Akerman: Don’t let Labor create another dystopia

Labor wants to entrench discrimination and give some citizens greater rights than others through the Voice. In envisioning a utopia, it is creating a dystopia – again, writes Piers Akerman.

Anthony Albanese will finally announce the date of the Voice to Parliament referendum this week in Adelaide but he should do so further north. He should go to the sprawling Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) communities that lie across the SA and NT border.

Up there, where almost 90 per cent of the 2500 population is Indigenous, he could gain some first-hand knowledge of the problems faced by people condemned to live in remote areas by the failed policies of Labor’s demigod Gough Whitlam and his offsider, H.C. “Nugget” Coombs. Coombs, a former head of the Reserve Bank, pushed for Aboriginals to be isolated from Western culture and entertained the fanciful notion that they would be better off living traditional lifestyles.

He saw their primitive culture as proto-socialism with all assets owned communally. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work. Indigenous Australians now receive twice as much per head in welfare payments as non-Indigenous Australians.

What Albanese would see in the APY lands are people who struggle with English (77 per cent use languages other than English at home, mainly Pitjantjatjara) and have an appalling rate of domestic violence and child sex abuse.

Anthony Albanese should announce The Voice referendum date in the APY communities, where he could gain first-hand knowledge of their problems. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Sam Ruttyn

All this on land for which they communally hold the freehold and manage in accordance with their own traditions and preferences, just as Labor insisted would solve all problems 40 years ago.

Women are regularly bashed and children cruelly treated, just as was observed by the European settlers two-and-a-half centuries ago. The endemic violence that sees a disproportionate number of Aboriginal men incarcerated usually occurs at the hands of an Indigenous perpetrator, according to every study.

This referendum has been marked by the level of incivility directed toward prominent Indigenous members of the No campaign, such as Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: ABC

Health workers are reluctant to stay in some communities unless there is guaranteed police protection.

The Voice, according to those pushing a Yes vote, would solve all these problems but it is difficult to see how a self-governing community would benefit from even more self-governance.

Albanese and the ABC want to close down debate on the nature of the Voice to Parliament but the full Uluru Statement revealed under FOI, not just the one-page window dressing, is freely available on the internet and was volubly praised by its authors until it all became too hot to handle.

Your ABC, which should support free speech and transparency, has issued its staff with instructions to suppress what the full statement says about reparations and sovereignty.

This is unsurprising as the taxpayer-funded organisation has been heavily promoting the Yes vote in the referendum, as have major corporates, notably Qantas, which gives free flights to Yes activists.

This referendum has been marked by the level of incivility directed toward prominent Indigenous members of the No campaign and the misinformation being spread unchecked by the government and the ABC (both of which would be protected by the government’s misinformation laws).

A political storm is brewing around how yes and no votes for the Voice referendum will be counted after the Australian Electoral Commission revealed how the ballot process will play out. The AEC urged voters to write ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in English on ballot papers, but will accept a tick for ‘yes’ but not a cross for ‘no’.

The electoral commission, which had said only Yes or No would be accepted, will now permit ticks to be recognised as Yes votes, though the draft voting paper does not mention ticks or crosses. Papers marked with a cross will be discarded.

Over a month ago, this column warned that WA’s Aboriginal heritage laws were fatally flawed and so it proved, to the extent that WA’s Labor government withdrew them. The state has now quietly shelved laws covering Indigenous fishing.

This referendum to give extraordinary powers to a racial group is even more damaging than anything WA Labor had in mind.

If successful, the Voice industry will clog the arteries of the Australian economy and race will be as firmly embedded in the Constitution as it was in South Africa under apartheid. Racial division has long been part of Labor’s DNA going back to its support of the White Australia policy – which the Liberals overturned. Labor even opposed the introduction of child endowment when the Liberal Menzies government introduced it but Menzies ensured that Aboriginals were just as entitled to all welfare benefits as were all other Australians.

Now Labor wants to entrench discrimination and give some citizens greater rights than others.

It envisioned a utopia and created a dystopia. Don’t let it happen again.