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thegreatdivide wrote on Feb 10^th, 2023 at 12:45pm:

When it comes to black sovereignty, the only differences between Thorpe, on the one hand, and key members of the voice movement embedded in and advising the Albanese government, are tone, timing and subterfuge. Thorpe is brash. She doesn’t do subterfuge. And she is impatient.

But it would be a grave mistake to treat Thorpe as a fringe-dwelling maverick, or to treat the black sovereignty movement as merely a far-left analogue of the far-right “sovereign citizen” brigade. It is now becoming clear that core claims to sovereignty made by Thorpe’s Black Sovereignty Movement are shared by key figures who have been central to the drafting of the words of the Albanese Amendment and to whom the government has outsourced its legal advice on the voice.

So much so that the words of the Albanese Amendment and the practical operation of the voice are little more than the appealing bait hiding the hook of Indigenous sovereignty. Ordinary Australians certainly have not been told this was likely and don’t realise it’s happening. It is also possible that while Albanese is very good at slogans about the voice, he has little understanding of the substance of how the voice – and his proposed words – are integral to securing black sovereignty.

We should have known, of course. The Uluru Statement from the Heart says Indigenous “sovereignty has never been ceded or extinguished and co-exists with the sovereignty of the crown”. That same Statement from the Heart proposes “an important reordering of the hierarchy of the state” and a “transformation in Australia’s established constitutional ­institutions”.

Unwisely, we paid no attention to this radical language in the Uluru Statement that reflects a long campaign for black sovereignty. Securing sovereignty depends, first and foremost, on entrenching the necessary constitutional machinery – a voice.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/the-voice-lidia-thorpe-wants-separatism-rather-than-reconciliation/news-story/88325494922f0b98f5971f0c0d125362

How do you say 'sovereignty' in Aboriginal languages?

issuevoter wrote on Feb 11^th, 2023 at 8:43am:

'It's only a joke', eh! That's how Rodney Rude used to get away with calling Kamal a little black Sambo.

Please. Don't be a wanker.

Australia ranks alongside southern Americans and South Africans in the world rankings of racism.

Frank wrote on Feb 11^th, 2023 at 6:53am:



Yep that's it in a nutshell - emotional blackmail.

Too many soppy guilt ridden softcocks will fall for it though.

The voice proposal provides for constitutionally mandated representative body, and privileged access for Indigenous people to make representations to the parliament and government on matters affecting Indigenous people. The access will therefore extend not only to laws and policies specifically about Indigenous people, but to matters that affect all Australians: welfare, taxation, climate change, the environment, to name a few. The four new sentences will be located in an entirely new chapter of the Constitution. Since Federation, no Australian referendum has ever proposed a new chapter in the Constitution.

As currently proposed, the voice will amount to a new group right in the Constitution. It will be exercised collectively and exclusively by Indigenous people.

Interestingly, by his repeated reference to good manners requiring that as a society we owe it to Indigenous people to accede to the Indigenous request for a voice, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese places the voice squarely within influential 20th-century philosopher Joseph Raz’s foundational conception of a group right; a group’s interests will generate rights when it can be said there is a duty owed to them by others. In this case, the duty is to listen. It is owed to Indigenous people by non-Indigenous Australians. The corresponding collective group right is the Indigenous right to make representations or provide advice.

...

By boldly entrenching a new group right, we are set to find ourselves with a novel and unprecedented advisory fourth arm of government. Of course, some people will be comfortable with that, and that is fine. But many Australians would be surprised to hear this characterisation.

Respectfully, the best that can be said for the expert group’s claim that the voice does not afford any kind of rights is that it is a mere assertion. The effort would be laughed out of court if it were ever put as a complete response to the issue at hand. It appears to deliberately approach the question viewed through a straw. The justifications provided are mostly beside the point and therefore wholly unsatisfactory. It is quite possible that the matters raised in this column have simply not been considered by the expert group. To demonstrate integrity, the claim should be revisited and conclusions explained.

As we go down this path we need a transparent, honest and robust public debate about the magnitude of what is being proposed, and the various options available. Yet the debate already has an ominous Kafkaesque feel, even before it has started. It should send a chill up the spine of every Australian.

Louise Clegg is a Sydney barrister.

A commenter:

Voice Mark 8.0

Nick Cater

The Whitlam government’s National Aboriginal Consul­tative Committee (1973-77) was replaced by the National Aboriginal Conference (1977-85), which in turn was scrapped to make way for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (1989-2005). The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (1991-2000), the National Indigenous Council (2005-07), the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (2009-19) and the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council (2013-19) were established with the same objective of allowing Indigenous voices to be heard in the corridors of power.

“Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent, but the results speak for themselves – statistics on education, housing, domestic violence and health that are a national disgrace,” Ananda-Rajah told parliament in an adjournment speech in November last year. “To paraphrase Einstein, we can keep doing the same thing over and over again, but don’t expect a different result.”

Ananda-Rajah, a Labor MP, is confident that voice to parliament 8.0 will succeed where versions one to seven failed. Those not bound by the solidarity of the Labor caucus are entitled to be more sceptical.

There is little evidence that the Albanese government has bothered to absorb the lessons of previous well-intentioned but failed attempts to bring Indigenous representatives to the table. Had it done so, it would have avoided trying to rush the voice through in its first year of government, the mistake Gough Whitlam made in 1973.

Elections for the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee were held on November 24, 1973, just 354 days into office. Confusion abounded. Writing in The Age in September 1973, Michelle Grattan described it as a “Black Parliament”, despite the government’s insistence that it would be merely advisory.

Senator Neville Bonner, the only elected Indigenous voice in parliament at that time, described it as a form of apartheid: “To have a separate parliament and a separate electoral roll on which only Aboriginal people will be listed will divide the Aboriginal people not only among themselves but also from the rest of the Australian community. I give a warning here and now that this will cause a lot more trouble than people seem to realise.”

Electoral officials had just 18 days to assemble a voting register. Only 27,000 of the 116,000 Aboriginal Australians recorded in the 1971 census voted.

The 41 elected members were paid a salary of $6000, roughly equivalent to the average wage, plus expenses. At their first meeting on December 18, the one and only demand was that their salaries be doubled, secretaries allocated to each member and that they be issued with cars.

Those demands not being met, the committee emerged from its second meeting in February 1974 with a threat to walk out.

It was followed by a demand for complete control over the $114m allocated to Aboriginal affairs.

The Canberra Times expressed puzzlement at the emphasis being put on “personal emoluments … rather than what is the object of the whole exercise, the Aboriginal people as a whole”. While the experiment was “a worthy one”, the committee “will manifestly have to evolve considerably before it becomes a useful tool in giving the Aborigines a sense of participation in the making of decisions affecting them”.

Thus, the first attempt to give Indigenous Australians a voice to parliament fell foul of the iron law of government funding: the first and often only beneficiaries of programs are those paid to administer them.
...
Last week the Prime Minister declared the argument between constitu­tional recognition and practical outcomes to be “a false choice. We need constitutional recognition to improve practical outcomes. It sends a message* to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: we’re serious about making this work, over the long-term.”

Albanese’s proposal is but the latest iteration of the failed technocratic approach to Aboriginal affairs now 50 years old. It holds that the physical and emotional needs of Indigenous Australians will be met only once social justice, property rights and compensation have been secured.

Anthropologist Peter Sutton is one of the few former advocates of this approach to renounce it. In his seminal 2010 book The Politics of Suffering, Sutton documents the breakdown in social order, the decline of literacy and health in towns such as Aurukun since the 1970s.

Our mistake, he argues, was to imagine that the solutions to human problems lie in politics and law rather than in the practical application of basic human rights. “This unscientific mumbo jumbo beggars belief,” Sutton writes. “It relies on a kind of magical cause-and-effect relationship, as if a treaty between ‘races’ will keep children safe in their beds at night.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/voice-80-poses-more-risks-than-foreb...
* As Hemmingway said, "If I want to send a message I go to the post office".

Brian Ross wrote on Oct 5^th, 2022 at 10:12pm:



The Voice is a snow job promulgated by activists & leftoid softcocks.

Aboriginals have as much power as any other Australian individual .... the have access to the same representation & have a multitude of lobby groups.

Yet phukkwits like you what to introduce a "race based" amendment into our Constitution(scant on detail) to circumvent the democratic process of govt on any matter they may deem fit.

As has been said to you ad infinitum ....

will every race or ethnic group then be entitled to recognition in the constitution so they have a separate voice to Parliament?

You Dypstick.