The Misguided Case for Indigenous Recognition (Part III)

Part Three: The Ethnic Bias of the Expert Panel

The makeup of the Expert Panel is consistent with the bias evident in the Report’s recommendations, that an ethnically blind Constitution be changed into one that names two relatively small ethnic groups so as to honour and privilege them in perpetuity while omitting recognition of Australia’s national origins.

Let us start with the numbers. The Panel had ten indigenous and nine white members. The three ex-officio members were also indigenous. [1] These are shown in the following table.

The Panel seems to have been selected to exclude all but indigenous and white Australians. Racial discrimination is not what progressive governments are meant to do. If accepted, the Panel’s recommendations would affect future generations of the entire population, which since the 1970s has become diverse. Where were the Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian and other non-white representatives? Where were the large European immigrant communities—Greeks, Italians, Croats? Apart from co-chairman Mark Leibler, who is Jewish, the multicultural community appears to have been excluded in a Panel of twenty-two (including ex-officio members). This is not to be expected from a prime minister (Julia Gillard) who loudly supported multiculturalism. The then Opposition failed to criticise this affront. Asians make up about 12 per cent of the population, pointing to an unbiased Panel representation of two to three. Did the Gillard government discriminate against them? And did they discrimination against Anglos, who were allocated only half the number of places compared to their proportion of Australian citizens? Indigenous overrepresentation on such a Panel is understandable, but why twenty-one times their proportion of the population? If the multicultural orchestra is harmonious, why not trust white and Asian players more? There are plenty of eminent non-Anglos to choose from. Why not trust them? Perhaps they were considered less than sympathetic to indigenous causes? Whatever the cause, the Panel’s gross ethnic imbalance undermines its claim to representativeness and fairness.

There were also strong contrasts among Panel members in ethnic loyalty and advocacy. The biographies in the Report reveal some striking differences. First, all the indigenous members stated their ethnic identities, while among the whites only Mark Leibler stated his. The other whites appear to be Anglos, though that can only be inferred. Second, all of the non-Anglo members but none of the Anglos declared loyalty to their own ethnic groups. Finally all non-Anglos were activists, “community leaders”[2] for whom ethnic commitment was central to their lives, while none of the Anglos showed evidence of ethnic activism to any degree, except insofar as they worked for indigenous causes. The three ex-officio members were all professional indigenous activists.

The Anglo panel members appear to have been chosen for their commitment to the Aboriginal cause, not as ethnic representatives. A prominent example is Fred Chaney, barrister, once leader of the Liberal Party in the Senate, and recipient of the Order of Australia in part for his services to the Aboriginal community. The connections, expertise and good will of allies such as Chaney have helped forge a powerful Aboriginal lobby. He also has a history of opposing legitimate Anglo interests, even when they do not conflict with advancing Aborigines.

In 1988 Chaney crossed the floor of the Senate to vote for a motion aimed at his Party leader, John Howard. Howard had stated that during times of recession “it would be in our immediate term interest and supportive of social cohesion if [Asian immigration] were slowed down a little, so that the capacity of the community to absorb was greater”.[3] The mainstream media attacked Howard’s statement for its implication that race or ethnicity are sometimes legitimate considerations in determining immigration policy. Even the Hawke Labor government attacked Howard with moralistic rhetoric along the same lines, though the Labor Party was notorious for playing racial politics. For years Labor had been buying minority ethnic votes with immigration concessions and providing special access to minority lobbyists. The Fitzgerald Report into immigration, published in June 1988, confirmed the widespread impression that the Hawke government had been unduly influenced by ethnic lobbies, allowing them to pull immigration policy away from serving the national interest.[4] Geoffrey Blainey had pointed out at the time that the Hawke government had given the “tiny Asian portion of the Australian population four of every ten migrant places”.[5] Ethnic favouritism in the guise of multiculturalism has become entrenched in the Labor Party, with the Liberals entering the bidding.[6] Somehow Labor’s racial politics escaped the attention of the professoriate and the media, despite their forensic hunt for Anglo “racism”. The 1988 debate over Howard’s statement revealed the double standards applied to ethnic affairs.

It was in this climate that Chaney voted against Howard, undermining an attempt just to raise a question about the pace of immigration that was transforming Australian society.[7] He claimed to be motivated by a principled ethical objection to racial discrimination that overrode all other considerations including personal loyalty to a close colleague. Based on his statements at the time, attachment to Anglo Australia did not complicate Chaney’s struggle of conscience. By 2010 the principles had changed, and he was able to join an inquiry that included not one Asian, only one non-Anglo European, and not one advocate for Anglos or white Australians. He signed off on a Report that recommended constitutional recognition and privilege in perpetuity for only one small ethnic grouping, leaving the majority identity unrecognised and undefended.

Anglo or white loyalists were absent from the Panel, a body that dispensed the vital interests of white Australians who make up the majority of the population and the core of the nation. Anglo panellists were influential professionals. They came from various sides of politics. But they all acted as ethnic neuters. They were the types described in Andrew Fraser’s book, The WASP Question, as members of the one ethnic group that dares not speak or even think its name. But most of the non-Anglo panellists represented their peoples—with unabashed pride and nepotistic devotion.

Anglo Australia was also excluded from the Panel’s leadership. The two chairmen were both ethnic advocates. They were Patrick Dodson, a senior Aboriginal activist, and Mark Leibler, an advocate of indigenous rights and a leader of the Australian Jewish community. Dodson has represented Aboriginal interests for decades and has become respected on both sides of politics. In 1989 he served as Commissioner in the Inquiry into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. From 1991 to 1997 he was the Chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. He is known for advocating “reconciliation”. The goal is positive—to improve indigenous Australians’ situation by providing them with pride and inclusion in mainstream society. But Dodson overlooks the needs of mainstream society. His is an ethnocentric agenda. The contribution asked of Anglos is to confess their ancestors’ alleged guilt in causing indigenous disability and commit to pay until equality is achieved.

Mark Leibler, a tax lawyer by profession, has for many years advocated indigenous empowerment. He also believes that opposition to illegal immigrants arriving by boat appeals to the public’s “basest instincts” and risks promoting racism.[8] At the same time he has been deeply committed to the Jewish community and Israel. He has led philanthropic organisations aimed at promoting Jewish settlement and development in Israel.[9] Leibler is well connected at the highest levels of Australian politics and publishes the magazine Australia/Israel Review. In its pages he has shown himself capable of tough tactics against those perceived to threaten the Jewish community—which, curiously, included Pauline Hanson, who is not a critic of Jews or Israel.[10] The Review is suspicious of opposition to immigration, to boat people, to multiculturalism, and to indigenous rights (in Australia) because it believes such opposition increases the risk of anti-Semitism.[11] That helps explain why Hanson was condemned: the Review’s stance is not fully appeased by the absence of anti-Semitism but only by abandonment of policies vital to national continuity. It is difficult to construe this hostile policy as a matter of humanistic universalism because Leibler’s website does not feature him criticising Israel’s restrictive immigration policy, its deportation of illegal African immigrants or its assistance of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Indeed, he is identified with the ethnic-nationalist side of Israeli politics, where the need to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority is taken for granted.

Dodson and Leibler easily fail to meet the standard of disinterestedness demanded of Anglos, but their ethnocentrism was not sufficient to bias the Panel. A necessary cause was the Gillard government’s failure to appoint a chairman or panel members with records of caring for the Australian nation the way minority leaders care for their own peoples. Such appointments would have steered the Panel towards its duty of serving the public good and away from sectional interests.

The Panel’s bias helps explain the incongruity of an ostensibly left-leaning body recommending an ethnic constitution. Explanation lies not only in the ideological domain but also in ethnicity. The Anglo members were not at all engaged in defending their tribal interests. Instead they represented political parties, the Commonwealth, Aborigines or universalist values. But the non-Anglo members were typically proud ethnic warriors, motivated to put their peoples’ interests first, accustomed to acting on that motivation, and rewarded by their communities and the political elites for doing so. That asymmetry in parochialism has been a key enabler of political multiculturalism from its origins in the 1960s. It justifies a degree of cynicism regarding those who adopt hair-trigger anti-racism against the slightest expression of Anglo ethnic preference.

The Report’s use of sources was also skewed. The Panel was meant to be composed of experts with professional connections, but little use was made of independent analysts in the social sciences and business. No critics of the Aboriginal industry are cited. None. The Anglo members are all but invisible. The Report does make extensive use of quotes by Noel Pearson, Panel member, lawyer, leading Aboriginal advocate, and once protégé of Mark Leibler.[12] Pearson is quoted, often at length, on pages 13, 32, 35, 36, 139, 158, 167, 185 and 211. Pearson’s Cape York Institute, which he founded and leads, made a submission that is cited, sometimes at length, on pages 60, 80, 103, 126, 128, 131, 149, 169, 177 and 185. Professor Marcia Langton, a leading Aboriginal rights advocate and board member of Pearson’s Institute, is quoted on pages 142, 194 and 200. It is good to see that the Panel included such expertise. However, taken together, the Report favoured submissions by indigenous advocates to a degree that did not accord with impartiality or representativeness.

Further evidence of ethnic bias is not hard to come by. Among the Report’s recommendations is advice about future consultation. It advises that should the government seek to include new questions in the referendum—questions not recommended by the Panel—it should seek the views of indigenous Australians.[13] In the Panel’s view the 98 per cent of the Australians who are not indigenous need not be consulted or represented.

The Report’s strange obsession with the race concept was also ethnically influenced. UN doctrine and leftist ideology played their roles but so did Adolf Hitler. Mark Leibler explained in a newspaper comment that his motive for seeking to rid the Constitution of any mention of race was that Nazi race doctrine caused members of his family to be murdered at Auschwitz during the Second World War.[14] Although he praises modern Australia, he believes that “racism casts a shadow here in Australia because it is part of our nation’s constitution”. As we have seen, this is a false accusation. There is no racism in the Australian Constitution. His assertion also vilifies the historic nation. It is a grotesque insinuation of a parallel between Australia and Nazi Germany.

Leibler’s statement reinforces the need to have had on the Panel champions of the Anglo-Celtic nation. It also reveals misconceptions about ethnicity and ethnic politics. Winston Churchill believed in the race concept. During the Second World War the only power that repudiated that concept was the Soviet Union, Ashley Montagu’s model state that had already murdered many millions of its own citizens, brutally suppressed movements of national liberation and after the war began an anti-Semitic purge. Treating Leibler’s view as a principle would require including “race” in the Constitution, to avoid the possibility of a Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin arising here. It is regrettable that a traumatic reaction to Nazism should motivate criticism of a nation-building constitution that helped defeat that tyranny. More regrettable is the lack of protest from either side of parliament.

Hostility towards Anglo Australia cast shadows within the Expert Panel. Noel Pearson has racially abused white journalists and public servants.[15] Marcia Langton recently responded to a journalist who had sought her apology for defaming him by portraying him racially: “I have been insulted so many times by white Australia that I don’t get stressed about it any more.”[16] Langton has expressed prejudicial views, criticising “[t]he Anglo preference for supercilious politeness”.[17] Pearson and Langton reject the concept of race but cannot help using it to classify opponents. This does not make them evil. But neither are they disinterested. They are erudite champions of their people who they view, rightly or wrongly, as opposed by white Australia. That is normal psychology in competitive ethnic relations. But it disqualifies them from reshaping the constitution of a people they see as antagonistic to their own.

The Expert Panel’s ethnic bias was manifest. The government failed to give advocates for Anglo Australia any representation in a panel dominated by passionate ethnic advocates. It is disappointing that when that bias emerged the activist members did not recuse themselves and request a more representative body as a matter of fairness. Instead they accepted a process that effectively excluded the great majority of Australians. That speaks of contempt for Anglo Australia, an attitude tolerated or perhaps shared by the Anglo members, none of whom raised a protest at the relegation of their people. Presumably they were chosen to be ethnically submissive, but one wonders how blatant the hypocrisy must become to incite rebellion. The ethnic bias of the Panel should raise the gravest suspicion about the Report.

Principles for recognising national origins

The Dodson–Leibler Report should be scrapped and a new inquiry appointed. The new body should be ethnically representative and literate in the relevant social sciences. It should be tasked with recommending changes that would recognise the nation’s origins. The guiding spirit should be one of truth and fairness. A statement of origins would include recognition of indigenous peoples as well as the nation’s roots in British settlement and the first two centuries of development when the national identity was objectively and subjectively Anglo. If it is right to recognise the first inhabitants, it is imperative to also recognise the founders and builders of the nation, the British colonists who within a few generations called Australia home.

How might the country’s British origins and earliest habitation by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders be recognised in the Constitution in appropriate relation to one another? First some principles:

1. Compatibility. Both the indigenous and Anglo roles in the nation’s origins can and should be recognised.
2. Historical recognition. Recognition should be limited to recognising the past, even if the country has changed. For example, Christianity played a prominent role in eighteenth and nineteenth century Australia, and should be recognised as part of the nation’s origins whatever the present status of that religion. If a constitution is to be durable it should record history accurately, not with idealisations or demonisations. Passages about a “continuing” indigenous culture, as recommended by the Expert Panel, are prescriptive and likely to deviate from reality over time. Many indigenous Australians are enculturated to the mainstream. The same criticism would apply to the claim that Australia is the same Christian European society it was in 1901.
3. Ethnicity. A fundamental principle is to recognise the ethnic dimension of nationality, not omitting its cultural or racial components. Australia’s first inhabitants were not a creed or set of values. Neither were the British settlers. Both were distinctive populations with evolving cultures. To respect Australia’s origins is to respect flesh-and-blood communities.
4. National and temporal precedence. Indigenous peoples deserve to be recognised as the county’s first inhabitants. But the first nation was established by British Australians in the nineteenth century and it was that emerging nation that brought mostly British technology, religion and political institutions and built the economy. National feeling was a prime mover of the Federation movement that in 1901 established the Commonwealth as its instrument. There is no simple precedence in ties to the land. Indigenous ties were ancient and sacred. White nationhood emerged when Anglo-Celtic inhabitants began to identify with Australia as their homeland, not sacramentally but with affection, awe and pride. This relationship was local, as it was for indigenous peoples, but also regional and continental, a breadth of identification that was not available at that time or previously to indigenous cultures. Indigenous acquisition of a continent-wide identity has come through their participating in the Australian nation. Thus indigenous ties have temporal precedence, while Anglo ties have national precedence, two compatible statuses to be recognised.
5. Assertion of continuity. A matter arises should the historical principle not be followed and the Constitution is amended with words asserting that indigenous peoples have “continuing” cultures, languages, heritage and relationship to the land, as the Expert Panel’s Report recommends in its proposed section 51A. Then fairness dictates that the British and European origins of the Australian nation be given the same prescriptive recognition. Any protection of indigenous culture should also apply to Australia’s original Anglo nation. If such recognition is placed in the body of the Constitution, as the Expert Panel recommends, requiring governments to advance indigenous peoples, then the Australian nation should also enjoy legal protection. It should be possible to mount a constitutional legal challenge to government policies that undermine the continuity and majority status of the historic nation.
6. Civil liberties and the race power. There is only a tenuous connection between indigenous recognition and the Expert Panel’s twin recommendations that the race power be removed and an anti-discrimination section inserted. Both recommendations should be declined (though section 25, which penalises states that do not allow Aborigines to vote, is redundant and should go). The Report’s authors realised that affirmative action for indigenous Australians would be blocked if the race power stated in Section 51(xxvi) (quoted above) was removed and an anti-discrimination clause added (116a[1]). Their work-around is the proposal to insert a special clause allowing legislation that benefits indigenous peoples (116a[2]). That is based on the UN doctrine that positive discrimination is acceptable in the case of disadvantaged groups, which are invariably interpreted to be minorities. This overlooks the fact that in many Western societies the founding populations are suffering from ethnic swamping and political repression as diversity grows. To protect against this threat government needs the power to discriminate in selecting immigrants, using “discriminate” to have the commonsense meaning of differential treatment. The proposed section 116A(1) is defective in part because it bans “discrimination” by government while leaving that term undefined. As a result its meaning is likely to gravitate towards common usage and not the UN’s contorted and limited meaning. A ban on government discrimination, as stated in 116A(1), would prevent the nation from pursuing the country’s legitimate interest in maintaining domestic peace and national identity, because these ends depend on discrimination (differential treatment) in selecting migrants. Should an insertion with the meaning of section 116A(1) be made, there should be an exemption that allows government to discriminate in immigration policy.

What do these principles mean for recognising both nation and indigenous peoples? Simple historical recognition in the preamble need only recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants, recognise the nation’s British origins, and acknowledge the relationship to the land of both populations in their own ways.

Recognition in the Constitution’s preamble would not bind government policy. Should proponents of legally binding recognition hold sway, the stakes rise precipitously and even more care will need to be taken to avoid legal traps. Historical recognition could modify the proposed section 51A, with a preambular section and brief prescriptive ordnance, thus:

Recognition of the Historic Australian Nation and Indigenous Peoples

Recognising that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were Australia’s first inhabitants;

Recognising that the continent and its islands now known as Australia are the homeland of the Australian nation and of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

Recognising the nation’s origins and development in British-descended people;

Acknowledging the central place of Christianity in founding the nation;

the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to the nation and indigenous peoples.

This form of recognition might also be deemed insufficient and assertions of continuity be demanded, as included in the Expert Panel’s recommended section 51A. Taking that path would raise the greatest threat to national status and sovereignty, and matters of precedence and protection would need to be stated in more detail.

Some criticisms and challenges to recognising the historic nation are likely to arise.

Diversity should be recognised. One objection to this proposal will be that Australia has changed. It is no longer of British descent but is diverse. It will be argued that if the Constitution recognises the people’s identity, it should reflect the new reality, not an outdated and offensive past. That argument could be embellished by arguing that, as the historic nation is now thoroughly multicultural, it should not be misrepresented as Anglo. The objection has difficulties.

First, regarding terminology. The Australian population is diverse but the nation is still largely Anglo, including all those who have assimilated into that identity group. That is because of the distinction between nation and state. Individuals of any background can belong to the nation, but the process takes time for shared memories and culture to accumulate and common ancestry to form through intermarriage. Joining the state (Commonwealth) is much easier because membership is a legal condition conferred by citizenship. It requires no emotional commitment or even convergence of identity. No wonder that multiculturalism emphasises citizenship and discourages expressions of ethnic nationhood. Yet our multicultural society is a nation mainly to the extent that it bears, at its heart, Australia’s Anglo-Celtic people.

Second, the argument misses the point about historical recognition, which acknowledges the past, not the present. If present reality is to be a principle for constitutional reform then indigenous Australians have much less right to be recognised than do Anglo-Celts. Australia changed more dramatically from 1788 to 1972 than from 1972 to the early twenty-first century. In the first period the indigenous population fell from 100 per cent of the population to about 2 per cent, while in the second period Anglo Celts stayed in the majority. If the society’s identity over its first two centuries is to be ignored, should not all previous ethnic identities be treated similarly? The likely reply, that indigenous people were here first, is not based on present reality and ignores the fact that Anglo Australia came before multicultural Australia. Another argument concerning ties to the land also applies to Anglo Australians in relation to relatively new arrivals.

Someone is bound to claim that diversity is the country’s distinguishing identity and that it should be recognised in the Constitution. But an index of degree of heterogeneity does not identify any society in a meaningful way. The only types of diversity that are recognisably Australian are those flavoured with the historic Australian identity, and it is that identity that belongs in a recognition of origins, not recently acquired changes.

No to sectarian constitutions! Another likely criticism of national recognition is that it would change a secular Constitution to a sectarian one. Some will contend that ethnic constitutions are retrograde and unacceptable in the modern world of diverse societies. Furthermore, Australia would be isolated, a pariah, especially among Western democracies. Andrew Bolt adopts some of these criticisms of the Expert Panel’s Report, arguing that any recognition of “race” in the Constitution would be divisive.[18]

As Bolt illustrates, these objections also apply to the Expert Panel’s recommendations, a point not admitted by supporters of indigenous recognition. The Greens Party, the most left-wing of the four main political parties, approved all the Panel’s proposals[19] but is unlikely to be sympathetic towards recognising Anglo history. But if the Constitution would be unacceptably ethnocentric by recognising the nation’s British origins, what makes recognition of the first inhabitants acceptable? Both sides of politics have already agreed to make the Constitution an ethnocentric document. If it is to be ethnocentric, how can Anglo Australia be omitted? How can it be just to recognise only one small ethnic grouping and bind government to advance it forever? Anyone who accepts this recommendation cannot have a principled objection to ethnic constitutions. Including the historic nation in the Constitution would merely extend the principle to include the majority of citizens, those derived from or identifying with Australia’s British origins and original Anglo nationhood. If ethnic constitutions are improper, then no ethnic group should be privileged with constitutional recognition. Retrograde? Constitutional secularism has flaws of its own. Many Western nations with secular constitutions are undergoing rapid displacement within their ancient homelands without symbolic or legal recourse.

Would Australia become isolated? Not if Israel is a guide. That nation has an ethnic constitution and has long been supported by Australia and the United States. Three Australian ex-prime ministers (Hawke, Howard and Gillard) have accepted the Jerusalem Prize for their efforts to forge closer ties with Israel.[20] Serving prime ministers have also seen fit to accept honours from pro-Israel organisations. These symbolic acts imply acceptance or tolerance of Israel’s understandable desire to remain a Jewish state. The US establishment agrees.

In March 2013 President Barack Obama, like many presidents before him, affirmed American support for Israel remaining a Jewish state, and expressed this in the principle of ethnic nationalism: “the dream of true freedom finally found its full expression in the Zionist idea—to be a free people in your homeland”.[21] Israel’s dream has been built using restrictive immigration measures that Australia’s founding fathers would have appreciated, though the White Australian policy was a broad tent compared to Israel’s emphasis on genealogy.[22] Obama’s ethno-nationalist credentials are considerable, his post-Harvard career being that of a community organiser for the black community. He has repeatedly expressed a special affection for his own people, one that was reciprocated in the last two presidential elections. Republicans have never criticised Obama’s ethnic loyalties and, although less overt, play the ethnic game themselves. They receive the overwhelming majority of their votes from whites. The US is Australia’s most important ally, so it is comforting to know that national recognition in the Constitution need not upset our indispensable ally.

Academic politics. The ignorance of intellectuals concerning human nature could raise hurdles in putting together a commission able to deliberate on national recognition. The Anglo-Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke observed in his reflections on the French Revolution that the construction of workable constitutions depends on a deep understanding human nature:

the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, [are] a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori … The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature, or to the quality of his affairs.[23]

The war on human nature that first broke the surface in the 1960s has diminished the universities as a source of political wisdom. This provides something of an excuse to politicians and the expert panels they appoint. They cannot be blamed completely for fumbling ethnic policy, because they are inevitably influenced by ideas and advice emanating from the universities. I described the corruption of the social sciences by utopian radicalism in earlier Quadrant articles.[24] The fallout also affects many conservative scholars, though it is easier to find examples on the Left.

A related phenomenon is shoddy scholarship, whose errors so often favour a radical agenda. An example is some historians’ contention that the British annexation of Australia was based on the legal fiction that the country was unoccupied and not possessed, the doctrine of terra nullius, a theory with obvious political and legal implications. But James Cook’s claim of the Eastern seaboard for Britain was predicated on the land being without sovereignty, that is, not being ruled over by a state. There was no reference to the land being unoccupied or not possessed. The First Fleet arrived with a detachment of marines lugging cannon and muskets. It was forceful annexation, an act of possession recognised at the time in international law. In his book The invention of terra nullius: Historical and legal fictions on the foundation of Australia (2005) Michael Connor describes how the meaning of terra nullius has expanded and spread to suit the legal purpose of asserting Aboriginal land rights.[25]

The ideologically driven denial of an innate human nature, the separation of the social from the biological sciences, has allowed utopian intellectual movements to put down deep root in our universities. The indigenous recognition movement derived in part from this radical trend among White academics. How else to explain the sorry reliance of the Report on Ashley Montagu’s doctrinaire pro-Soviet screed written during the Second World War, ignoring seventy years of advances in human biodiversity research?

This is not an isolated incident. It is telling that Paul Keating’s misleading Redfern Speech of December 1992 was received with equanimity by academicians and journalists. The demagoguery was compounded by speaking down to the Aboriginal audience, as if they could not handle an honest assessment of their situation. Two decades later we are still waiting for a statesmanlike corrective.

Overcoming academic ignorance and ethnic bias will involve education. Any movement to oppose the planned referendum and prepare an alternative would benefit from an injection of science into discussions of ethnicity and nationalism.

The referendum process

If a new referendum process is undertaken the cabal of the last Expert Panel should not be repeated, though some of the original members should be invited to participate. A fair and representative process of constitutional reform is essential to ensure a just settlement of ethnic interests. The inclusion of all major stakeholders is a basic principle of democratic ethnic conflict resolution. The responsible government commission should have the substance and appearance of fairness. Realistically, bias and its appearance can not be avoided by appointing experts who declare themselves free of ethnic loyalties. The most insidious bias exists below the level of consciousness and besides, ethnic leaders and even politicians have been known to deceive. Around the Western world, majority elites who claim non-partisanship have a track record of acceding to minority demands. It is safe to assume that the Anglos who appointed the Expert Panel and who served in it would blanch at the suggestion that they have any ethnic motives, apart from sympathy for victim groups. Based on their performance it would be safer to exclude anyone who claims a post-ethnic orientation. Another reason to include ethnic partisans is that attempting to keep them out would rob an inquiry of many individuals who are best informed about ethnic affairs, including the interests of their own ethnic groups.

The more feasible approach would be to design the Panel as a representative forum that includes leading activists from all stakeholder communities. The forum would allow for adversarial procedure, part of our legal tradition and a fair approach to resolving competing claims. That would be fairer and more effective at winnowing bad ideas. A balance of partisanship would be crucial, and that is the challenge because the present political class considers it unthinkable that the policy process should include Anglo Australians who feel about their people the way Aboriginal and multicultural leaders feel about theirs. Representatives of all major ethnic communities should be included because they, as citizens and taxpayers, will be liable for the costs of constitutional change whether or not their ancestors were involved in the displacement of indigenous peoples. Thus such a panel should include indigenous and minority representatives in a principled and fair manner. Major ethnic groups should be represented in approximate proportion to their share of the general population, except for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, whose number should be sufficient to form an effective work group and represent different regions. The chair or co-chair of a balanced commission would necessarily have a history of advocating Anglo interests. There would be several other commissioners of like background. Only then would the inquiry conduct – and appear to conduct –its own business instead of being dictated to.

I argued earlier that a representative Expert Panel must include advocates of Anglo Australia. Who would they be? From where would they come? At this point, not one member of the national Parliament has faulted the Report for omitting the nation. Academic and journalistic criticism has been muted. As discussed in a previous article, Anglo ethnic organisations are few, a rare example being the British Australian Community based in Melbourne.[26] Any new government inquiry into constitutional recognition of origins should reach out to include loyalist members of the Anglo-Australian community able to contribute to deliberations.

Conclusion

The Report on constitutional recognition was written by an Expert Panel dominated by individuals for whom Anglo Australia, the country’s majority population and leading identity group, is an embarrassing relic or obstacle to their own ethnic aspirations. This should teach Australians that the cost of ethnic subordination is to be excluded from policy-making forums that dispense status and resources. Anglo Australians lost the cultural war that set the policy boundaries regarding immigration and domestic ethnic arrangements. Being kept out of their own Constitution, having their children indoctrinated at school and having to pay endless rent for permission to live in their own country, that is the price nations pay for not investing in ethnic agencies of the same stature as those arrayed against them.

All patriotic Australians should oppose the planned referendum, which is flawed beyond repair. Unfortunately, elements of the amendments proposed by the Expert Panel have a good chance of passing a referendum because both sides of politics enthusiastically endorse unilateral indigenous recognition, though both parties have selective criticisms. The odds would change dramatically if a major political party took the lead in the NO campaign. At present there is no sign that either side of politics recognises the issue as an existential one for the nation. Should an established political leader fail to step forward, an independent campaign should be mounted. There is time for the stench of the Expert Panel’s Report to cause a healthy revulsion, at least outside the Canberra beltway. The immorality of the proposed amendments should also work against them. I do believe that most Australians would reject the referendum if they grasped its unfairness in both means and ends. Fair process and democracy have deep roots in the Australian people.

A reason for hope is the healthy instincts of the Australian people regarding national defence. When the Rudd-Gillard government failed to stem the tide of illegal immigrants posing as refugees, one journalist summed up the mood thus: “The Australian people in their overwhelming majority want the national government to reassert national sovereignty over our borders”.[27] The public’s mood turned despite spin from the ABC and the left intelligentsia. The same sense of outrage and urgency is warranted regarding the proposed constitutional amendments, which if framed in a referendum would represent a fundamental assault on the nation’s sovereignty. This time the threat is internal, an attempt psychologically to uproot the nation from its continental homeland and burden future generations with confected ancestral guilt.

If there is to be recognition of our first peoples in the Constitution, there should also be recognition of our first nation.