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What to write about in this, the time of the Voice? Anything which hasn’t already been written and said in support of the No case is probably not worth mentioning. In any event, it boils down to this: do you support two to three percent of the population having an extra say to the parliament and to the government, based, mostly, on them having an Aboriginal ancestor or two.
Me, I don’t believe in racial discrimination. I’m a Martin Luther King Jr. man. It’s content of character that matters; certainly not race and not where long-gone ancestors might have lived. Surely it is possible to have a national conversation about it, as they say? No, it isn’t — not when one side adopts the premise that people can be treated differently on the basis of personal characteristics that they can’t control or change. There is no decent common ground to be found. That’s why the referendum is so divisive at its very core.
One side believes in equality. The other doesn’t. A large section of the population, Christian churches (sadly), community organisation, big corporates, trade unions, and most of the media, are supportive of racial discrimination; in fact, of apartheid. Look it up. It’s apartheid when one racial group enjoys privileges, in this case certain political rights, not available to others.
Of course, apartheid is hard to sell. So it’s tarted up as ‘reconciliation’ and bought hook, line and sinker by people who should know better. Apropos, as examples, Greg Craven, Chris Kenny, and Julian Leeser. Reconciliation? What does that actually look like? Well, it’s a Humpy-Dumpty concept. It means whatever an Aboriginal activist chooses it to mean. It has no real objective meaning. It’s a nebulous concept devised to ensure the impossibility of its consummation. Think, if reconciliation were ever achieved, the gravy train for so many activists would dry up. Can’t have that. Need the Voice permanently enshrined to ensure proper governance of an eternal factious running sore on national consciousness.
Premise is all. Agree on the premise and conversation is possible. Some time ago I was introduced to someone who had seen some of my stuff in Quadrant and thought I might be interested in joining a group he belonged to. Quickly found he was antisemitic. Further conversation, untenable.
So-called “climate change” has, for some considerable time, been in that realm where conversation is untenable. In this case, the competing premises are wrapped around truth. One side believes in telling it, wherever it leads; the other side believes its agenda is much more important than the truth. Failed alarmist predictions, one after another, are simply buried under more alarmist predictions. Polar bears will die off, children in the UK will not know what snow is, Australian dams will never fill again, the summer Arctic ice cap will disappear, there are just ten years or less to save the planet – twenty years ago, ten years ago, today, ten years hence, ad infinitum.
Maybe I’ve missed it, but have those who made these outlandish predictions ever apologised for getting them wrong and suggested they might in consequence review their underlying theories? I don’t think so. They just double down with more alarmist predictions. They have no regard for telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And just like their hysterical COVID brethren, and like tyrants down the ages, they think the end game justifies the means. How can those who believe in the moral truth ever talk sensibly to people like that.
I do think, though, there is a difference between the Voice and “climate change.” The Voice is the manifestation of a society which has lost the sense of its own worth, and is willing to sellout its peerless Western values. The Pope summed it up: No culture is better than another. Really, foundationally Christian cultures which ridded the world of slavery; which promoted human equality; which established the presumption of innocence and the rule of law; which engendered inter-person trust, a precondition for prosperity, are no better than primitive or barbaric cultures? He should set up house (Apostolic Palace) in Afghanistan.
As for “climate change,” it has long since morphed into a pseudo religion. Alarmists ‘believe’ without question. You might point them to data showing no discernible trends in hurricane activity or to information showing bushfires of the past were as extensive as in more recent years. No matter. They will look straight through it as though it was non-existent, and point to the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes and bush fires as being attributable to man-made “climate change.” It’s a psychological illness, if it’s not a mystic religious cult. In any event, dialogue is not possible when the truth plays second fiddle to dogmatic delusions.
Everyone looks pretty reconciled to my way of seeing it. I’ve had Aboriginal bosses: they were fully reconciled to our industrial relations system. and the banking system when it came to their pay. Our whole organization had a few Aboriginal senior execs. A bright bunch of people. They were fully reconciled to ‘western’ IT systems; we used them, after all. The concept of law we used in our contracts? They were fully reconciled to that too. Reconciled all round, in fact.
‘Reconciliation’ is a crock. As Gary John’s points out in Burden of Culture, the issue is the 20% or so of Aborigines who are kept as victims by the fully reconciled class: they are not so much not reconciled (although they do like the food, the sit-down money, etc, so at least reconciled there) as actively marginalized by their city fellow Aboriginals just to keep the pot on the boil in cynical disregard for assisting all Aboriginals to enjoy full participation in modern life.
Hmm, that last sentence was a bit long…
Before the performance last night by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the audience was subjected to an elaborate, tedious and entirely spurious ‘welcome to country’. The orchestra then played Tchaikowsky and Rachmaninov. A soloist played the Tchaikowsky violin concerto on a Stradivarius violin. Technically and artistically brilliant, as usual, the orchestra received thunderous applause after the stupendous finale of the Rachmaninov 2nd Symphony, which concluded the program. The large audience appeared to contain people of many races, but no Aboriginals. There was no didgeridoo, so a direct comparison with the primitive farting instrument of the erstwhile hunter-gatherer was not possible. Why do audiences put up with this ludicrous ‘welcome to country’? Are we really that far gone?
Stephen, it seems to me that in such circumstances – a welcome to country performed ritualistically before a magnificent concert of Western music – the underlying attitude is patronising. The audience puts up with an Indigenous welcome to country because the Indigenous can put nothing up to Tchaikowsky and Rachmaninov.
I think just about everyone would agree with you on that, Stephen, but don’t you see? It’s just another form of tax, or maybe welfare contribution. As explained on these pages previously by Tony Thomas, indigenous welcomers receive $400-600 for the service, with an extra $500 or so should a didge be wielded. Think of it as a job-creation scheme, albeit not in a remote community, and a bit tedious, for all concerned.
This article is all too true and too sad.
Apartheid. That boil on the nose that most Australians, but especially certain politicians, won’t mention for fear of causing offence with the truth and ‘letting the cat out of the sack’ to brawl with the dogmas.
The only welcome to country I honour was when I was welcomed to Australia at a ceremony in a city hall at which I was presented with a Certificate of Citizenship. This occurred after a legal process of clearing criminal and medical checks and meeting educational requirements at the time.
Now I must be welcomed again and again with a primitive tribal instrument, foot stomping, and smoking leaves courtesy of the taxpayer. There I was thinking I had already earned my place in this country.
I left a country with legally entrenched apartheid and now watch this country legalising and implementing it. And I wonder what Nelson Mandala would make of this version of ‘reconciliation’ so very different from the reconciliation process he implemented after the ditching of apartheid.
Interesting, but the Pope is among the alarmists who ‘believe’ in the pseudo religion of “climate change” without question.
Or Gordon, does the Pope believe in the capacity of human nature to be
corrupted? Thereby leading to the distortion of justice and truth, which coalesces as Social Justice which is what climate change really is – in a very real sense the betrayal of truth in justice.
Laudato Si , Praised Be. As I read this document I thought it had more to do with the command of loving thy neighbour. You don’t have to like, believe ,trust, covet , but we are commanded by Christ to Love, especially those that we despised as untrustworthy and deceitful – pray with love and bring change to the fold.
“Nelson Mandala”. That’s sic. Om, om.
STJOHNOFGRAFTON, I hope you’re covering your dreadlocks with your rainbow beanie when you are Oming.
Treat the memory of Nelson Mandela with great care. Ask yourself, “Was Nelson Mandela a great man for what he achieved?” Look to the record of the Stanleyville massacre. Look to the basket case South Africa is now. Take care who you choose as a hero.
Well said!
So called reconciliation through the voice is deliberately nebulous because it’s nefarious, and of course, has no end date. Gotta keep the gravy train going forever.
I’m at the end of my tether and just accept now that the brainwashing has succeeded for about half the population and that I will save my breath in any attempt to persuade people who love the vibe, and are contemptuous of facts.
Lost cause and don’t want to know them.
Feel in desperate need of some sort of overdue conservative victory – the draconian “disinformation” proposed legislation and the voice, are diabolical. Optimistic that the voice may go down. Aboriginal everything is a big turnoff.
Climate Change, Covid and the Voice, all covered in the Sciences?
An important reminder from Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian 5/7/2023:
.
At the height of his reforming period Noel Pearson said: “As long as the allowance of racial discrimination remains in our Constitution, it continues, in both subtle and unsubtle ways, to affect our relationships with each other. Though it has historically hurt my people more than others, racial categorisations dehumanise us all. It dehumanises us because we are each individuals, and we should be judged as individuals. We should be rewarded on our merits and assisted in our needs. Race should not matter.”
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https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=cd2dbf5c-7d14-4580-a600-b2e71405ad05
Thank you PS.
Barking dogmas bring to mind another dangerous canine, the one that didn’t bark: the hound of the Baskervilles. What the detective said in that case does, I suggest, also apply in this one.
“It’s an ugly business, Watson. The more I hear about it, the less I like it.”
You’ve sure hit a lot of nails on the head here, Peter. What really resonates with me is: “Failed alarmist predictions, one after another, are simply buried under more alarmist predictions . . . but have those who made these outlandish predictions ever apologised for getting them wrong . . ?”
This immediately brought to mind one latter-day prophet, a Professor Tim Flannery, whose dire prognostications of permanent drought (with catastrophically rising sea levels, of course) prompted the Qld government (I think under Anna Bligh at the time) to invest in a multi-billion dollar desalination plant (on the Gold Coast), which has never been used in anger. Meanwhile, the good professor moves onto a property alongside the Hawkesbury River! Not a case of walking the talk . . . and we’re still waiting for that apology. Or has everyone forgotten already, overwhelmed by updated prophecies?