A Discordant Voice in a Culture of Consensus

In his recent Quadrant Online column, Peter Smith writes how “the Voice, if it gets up, will not be an elected body in the sense in which we usually define elected bodies on the national political stage. To wit, bodies elected by voters through a secret ballot. The Calma-Langton report envisages an abbreviated bottom-up process  … from which twenty-four members will be appointed to the constitutionally-enshrined national Voice. It’s an appointment process.”

Representative decision-making by a majority vote of elected representatives is integral to Western governance processes. Persons in positions of leadership are generally accepted as having authority to make decisions binding on all, though many may not agree with those decisions.

This analysis was first published online in January
and is reprised in the latest Quadrant.
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Langton and Calma have designed their appointment process because they are no doubt well aware that the familiar Western…