Frank wrote on Mar 19
th, 2023 at 8:40am:
" I am very concerned a voice to executive government is unworkable in practice. While Justice French dismisses concerns regarding the voice to executive government, he does acknowledge there is a risk. The problem is the capacity of the executive – that is, cabinet, minsters, departments, public servants – to make decisions without the risk of a challenge that a decision-maker has not properly considered or provided reasonable opportunity for consideration of a matter by voice representatives. Or indeed that voice representatives were not made aware that a decision was being made and, if it had been known that the decision was being made, they would have sought to make representations.”
Conran has suggested a series of scenarios where commonwealth public servants could face demands for advance consultation on decisions and even face challenges if they failed to advise the voice of a relevant decision being considered.
Voice representatives could write to the Treasury secretary seeking the following:
• Input to the preparation of the 2024-25 budget to allow it to make broad and/or specific representations on the budget, given known and unknown impacts on First Nations people and communities.
• Set out a timeline for proposed representations and note that this would involve consultations by the voice representatives with indigenous communities and might require meetings between Treasury officials and different Indigenous community and voice representatives.
Conran flags that issues to be discussed could include, but not be limited to, superannuation (for example, the lack of superannuation benefits available to many First Nations people); welfare support services and payments, including health; environmental planning, heritage protection and climate change; corporate and small business support services and subsidies; and taxation relative to the impact on Indigenous businesses and individuals and in the context of future tax reforms
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/quietly-and-behind-closed-doors-labor-alters-its-voice-draft/news-story/8a6f7abb44eae27d1435a04aa6e2cbf6
A Voice:
What a useless, boring mess this whole Voice has become. It’s not needed. There are already 11 indigenous MP’s and Senators, hundreds of Aboriginal councils and organisations, all with a voice, and all more interested in funding and power than helping Jack and Mary sitting in a remote indigenous community.
If this Voice gets up, it’ll just be a bottomless bucket for money, a back door into legislative control by activists, a hotbed of nepotism, full of infighting, a house of lawfare in the Canberra Bubble, and Jack and Mary will be no better off.
NO is the only sane vote.
I will agree with all this, but I am still thinking I will vote yes, for this reason:
The author writes:
"Conran flags that issues to be discussed could include, but not be limited to, superannuation (for example, the lack of superannuation benefits available to many First Nations people); welfare support services and payments....".
Indeed, lack of super due to relatively higher unemployment compared with non-blacks; and in the very next sentence Conran refers to the poverty ('welfare') industry in relation to blacks.
Talk about the 'blind leading the blind': we need a JG, not a poverty industry.