MeisterEckhart wrote on Oct 8
th, 2022 at 12:47am:
Karnal wrote on Oct 7
th, 2022 at 11:42pm:
MeisterEckhart wrote on Oct 7
th, 2022 at 7:57am:
Karnal wrote on Oct 7
th, 2022 at 7:52am:
Revel in being a victim?
Oh, you mean asking for representatives to come forward and have a say. I see what you mean.
Travel out to aboriginal communities and observe the human instinct to acquire power and resources.
Conflicts over representation within an established voice will be at their most wild within disparate aboriginal communities as hundreds of pretenders joust to be king.
As they should. We Westerners call this healthy debate. Courts, parliaments, media outlets, the lot. All are based on the principle of jousting. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
We may not agree with what you have to say, but we'll fight to the death for your right to say it.
We are a jolly bunch, no?
Is there a question of voice representatives being democratically elected? Or will they be appointed?
Hard to say, Meister. Judges and media editors aren't elected either, but both are fundamental to democracy.
The voice has precedents in the Westminster system. The Federal Executive Council that advises the governor general is not elected, and nor is the GG him/herself. The Great Council of Bishops and the House of Lords were both unelected, back in the UK. The same applies to the Privvy Council, which still had jurisdiction in Australia until the 1980s. Various ministries have a range of unelected advisory bodies too.
We could go down the American route and elect everybody from DAs to judges, but it may not be more democratic. The American model just places more power in the hands of political donors.
I'd want to see an Aboriginal voice as apolitical, ar least in the party sense, but I'm not too fussed with the voice itself. I'm more interested in constitutional recognition, which is unfinished business, particularly since the Mabo decision.
We have a legal precedent for prior European settlement, but no national recognition and no treaties. Any voice or representative council should ultimately be moving towards treaties - the unfinished business of Australian settlement. The question, after so much time past, is who we should be negotiating with - a political question, but not necessarily a democratic one.
Australia is globally respected and admired as a democratic, free and fair country, with one exception - Aboriginal sovereignty. In this respect, we're a backward, colonial regime.
We're economically prosperous. We have a healthy, stable rule of law. We have genuine political representation and a democratic culture. We have a high standard of living.
Despite all that, Aboriginal Australians live in third world conditions. We can't be satisfied with what we've achieved until we work on that, and this requires us to fix past wrongs. Ultimately, this will require treaties with the original landholders, and we need a process to get there.
If the lack of treaty and constitutional Aboriginal voice were the cause of 3rd world squalor then EVERY SINGLE Aborigine would be living in squalor. This is obviously not the case.
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The Aboriginal Voice referendum (Read 100558 times)
