Andrew Bolt: Why we don’t owe Thomas Mayo The Voice to parliament

Thomas Mayo is everywhere right now, arguing for the Voice, but he is not so different that any of us owe him – or the many like him – a Voice or a dollar.

More Australians are waking up to the dumbest thing about the Voice. I mean, just look at Thomas Mayo.

I’m not saying Mayo – the face of the Voice – is himself stupid. He’s actually smart and articulate.

But look at him! Why do any of us owe anything to this man, let alone the “rent” or “reparations” he says the Voice would push for?

Mayo is everywhere right now, arguing for the Voice. He’s ambassador for the Uluru statement that demanded the Voice, and on the Albanese Government’s referendum advisory group that designed it.

Thomas Mayo is everywhere right now. Picture: John Feder.

Woolworths even sells a book he co-wrote telling shoppers the Voice is the best thing since sliced bread, over in aisle 2.

But wait. What makes Mayo so different to other shoppers in Woolies that Australians must now be divided by race in our constitution to give people like Mayo their own advisory parliament in our constitution, to argue for reparations and sovereignty?

Well, declares Mayo, he’s an Aborigine and Torres Strait Islander. That’s why. And that’s where this whole campaign becomes a farce.

True, the Mayo family tree drawn up by professional genealogists at dark-emu-exposed.org does include some women who seem to have been indigenous Torres Strait Islanders.

But there are also many more racial or ethnic parts to the Thomas Mayo story that make me wonder why he’s owed extra political rights and reparations for being “indigenous” himself.

Mayo (who changed his surname) has described his father Celestino Mayor as a Torres Strait Islander of Filipino and Dayak (Borneo) ancestry, and his mother Liz as of Polish, Jewish and English ancestry.

In one interview, Mayo said his great-great-grandfather Mayor came to Australia from the Philippines.

His family tree shows Mayor’s descendants then married into families from Malaysia, the Pacific Islands and Germany, as well as into immigrant Filipino and indigenous Torres Strait Islander ones.

A united nations of ethnicities then, like many Australian families today.

Take my own children – of Dutch, Irish, English and French background, with partners with Chinese and British ancestry.

Given that, it’s a joke to now divide us by race, and even crazier to insist that people with, say, just one great-great-grandmother who was Aboriginal, must be Aboriginal themselves, whatever the “race” of their other 15 great-great-grandparents.

No, Thomas Mayo is not so different that any of us owe him – or the many like him – a Voice or a dollar. We’re Australians all.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Why we don’t owe Thomas Mayo The Voice to parliament