Truth the first victim in campaign to insert racial divide into Constitution

The push for an indigenous voice to federal parliament is yet another example of a small group attempting to dictate a social agenda for the nation, following assaults on religious freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of thought, writes Piers Akerman.

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Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s statement that “nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state” underlies the campaign to have indigenous Australians given special mention in the Constitution and a voice separate from all others.

Of course Rousseau, who never left Europe, certainly never came across anyone in a primitive state, spending most of his life in Geneva.

His sentiment, absurdly untrue as it was, took hold with nature’s fantasists, and utopian movements based on this patently false premise have arisen only to crash since his death at 76 in 1778, somewhat coincidentally 10 years before Captain Arthur Phillip landed the first convict fleet to reach Australia.

Captain Phillip, and those who sailed with him, would have laughed at Rousseau’s premise after witnessing the ­violence that was commonplace among those he found living around Port Jackson.

Ken Wyatt when he was sworn in as Indigenous Australians minister. Picture: Gary Ramage

Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt has courageously seized upon last year’s Uluru Statement from the Heart to launch a bipartisan political push to have a referendum on constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders within three years, with the possibility of a legislated Voice (his capitals, not mine) to federal parliament.

The same corporate chiefs who used their shareholders’ funds to support homosexual marriage have fallen over themselves to support this notion.

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It’s yet another example of a small group attempting to dictate a social agenda for the nation, following the cult of climate change and the assaults on religious freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

Just as Rousseau never actually met any primitives, few of the bankers, advertising and airline executives ever witnessed the blighted lives of those living in remote and isolated communities who maintain they are practising their culture.

Signing up for this agenda does, however, give them the woke credibility they crave.

In the Uluru Statement, the signatories — most from urban areas — proclaim “when we have power over our destiny our children will flourish”.

Given that the federal government allocates more than $33 billion a year for indigenous assistance now, the extra money needed to give that greater power necessary for children to flourish is beyond calculation.

Clean water, an education, and a healthier and safer environment might be a better start than showering even more money on yet another iteration of an Aboriginal bureaucracy.

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton, one of the authors of the Uluru Statement. Picture: James Croucher

The statement also calls for a Makarrata Commission, “to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”.

Makarrata is a Yolngu term, coming from the Northern Territory, where it means truth-telling and is held to be the basis of restitution to wellbeing.

Unfortunately, truth-telling about indigenous culture is already subject to any number of laws administered by anti-discrimination and human rights bodies, because the truth about indigenous culture pre-settlement and post-settlement is not always as pretty as Rousseau fantasised.

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton, one of the authors of the Uluru Statement, said the voice needed to be constitutionally enshrined to prevent it from being dismantled, citing John Howard’s decision to abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 2005.

“Going back to the 1970s, there is a long history of it,” Professor Langton told The Australian. “No effort to involve indigenous people in the government system has survived very long. They have been abolished after one or two terms. It is one of the reasons why policies fail over and over again.”

Professor Langton is a respected figure but she is disingenuous in failing to admit ATSIC was dumped because of massive corruption.

The ABC, which routinely breaches its charter as it advocates for this new assault on the Constitution, even using Play School to indoctrinate toddlers with the propaganda of the campaign, has given a platform to proponents of the Uluru Statement, but those who don’t fall into line haven’t been given the same microphone.

There is no need for racially based legislation, a referendum to reintroduce race into the Constitution.

Symbolism won’t close the gap.

Moral poseurs must not be allowed to dominate the Australian agenda.

Enforcing yet another top-down agenda on the most vulnerable is not going to change anything.