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Forgive me, woke sisters and brothers (or should that be Comrades), for these are my sins:
♦ I am male.
♦ I am a septuagenarian.
♦ I am a retired solicitor of 46 years duration.
♦ I was a supporter of Charles Perkins Freedom Ride in the 1960’s.
♦ I am at least third-generation generation indigenous, as is anyone born in Australia, meaning my children are fourth generation and my grandchildren fifth.
♦ I am old enough to remember how moved I was and remain by Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and its inspirational yearning for the day when “my children will be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”
♦ Although not yet old enough to vote I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Yes vote in the 1967 Referendum.
♦ I marched against apartheid when the white South African Rugby team toured here in 1970.
♦ I celebrated when Nelson Mandella was released from Robin Island and, later, when apartheid collapsed and the former political prisoner became president of the new South Africa,
♦ Virtue signalling has no appeal to me, nor do I suffer from white guilt.
The reasons I intend to vote No at the Voice referendum are:
1/ If passed it will create an unelected race-based institution enjoying power and privilege denied all other Australian citizens.
2/ If not consulted before the Parliament or executive pass laws or implement them, the High Court will become involved. After recent decision in regard to race and Aboriginality, who knows what innovative light the justices will bring to their rulings.
3/ A Voice could be created by Parliament right now without any need to tamper with the Constitution
4/ If the referendum question were to be altered, as it easily could be, to acknowledge in the preamble to the Constitution that Aboriginal people were the first inhabitants of the continent it would have overwhelming support.
5/ There are eleven Aboriginal MHR’s and senators. As has been repeatedly pointed out, that means in relation to their percentage of the population Aborigines are over-represented. Memo to Albo and the Yes-vibe crowd: we’re all Australian no matter where our forbears came from.
6/ In addition to their parliamentary representatives, government websites reveal that there are 3278 Aboriginal corporations, 243 native title bodies, 48 land councils, 35 regional councils and 145 health organisations,
7/ Government records also reveal expenditure per person is twice as much for Aborigines as for other Australians.
8/ There does not appear to be unanimous support of all Aboriginal groups. The elite Aboriginal spokespersons are all in favour, but respected others such as Anthony Dillon, Warren Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price all intend to vote No. In addition and as interviewed on Sky News, elders from Uluru, James Calyun from Western Australia and Kerry White from South Australia all say that they will vote No as will their peoples.
9/ The Voice would open a Pandoras box that would spawn a treaty, sovereignty and reparations.
Despite the recent protestations of the Prime Minister that the Uluru Statement is but a single page of feel-good niceness, it has become quite apparent that the accompanying pages — be they 15, 16 or 25 pages –, that the Voice is the first step towards a treaty, a makaratta “truth-telling” commission and, after that, reparations as a percentage of GDP being paid to Aboriginal Australians by other Australians. Oh yeah, that’s right, Albo hasn’t been bothered to acquaint himself with those attachments — or so he claims.
Who is eligible to receive the reparations and who must pay them? Do we turn to self-identification as the criteria? Where do fauxborigine scam artist Bruce Pascoe along and other main-chancers whose Aboriginal bloodlines are vestigal or altogether non-existent fit into the picture? Are we really contemplating DNA testing to determine who gets what and how much?
And the calculation of reparations becomes even more difficult, as might be seen by considering Senator Lidia Thorpe, a vocal supporter of sovereignty, treaties and reparations. She has disclosed that her father is Irish and her Aboriginality traces back to her great-great-grandmother on her maternal side. Assuming that her great-great-grandmother was a full blood Aboriginal, that would make her great-grandmother 50 per cent Aboriginal, her grandmother 25 per cent and her mother 12.5 per cent, making her 6.25 per cent Aboriginal and 93.75% caucasian. Does she receive 6.25 per cent of the reparations and pay 93.75 per cent, or does she only have to kick in the 87.5 per cent difference?
The cynic in me thinks the elite members of the Voice will argue that it’s all too difficult and that all the reparations must be paid to the Voice so that what the Calma-Langton blueprint says will be an appointed, not elected, body can determine how those funds will be distributed.
At a risk — nay, the certainty — of being branded a vile racist by the likes of Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson, this is not a future any sane Australian would endorse, let alone accept.
“And the calculation of reparations becomes even more difficult, as might be seen by considering Senator Lidia Thorpe, a vocal supporter of sovereignty, treaties and reparations. She has disclosed that her father is Irish and her Aboriginality traces back to her great-great-grandmother on her maternal side. Assuming that her great-great-grandmother was a full blood Aboriginal, that would make her great-grandmother 50 per cent Aboriginal, her grandmother 25 per cent and her mother 12.5 per cent, making her 6.25 per cent Aboriginal and 93.75% Caucasian. Does she receive 6.25 per cent of the reparations and pay 93.75 per cent, or does she only have to kick in the 87.5 per cent difference?”
This I find to be inspiring. Though I intend to vote ‘no,’ I am inspired by dear Senator Lidia’s example. My own great-grandmother was a full-blood Norwegian, probably out of a line of Vikings fond of raiding the coastal settlements of Scotland, Ireland and England, where the rest of my ancestors resided. If this Voice gets up, to be there followed (as the race-callers say) by ‘Treaty’ and COMPO!, I reckon I will have a good case to put to the Norwegian government, inspired by this example, for Voice, ‘Treaty’ and COMPO likewise. I might even take it to the UN, where I am sure the Norwegian government, keen to avoid embarrassment and humiliation, would lose no time in asking me how much COMPO I might settle for. Might throw in a brand-new Volvo just for good measure. (Swedish, I know, but tarred with the same brush.)
Here’s hoping.
Thank you, Ian MacDougall
We in the Pictish Liberation Front send you greetings of fraternal solidarity.
The struggle continues until final victory.
Victory is certain!
Challenge… photo from every landmark in Oz with a gNOme in it.
Covered so well all the questions that every person with a smidgin of curiosity and a few brain cells should be asking.
As for the meaningless slur of racist which is flung around with gay abandon, it’s the refuge of those bereft of rational argument to shut others up. Doesn’t worry me one bit.
Hopefully the polls will prove to be correct and Australians will demonstrate they are critical thinkers and do have those brain cells, on October 14th.
Some excellent points but WHY do we need to make special recognition that there were peoples living here when the British arrived? They knew that. We know that.
The First Fleet had orders to befriend, learn from and assist the peoples living here and they made them citizens. It is not as if they were ghosts. They were humans, recognised, respected and embraced.
The British were fascinated by these stone-age peoples and believed that they could understand better our common human stone-age origins through them.
Just as we spend millions today trying to help people in less developed countries join the modern world so the British wanted to help those who chose, join the modern world of the times and to support and preserve those who did not.
The fact many different peoples colonised Australia before the British is historically interesting but otherwise irrelevant.
Yes, I can’t see the relevance of a Constitutional recognition of human inhabitation on this continent prior to 1788 or 1770. The Constitution is about the creation of a modern nation by the federation of the colonies. Why is it being said that Australians are near universally in favour of such recognition? Even if only in a preamble, it still puts a foot in the door regarding First Nations political ambitions.
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In regards to Lidia Thorpe, I always find it jarring when she refers to herself as “Black” (or is it “Blak”). If I get out my set of crayons, the one labeled “Black” doesn’t resemble her skin colour in the slightest! Is Bruce Pascoe “Black”? If he is, then it’s a classic case of Albinism!
Thorpe like most of the activists is an abolite, more anglo-european than aboriginal but milking the aboriginal ancestry for all she can.
Fully agree, Lindsay, and my profile overlaps yours in most places, except that I come from a medical/academic background, was born in Austria (which refuses to offer me citizenship), and was beaten up as a kid in Parramatta Park by a vicious gang that called me a “dago”, “reffo” and “balt” (terms which I didn’t understand then, but now seem highly contradictory). As for your “The elite Aboriginal spokespersons are all in favour”, I’d guess that many, if not all, of them see a specially reserved place for themselves on The Voice. I’d love to know just how much they’ve been disadvantaged by indigenous identity. From what I’ve been able to find, their jobs and net worth indicate most to be materially far better off than I am. Such information should be available to the public.
A lot of us grew up tough and many of us grew up poor. Kids are cruel and will mock you for anything they can find – too rich, too poor, too smart, too dumb, red hair, freckles, fat, skinny etc. As we learned as kids, sticks and stones can break our bones but words can never hurt us.
What many seem to overlook is that any recognition of those with aboriginal ancestry would create a ladder effect of superiority which is totally racist and undemocratic.
In our modern nation it should not matter a whit whether you can trace some of your ancestry back 40,000 years or 40,000 seconds. And the fact is, most of those here in 1788 are probably not descended from the first humans to arrive anyway. But the timeline just gets longer. Odd really since it makes failing to evolve beyond stone-age worse if you increase it from 40,000 years to 65,000 or more. How is that impressive?
rosross: “In our modern nation it should not matter a whit whether you can trace some of your ancestry back 40,000 years or 40,000 seconds.”
I very much doubt that anyone today, black, white or brindle, can trace their family tree back 40,000 years. But at 40,000 years ago, we all have ancestors living somewhere; certainly so many as to exceed the then human population of the entire Earth.
And “Thorpe like most of the activists is an abolite, more anglo-european than aboriginal but milking the aboriginal ancestry for all she can.”
Your abolite is a brilliant term. I must use it in future discussions; particularly re who might owe COMPO, and to whom.
Ian MacDougall
Of course. I doubt anyone here in 1788 was descended from the first humans to arrive given the stone-age propensity to kill strangers they found in their way.
And yes, at a thousand years we each have a million ancestors and more and indeed are descended from the same relatively small group of distant ancestors. We are all one. Currently assumed to have come out of Africa but aborignal peoples were also colonists in this land. How convenient to ignore that fact on the basis of longevity racism.
Feel free to take up abolite. I coined it some years ago to refer to the urban elites who are mostly anglo-european but who play aboriginal. They are, in aboriginal terms, what margarine is to butter and Lite Milk to real milk for those who want to play the one-drop game as so many seem to do in the aboriginal industry. Ironic is it not that a racist concept from 19th century US should be so warmly embraced by the aboriginal activists. Needs must.
What this referendum has done is turn a light on the Aboriginal Industry and its voracious appetite for public Money .
I am greatly upset that my taxes are being spent in such a way and that it supports the Toxic militant Activists we have seen in this campaign .
As a taxpayer I want to see accountability for the money spent and a dismantling of all the Institutions that are obviously not working .
There has evolved a Cult of First Nations Respect over recent years with all large businesses , sporting bodies , all levels of government and most of the media and Internet social media trying to out do each other in Virtue Signalling .
Aboriginal Culture evolved as a way for hunter gatherers to cope in a land that required extremely difficult decisions to survive.
The terrible parts of that Culture can only been seen in that context and cannot be judged by the standards of a culture that did not have to do those things to survive.
However no Aboriginals now live as true hunter gatherers .
The worst aspects of Aboriginal Culture have no place in Australia now .
Bring on Truth telling by all means but make sure it does not only stop at the wrongs that the White Invaders did .
Shine a light on why there are so many different Aboriginal Languages in such a relatively small population and when I went to the Melbourne Museum as a kid there were more weapons on display for killing people than for killing game .
How far could a person walk on their own away from their mob and hope to survive .
There was no Nation only a large number of xenophobic mobs .
A culture of Myths .
A Myth is story that is not based on truth .
Great article Lindsay. But.
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The preamble to our Constitution is just that; a preamble. It is not the Constitution. It includes the words, “Constitution hereby established” thus distinguishing the Constitution from the preamble.
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Section 128 provides the method for changing the Constitution, not for changing the preamble.
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If a Government wanted to put
a history lesson into the Constitution, in my opinion, it could only do that by inserting a new section; subject to it passing the referendum process.
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If the preamble itself was to be altered, then that would require
the UK Parliament to pass a new Constitution of Australia Act. As far as I am aware, that course of action is now not possible.
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We already have a Constitution which recognises “the people”, all of us, we should not foul it by inserting racial distinctions.
Lindsay, I suggest you consider putting your contract skills to work and draft a treaty because that’s going to be the next demand from the grafting elites.
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The treaty could include clauses that indigenous peoples would be treated as equals with all other peoples. That the land would be developed to provide a good living for all who wished to contribute to an egalitarian society.
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Further treaty provisions could guarantee indigenous peoples access to hospitals, security from inter tribal violence and schools and higher education for their children to enable them to fully enjoy the fruits of the society to be created.
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Clauses would also guarantee to indigenous peoples the right to participate in the law making by which all Australians, including them, would be governed. In turn indigenous peoples would pledge to obey those laws and to live in peace with all others.
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There could be other provisions that promised that the society to be created would grant sickness and other benefits to those unable to work. Finally, those that reached a certain age, determined by the laws they had helped to formulate, would be entitled to old age pensions.
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Newsletter!
Anyone who supports the Uluru statement and intends to vote “yes” at this alleged ‘referendum’ should put their money where their mouth is and sign over all they own to the Aboriginal people and quit these shores now. Anything less is just virtue signalling lip service to an alleged cause they are prepared to back publicly, but never actually do anything meaningful privately to give effect to their espoused position. I challenge Albanese to sign over Marrickville, resign as PM and leave Australia for good along with every other left wing ideologue. That would really be doing this country the greatest service imaginable.
Ta for the article…..Quite obviously the government could have legislated the Voice, if they the need for such so urgent, and given it a decade to see if it panned out better than ATSIC.
However my guess is that in the hubris of believing themselves wildly more loved than Mr Morrison, that they imagined they could get a bunch of leftist academic malcontents enshrined in the Constitution, merely by threatening to call opponents to their divisive practices:“Racists”. Let’s hope they fail totally
Legislating the voice would not give it the Constitutional power to negotiate a treaty, as another nation with the Australian Government.