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Victory seems assured for those who value Western civilisation and who, unlike the Chris Kennys of this country, have also managed to avoid being dumbstruck by kumbaya. But will the rejection of the Voice make any difference? That is my question.
Anthony Albanese said something insightful the other day. Yes, it happens. When asked about a national treaty he deflected by saying that treaties were in process of being negotiated in Victoria and in Queensland. Territories aside, Australia comprises six sovereign states, each with its own parliament, government, premier and His Majesty’s governor. They might not be able to make treaties with China but they can with selective elements of their populations, and they will; and with taxpayer money galore.
Before too long, we’ll see each state concocting a “treaty” to mollify and selectively reward a small but growing group of people (indeed, the “oppressed” are outgrowing the rest) identifying as having some, often heavily diluted, Aboriginal ancestry. There will be no effective opposition to this insidious apartheid. A rump of the Nationals might put up some resistance but their Coalition colleagues are now mostly compromised, pantywaisted or pink tinged. Even as it is, the states are moving towards preferencing indigenous cultural norms, whether ancient or modern inventions.
We have recently seen the Western Australian government bringing in a pernicious Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, requiring those who think they legally own more than 1100 square meters of land to get Aboriginal permission to dig even a small hole in it. True, grassroots opposition has reportedly convinced the government to rescind the legislation. But the fact that they tried it on shows just how far things have gone. And all without a treaty or the Voice.
The Victoria government has agreed to hand the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagulk peoples, represented by the Barengi Gadjin Land Council, powers (inter alia) to rename roads, bridges and public spaces over an area of almost 36,000 square kilometres – currently administered by ten local councils. Google maps will have to get up to speed quick smart. Let’s hope our felicity with hundreds of primitive languages improves or we’ll have trouble finding our way around. And does anyone think the job is finished? Heck no, there’s another 191,000 square kilometres of Victoria to go. And, again, without “benefit” of the Voice.
The evidently hopeless, though very well-funded and staffed, National Indigenous Australians Agency, which reports to the equally hopeless Linda Burney, and whose vision is that “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are heard, recognised and empowered,” says that about 50 percent of the Australian land mass is now under Native Title. Half of Australia already! How much worse can it possibly get, Voice or no Voice?
If you’re confused, can’t grasp what’s going on, it’s because of an absence of context. Context, by example, is the enforced takeover of Calvary Hospital in Canberra and the subsequent removal of crosses. An act of bastardry which would not have stood only a very little time ago. Now, there is no overwhelming public outcry, no thunderous editorials, no prime ministerial (Howard-like) veto, no legal overturning. Communism, having snuck up, is out of the closet.
And what is communism? Among other things, it’s communal ownership of land. Think native title. It’s the fraying of private property rights. Think of dreamt-up cultural and spiritual connections to the land and seas. It’s the undermining of Christianity; a bulwark against communism. Think of the anti-Catholic partiality of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the subsequent persecution of George Pell. It’s the undermining of the traditional family. Think of a lot of things, including confected gender dysphoria, abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, and the perverted sexualisation of children. Add to the list, mass cross-cultural immigration to undermine the cohesion of the nation state; and the “climate change” and pandemic hysterias, phony rationales for tyranny.
No-one is in a backroom planning it all. But the march through institutions is an empirical reality. It’s produced a mindset among public officials, among politicians, among academics, among the great and good, which despises Western civilisation and capitalism. You can’t understand the joint support of governments, unions and corporate elites for a divisive racial provision in the constitution, unless you understand the march of communism; of which the Voice is a peculiarly Australian-made facet. Conspiratorial? I don’t think so.
It all began when the Bible was removed from schools. The most important book in the history of Western Civilization was removed because it’s ‘religious’. The entire cultural superstructure was removed. Then they removed Greek and Latin language and literature. Then they replaced literature with texts analysed in terms of race, class, gender. Then they brought in multicultural perspectives and literature. Then they brought in ‘Indigenous’ perspectives and literature.
Suddenly a whole generation has no idea who it is and the only information about itself comes from the perspective of outsiders who are usually usually hostile to it. Australia vanished without a trace, like Leichhardt in the outback.
Like a lot of Quadrant contibutors and commentators I am in my 70s and so can compare the sort of education I had during the 1950s and 60s with the current state of affairs. Naturally schools aren’t the only
‘ centres of learning ‘ so I have learned a lot by merely existing. In many ways the modern ‘ West ‘ is better than it was in 1950 say, but its ‘ inner life ‘, its essential qualities defining it as the ‘ West ‘ have changed so much as to definitely indicate a decline and fall.
It’s not easy to discover in a really precise way how this has happened. Such factors as the rise of the internet making ‘ social media ‘ possible, the now dominance of women in positions of influence, the acceptance of huge numbers of immigrants from cultures totally foreign to our own, the comfortable life styles of the majority bringing the usual complacency, and an educational system that despises any idea of a ‘ liberal education ‘, and above all, the current irresistable power of the people and organisations able to enforce ‘ political correctness ‘, a semi-comical synonym for ‘ thought control ‘.
No doubt the undeniable decline of Christianity has a part in any explanation of how things have come to the present pass, but what ‘ weight ‘ to give it is the question. Naturally opinions will differ, but I believe that civilisation in the West reached its highest level when it could best be described as ‘ secular ‘ and not
‘ Christian ‘. I will go further and say that the modern world couldn’t have arisen if the power of the
‘ Church ‘ had continued unchecked.
Queensland uni bloke on the Drum just now making the case for the Voice – well, playing the emotion card, anyway – unaware the crux of his argument is that the status quo doesn’t work so we must enshrine what doesn’t work in the Constitution. And by the way, the Drum panel is 100% Yes.
6-0 for the Voice including Baird. Bizarre.
Another keeper , Peter , every word I agree with , and I’ve been aware for months now , that what they can’t do federally with the “Voice” , they’ll just implement locally at state and council levels , and aren’t we seeing that unfold !? Plans to abolish Australia day , property rights under siege everywhere , paid “Welcome to country’s ” at the opening of an envelope , renaming everything in all state/bureaucratic institutions, the ABC’s adoption , without taxpayer consent to just use aboriginal place names for major cities , and shoehorning of native “sounds” into as much content on classical ABC a they can ! Yes The long march through institutions is complete , Now for the next “plandemic” to grind the boot already on neck .
“Now, there is no overwhelming public outcry, no thunderous editorials…”. And the argument is that public sentiment is changing as people are becoming more enlightened. The progressive agenda is bearing fruit.
Certainly Christianity is taking a battering. Consider that the Premier of Victoria was recently able to tell the electorate – without any real blowback – that Christian views on marriage and sexual behaviour are “bigotry” and anyone holding those views should “move to Florida” because they are “not welcome in Victoria”. But all conservative positions are under fire, and are proving to have weak defences.
Note that the attack by governments and also large corporations is directed against opinions and the expression of opinions. Debanking, which is soon to come to your neighborhood along with digital ID and social credit scores, is directed specifically at people who have the wrong opinions and are not thinking in alignment with the progressive agenda.
Furthermore the agenda is not locally grown. Rather it is imported from organised international operations – a conclusion supported by the uniformity with which it is being implemented throughout the West. I would agree that, even if the Voice fails, the forward drive of the progressive socialist juggernaut will continue regardless, crushing all in its path.
Democracy is becoming increasingly meaningless, because of the vast power and wealth that is accumulting in the hands of giant multinational corporations and supranational organisation like the UN, the Gates Foundation, the WEF and the WHO. The future for elected parliaments is lilkely to be limited to mopping up after the big players have finished implementing their own agenda.
As the people of the once-free world are progressively disempowered, they will descend further and further into serfdom. Not only will their property no longer be theirs, but even their thougts and opinions will be under the control of unaccountable, faceless bureaucrats. Recall the prophetic words of Klaus Schwab of the WEF, speaking of the Great Reset, which is currently being implement with gusto by the progressive global movers and shakers: “You will own nothing and be happy”.
And I remember when the WHO was just an entertaining musical troupe.
A sad but true analysis, Stephen, but ultimately the blame lies with the sheeplke populace for either ignoring or embracing the things so anathema to freedom. Waving phones at scanners – convenience ahead of liberty, accepting without question Orwellian impositions, and more disturbing- happy to scold and “dob in” transgressors, falling for the greatest hoax ever foisted on humanity , climate change , and the glee in cancelling those who don’t toe the identity politics line. I am beyond disappointed in society and not confident in a return to sanity , so entrenched are the termites in every western institution. A biblical intervention is needed.
An interesting opinion piece in this week’s Catholic Weekly.
An excerpt.
“As Ronald Reagan wisely noted, Government is not the solution to our problems-government is the problem.”
“Voting for the Voice is like finding oneself in a hole and digging deeper. To survive on this hostile continent for 65,000 years the various peoples must have been possessed of a powerful can-do spirit. Reducing government bureaucracy will help them rediscover that essential ingredient.”
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Labor craves constitutional change because it wants more of YOUR POWER.
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Since federation the ALP has put up 30 referenda – only one has passed the muster of voter trust. However non Labor forces on the other hand have put up 14 referenda of which 8 have been given the tick of trust. In short and on balance the left handed forces of Socialist, Marxist bent and instinct – Communist-Labor DNA-are not to be and cannot be trusted in anyones racial language.
The bookies, will no doubt be putting their faith in the Nose. The Voice is a RAT ON STEROIDS.
The you lu-ru statement from the heart, is in fact, a stake to the heart of Australia. The Uluru statement was formulated by consensus by left wing activists, it is therefore going to bring a completely left wing agenda to senate deliberations and amendments.
Always impressed by the thoughtful analysis of Peter Smith.
Mostly also impressed by the journalism of Greg Sheridan who writes today [8/08] in The Australian of the loss of faith in Bishops. and in secular public institutions. He writes “The public is losing confidence in these institutions. But that is often caused by the institutions losing confidence in themselves”
Where was the confidence in traditional Liberal Party values when the Government of Scott Morrison appointed Ita Butrose to head the ABC?
Why were former [but unreformed] communists given such power by Morrison to draft a referendum and Voice, Treaty, and Truth Telling referendum? Why create the NIAA bureaucracy?
Hopefully, new Liberal leader Peter Dutton can keep the Party on a winning track to avoid a ‘Black and Red’ dominated country under Albanese.
Peter, thank you. You are absolutely right. The ugly, thugly, crypto-totalitarian, vastly empowered modern Orwellian Left has derived its linguistic and organisational tactics, and its Gramscian cultural-infiltrationist strategy, from the Communist parties of yore. This is the case above all with the most cankered arm of the modern Left, feminism. The feminists actually crow about the fact, proudly tracing the origin of their movement in its current incarnation to female members of the Marxist activist movements who in the 1960s reacted against their settled role in those movements of providing sexual relief for their male leadership, and decided to start a mirror-image power-racket of their own. In effect, modern feminism is a dag which fell off the posterior of organised male Marxism and wriggled into a life of its own.
But as for the denial of any right to private property, Peter, there is a mega-hypocritical irony which you miss. This is that today’s Communist-inspired Left, while denying any fundamental right to have private property, interminably insists that Australia is properly the private property of those of its inhabitants who have some iota of Aboriginal DNA; and that the rest of us are illegal squatters on these persons’ private land who, by dint of some Left-concocted ersatz Natural Law, should be paying them rent.
It is hard to see Communism as a threat. It collapsed in the Soviet Union and Russia is now restored to orthodox Christianity. It doesn’t exist in capitalist China where Christianity is the fastest growing religion.
The irony is Christianity is being destroyed in the West by the West and that ingrown threat is the greatest danger.
August 10, 2023
I hope that Christianity is indeed growing quickly in China, but it is still for the most part illegal (as it became in the Roman Empire, while still growing rapidly. And Chang Jung, authoress of Mao: The Unknown Story (and other books on China) would no doubt be enlightened to learn that Communism “doesn’t exist” any more in her native land. Introduction of SOME capitalism does not mean that China is not still a Communist nation, just as SOME private business ownership did not make East Germany non-Communist.
Thank you PS.
What a grim outlook: “phony rationales for tyranny” and exploitation, bogus “spiritual” connections to land and sea, and all the nonsense used to justify them.
What is a “sacred site” worth these days? As much as you can get to “compensate” you for the alleged damage done to your religion. In the case of Fortescue Metals and its Solomon Hub, the claim against it is $500+million.
No wonder the WA government withdrew its new “heritage laws” this week which, according to the Premier, “went too far.” Now it intends to fund and produce a “sacred site” map of WA. Good luck with that exercise. Doesn’t it know that every square metre is sacred? Welcome to Country, folks.