Indigenous Australians Deserve a Democratic Voice

In a democracy, everyone deserves a voice. For most Australians, that voice is formally expressed at the polls: once every three or four years, they cast secret ballots to decide who will represent them at various levels of government. A select few have other, more influential voices, publishing their views in newspapers or whispering them in closed-door meetings.

Of course, Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have the same electoral voice as everyone else, but very few of them have a direct line to the powers that be. The proposed indigenous Voice to Parliament and Executive Government is an opportunity to change that. An opportunity that, unfortunately, has already been all but lost.

There are many valid arguments for and against enshrining an indigenous Voice in the Australian Constitution, but no one can argue that prominent indigenous intellectuals and businesspeople lack access to the media—or entry to the closed doors that line the halls of power. They have highly influential voices, and they are listened to.

What Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are missing is the democratic voice of the ballot box.

Of course, indigenous Australians have the right and responsibility to vote, just like everyone else. But in a country where much government attention is focused on specifically indigenous issues, the opinions of ordinary indigenous Australians about how they should be governed are overwhelmed by the preferences of the general public.

General elections are won or lost on broad issues like housing policy or climate change. Arguably, indigenous Australians should have a separate say regarding policies that apply only to them under the ‘race powers’ embedded in section 51 of the Australian Constitution.

But the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice would do nothing to give voice to ordinary indigenous Australians. It will instead further empower the relatively elite officers of indigenous organisations to speak on behalf of indigenous Australians. It represents power to the already powerful, not power to the people.

It is theoretically possible that, should the referendum succeed, Parliament would decide to set up a system of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elections based on a indigenous electoral roll. But the government has never suggested that it would.

The official government Voice website elides the issue, saying that “to ensure cultural legitimacy, the way that members of the Voice are chosen would suit the wishes of local communities”. But what are those wishes?

In democratic countries, we ascertain the wishes of local communities via secret balloting based on universal suffrage. But that is not the mechanism envisaged for Australia’s indigenous Voice. In fact, the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process never even considered it. Their two models were that unelected regional Voices would either meet behind closed doors to select members of the national Voice, or vote for members of the national Voice.

They opted for closed doors.

Indigenous Australians deserve better. They deserve what indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada, Norway, Finland, and New Zealand all take for granted: a vote. Every other country that has formal representative mechanisms for indigenous peoples organises them on the basis of one person, one vote.

Some people suggest (and indeed the Co-design committee report implied) that Western-style representative democracy does not align with the cultural values of indigenous Australians. On that argument, we should stop criticising China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia for not adhering to international standards of democracy and human rights. We don’t trust foreign leaders who say that their people don’t value democracy; why should we trust would-be indigenous leaders who say the same about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians?

The proposed Voice would make Australia the first democratic country to formally relegate its indigenous citizens to second-class status by denying them the dignity of voting for their own representatives.

Granted, the referendum question does not preclude the possibility of indigenous democracy. But neither side in this debate has so much as raised the issue, and the historical treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians gives no reason to believe that Australia’s governing elites—indigenous or non-indigenous—are likely to legislate a democratic Voice.

Salvatore Babones is an associate professor at the University of Sydney