A Rising Generation of Accusers and Incendiarists

Voice architect and campaigner Noel Pearson has just informed the Guardian Australia readership of his plans for semi-retirement should the referendum fail this coming Saturday. In the future, his talent for demagoguery and name-calling — I’m paraphrasing — will no longer be on offer to his fellow Aboriginal activists. In his words, he will never be “an advocate for conciliation and compromise again, for trying to find a middle path.”

Pearson’s self-portrait here would be unrecognisable to most Australians. After all, he seemed to spend most of the campaign trying to see how many voters he could personally insult. Only very recently has he resiled from calling the nearest person a racist and started banging on about how the Voice is, you know, all about love and respect.

If the ‘Yes’ vote goes down, Pearson’s own approach, allegedly based on all that goodwill and moderation, will have been proven a failure. For that reason, the post-referendum political landscape, he says, should be shaped by a new generation of indigenous leaders. As Pearson prepares to pass on the torch, it’s worth thinking about who, exactly, is likely to take on those responsibilities of leadership. This last stretch of the Voice campaign, I would argue, may provide some early and troubling indications.

In progressive media in the last week or so, there’s been quite a bit of giddiness about the latest enlistees to the ‘Yes’ camp. A number of former ‘No’ advocates, once aligned with Lidia Thorpe’s orthographically challenged Blak Sovereignty movement, have had a change of heart. Tarneen Onus Browne, foot soldier of the militant left-wing group Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, is one such apostate. That name should be familiar to many readers, by the way, as she is best known for her pyromaniacal tendencies at an Invasion Day rally in Melbourne in 2018: “F*** Australia,” Ms Onus Browne huffed at the time. “Hope it burns to the ground.”

To be fair, she later said she had the poet’s spirit upon her that day and all that arson enthusiasm, apparently, was intended as metaphor. Nevertheless, it’s still amusing to see the media now put her to work as a surrogate for the ‘Yes’ campaign, as suggested by an uncritical profile in the Sydney Morning Herald and a soft interview on Channel Ten’s The Project. Here, Onus Browne clarified her second thoughts on the Voice via her desire not to be associated with the likes of Peter Dutton and Pauline Hanson. In fact, she seems to perceive little distinction between the ‘No’ camp and — go on, have a guess — Nazis, of course.

In a follow-up piece in Crikey, Onus Browne sets out her change of mind in greater and more interesting detail. I admit that I was initially surprised by her moderation and restraint, as she waits until the second paragraph before she starts prattling about the “violent settler colonial system” and whatnot.

She calls the referendum debate itself “an act of violence”, and this leads her to the view the Voice is strictly blackfella business; therefore, in an ideal situation, non-Indigenous Australians wouldn’t even be permitted to vote on Saturday. (The Constitution, she laments, stands in the way of such a project.) Nevertheless, she calls on “settlers” to write ‘Yes’ and reminds them to keep on RSVP-ing to any and all upcoming street protests, no matter the outcome.

As I hinted, Onus Browne isn’t the only recent defector from the progressive ‘No’ camp. Fellow WAR organiser Meriki Onus, after much hand-wringing, also intends to vote ‘Yes’. Writing in IndigenousX, Onus agrees that the non-Indigenous electorate should have its voting rights restricted, at least on this issue. There’s also a good deal of blather about “ongoing genocide” and “ongoing colonialism”, which suggests that Onus has simply borrowed the drivelling style and already quite limited vocabulary from her sister, Senator Lidia Thorpe.

This kind of whinging is again on display in Crikey, where activist Roxanne Moore outlines her own change of mind and encourages her fellow progressives to do the same. The most noteworthy element of Moore’s contribution is the photo next to her byline, which shows the author with bloodied hands and a vaguely threatening stare. This coheres well, I suppose, with her view towards post-referendum politics, as she writes: “A No vote will hardly be the end of our movements; we will come back stronger, more determined and more radical than ever.” Thanks, I guess, for the heads up, Roxy.

What really explains this late decamping, I suspect, is political positioning. Undoubtedly, these activists and their ilk would hijack a seat at the table should the ‘Yes’ vote actually get up, and there is some indication that they think this is a real possibility. For example, Onus Browne — and this isn’t her only delusion — sometimes writes of when the Voice succeeds rather than if.

Imagine, for just one frightening moment, if the Voice had to listen to the radical demands of activists like these. Excising Australia Day from the calendar is one of their milder ambitions; they also favour police disbandment and prison abolition, which (and you can look this up) may lead to problems somewhere down the track.

Even in the likelier scenario in which the Voice fails, these activists will also find themselves well positioned. They can more effectively use their anger and bitterness about the result to argue for a more extreme politics and pick up exactly where Noel Pearson leaves off. After all, he has said it would be time for new leadership.

Any form of constitutional recognition, however, isn’t likely to be on their agenda. Tarneen Onus Browne says such symbolism has never interested her and Meriki Onus, like her sister, clearly loathes the Constitution and doesn’t see herself as part of it. “Good riddance to the reconciliation era,” predicts Roxanne Moore. If you thought the Voice debate has been divisive and nasty, just wait for what’s coming up next.

In some ways, though, I’m rather glad the media chose to spruik these newest ‘Yes’ advocates, as they really offer yet another good reason to vote ‘No’, and perhaps to do so with even more determination. When that’s done, I suggest we begin cultivating a bit more annoyance with those who wish to burn Australia to the ground. As we enter the post-Voice political era, it’s worth keeping in mind that the more continually disappointed the likes of Tarneen Onus Browne and her accomplices are, the better off and safer the country will be.