The Financial Review's legal editor Michael Pelly says the Australian people
will be unlikely to vote "yes" without a clear idea about how the Voice will work.
Indigenous academic
Marcia Langton says such questions are answered by
her 2021 co-design report co-authored with former Indigenous social justice
commissioner Tom Calma. But with that document running to almost 300
complex pages, it falls short of an easily digestible blueprint.
Giving voters more confidence about what they are voting for also calls for
clarity about what issues the Voice will have a say on. Radical activist talk,
echoed by the far-left Australian Greens, about indigenous truth commissions,
treaties, reparations, and sovereignty will also turn off mainstream voters.
It remains unclear exactly how creating an advisory committee in Canberra
will materially improve the situation in remote Indigenous homelands that
lack the economic base that all functional communities require.
That is the essential point made in the maiden speech of Voice opponent,
Jacinta Price, the first indigenous woman elected to parliament, who warns
that
a symbolic gesture could end up deepening the divide between
indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
It's reasonable for voters to ask Voice proponents to set out the basic structure
of this new political institution and how it will work to alleviate indigenous
disadvantage,
before it's permanently enshrine in the Australian Constitution.
I've yet to see any accessible, simple documentation setting out the makeup,
authority, structure, governance, or commissions of this Voice proposal, other
than
this vague document which contains too many 'coulds' and not enough
'woulds' for my liking. It seems that thus far, not much actual, real time wording
on its content has been formalised.
Why would I—as a 4th generation Aussie—be likely to vote "yes" on such a flimsy
proposal that would seriously and permanently alter our constitution?
Footnote:
Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO says Jacinta Price is right. The Voice
to Parliament is going to be a massive expensive bureaucratic structure which
will do nothing for the safety and living standards of indigenous Australians. We
have indigenous voices, they're called Aboriginal parliamentarians.
[And yes, there are eleven currently.]