James Campbell: Why I won’t be voting yes to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament
It’s time to question the message sent by Welcome to Country ceremonies, writes James Campbell: that there are two peoples occupying Australia — and only one of them has a right to be here.
Opinion
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Though I doubt he intended it to be, there’s a bit in Albo’s speech on Sunday to the Chifley Research Centre that has crystallised why I will probably end up voting no to the Indigenous Voice to parliament.
I should be clear: I’m not against it because I think it’s a Trojan horse in which lots of clever Lefty lawyers are crouched waiting to unleash their arguments in front of activist judges the moment it is safely inside the gates of constitution. You can’t rule this out, of course, not since the High Court managed to discover a few years back that special rights attach to Indigenous folk in this country, even if they’re actually citizens of New Zealand.
But on my — layman’s — reading, these arguments strike me as overblown, not least because they so often seem to be derived from the Kiwi experience of the Treaty of Waitangi. The reason I’m not really worried about this is because even if the fears turn out to be well-founded, it’s obvious that a future Coalition government will spearhead a campaign for the Voice’s removal from the Constitution.
Other arguments against include that by giving the Indigenous their own de facto parliament, we are stepping down the primrose path to apartheid; that it is unnecessary because there are already Indigenous voices in parliament; and that it will encourage frauds.
There’s also a general objection that singling out one particular race is, by its nature, divisive.
To me, the last one has the most merit, but even so, on its own, this probably wouldn’t be enough to persuade me to vote no.
Why not? Because I think it’s probable the Voice will end up confining itself to Indigenous issues just as its proponents say it will, in which case its capacity for spreading division will be limited.
My problem with Voice is it is not happening on its own. It’s happening in the context of a concerted campaign to redefine the way the non-Indigenous Australians see their relationship with this land.
As Albo says in his Chifley speech: “If you go to any big sporting event — a Test match, State of Origin, the footy finals — there will be a Welcome to Country. Or a barefoot circle. Or a smoking ceremony.
“We begin sittings of parliament with one each day, The Project open their show with it every night.”
These acknowledgments, he says, are “embraced by community in schools and childcare centres, local councils and sporting clubs” as “a simple, humble, very Australian way of paying respect that has become part of our daily lives.”
Whether or not they have actually been embraced or rather imposed by the great Australian fear of doing the “wrong thing” socially is debatable.
What is undoubtedly true is that they are to be found everywhere.
At first I didn’t notice what a noise these acknowledgments made, perhaps because they were initially rare. But these days they are inescapable — at the start and end of ABC programs, every time the Qantas plane touches down, at every school assembly.
When something becomes ubiquitous, you see it in different terms. I can’t remember when my bemusement changed to irritation — “are we still doing this?” — before moving on to overt hostility.
Probably when it dawned on me that these little acts of contrition were never going to end.
They’re now a permanent part of our national settlement.
And the message we give ourselves by opening everything we do in public and private “by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet” and paying “respects to their elders past, present and emerging” is that we are interlopers in this country who are here on the sufferance — morally anyway — of the people who were here before we, or our ancestors, arrived.
Maybe you are comfortable with that for yourself. Maybe you are even happy for your children, who will never know a time when it was different, to live in an Australia where their every moment from birth to death is dogged by the message that there are not one but two peoples that occupy this continent and only one of them has a right to be here.
Personally, I reckon a country where most of the populace is made to feel like they are guests is unlikely to be a happy one. Especially one where most of that populace — myself included — has no right to live anywhere else.
I obviously understand that 234 years is the blink of an eye to people who have been here for 60,000, and that in world historical terms, it’s a very short time for a society to heal after something as traumatic for the original inhabitants as what kicked off at Sydney Cove in January 1788.
Readers of English descent would do well to remember that plenty of their ancestors were still going on about the “Norman yoke” at least 700 years after William the Conqueror saw off Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
But that said, the Voice, as with acknowledgments of country, denies the possibility there can ever be convergence between these two peoples.
It’s not a step to a brighter future, it’s an acknowledgment of defeat.
Got a news tip? Email james.campbell@news.com.au
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