, such as Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, can often convey profound insights into what is actually going on, encouraging the reader, after stripping away the veneer of fiction, to say, yes, that’s how it is, that’s the reality. Insights like this can pave the way to reform.

The abstract language of international politics suggests that truth-telling projects can be set up anywhere, ignoring the likelihood that, in adhering to a familiar orthodoxy, rulers will probably arrive at a pre-determined outcome. Literary works, on the other hand, remind us that one size doesn’t fit all circumstances. The habits of a particular society are special to that place. Local circumstances and individuality should be respected. What good will freedom of speech bring in practice unless it is accompanied not by jargon from overseas or an orthodoxy known as “truth-telling” but by the straightforward local custom of simply telling the truth?

Freedom of speech will be illusory if we all hold, or are expected to hold, the same opinion. This seemed to be happening early on in the Voice campaign when the Yes case was widely favoured, an expectation that lured the Prime Minister into making an unwise decision, namely, to disregard a bipartisan approach, a national approach, and aim for a purely Labor victory.

A country’s culture and distinctive ways are precious. They will change and mature as time goes by. They will be ill-served by supposedly truth-telling processes that sound virtuous but are often driven by rhetoric and untested orthodoxies, constantly nurturing grievances from the past. Better by far that the process of change be shaped by looking forward, striving for improvement, with an awareness that much of value is shaped by independent thought.

It appears that the Prime Minister is now minded to bypass the setting up of a Makarrata Commission, even though the 2022 budget, his first budget after the election, set aside nearly $6 million for work to establish such a commission. He has changed tack. He is now describing Makarrata as simply the process of coming together after a struggle, including engagement with land councils and other bodies. The Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, has made it clear that a Makarrata Commission will not be set up under any government he leads.

The likelihood remains, however, that Aboriginal activists will continue to press for the establishment of a Makarrata Commission, as envisaged by the Uluru Statement, because this was implicit in the Prime Minister’s promise to implement the Statement in full. The co-chairs of the Uluru process, Professor Davis and Pat Anderson, have called out Albanese’s ambiguous stance. “Makarrata is not a vague vibe or a series of casual conversations,” they said. “It’s a bricks-and-mortar body and it was a clear election promise.”

Political observers will have to keep watching the Makarrata space.

Nicholas Hasluck’s latest works include his novel Che’s Last Embrace. He wrote the article “Adrift in the Art Circus” in the September issue.