Joe Hildebrand: Voting Yes to the Voice is the only logical step

When all is said and done, the Voice to Parliament proposal is pretty simple and, therefore, our choice to vote Yes, says Joe Hildebrand.

Three of my best Indigenous friends in politics and the media are Warren Mundine, Jacinta Price and Anthony Dillon.

We speak often and I have the greatest love and respect for them, not only because they are warm and intelligent people but because we share almost identical views on Indigenous issues. These issues include tackling violence and chronic disadvantage in Indigenous communities instead of always crying racism; making Indigenous leaders accountable for what happens in their communities instead of always blaming colonialism; and shifting the power balance away from prominent urban Indigenous voices that already have a strong platform and towards remote and regional voices that are so often unheard.

And so how on earth, I ask myself day and night, have I ended up opposing these three people I so admire when it comes to the question of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament?

One answer would be that I also greatly admire other pro-Yes Indigenous leaders, such as Noel Pearson — whom I have never met — and Yes campaign director Dean Parkin, another great friend who I believe is the best and brightest First Nations advocate of his generation.

But that is an easy answer, not necessarily the full one.

I am writing all this personal stuff — some might say self-indulgent guff — because for so many people, this debate is not just an abstract constitutional argument. It’s as personal as it gets.

For hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Australians, for whom life-expectancy is on average a decade shorter than non-Indigenous, it is literally a matter of life and death.

But for the biggest and strongest voices on both sides of the debate it is deeply personal too. This is a large part of the reason why the campaign has become so polarised, and when national debates become polarised it is often the negative side that prevails.

This would be an awful shame for our magnificent country. And so it is vital that the two sides of this debate at least understand each other before they destroy each other.

As is now on the public record, Pearson clearly feels an acute sense of betrayal by both Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton, both of whom he believes made implicit, or explicit, private undertakings that have since been broken.

For someone who has spent so many years helping to carefully construct the most conservative Voice model imaginable so that it would be acceptable to, well, conservatives, it is not hard to understand why he feels the dagger has been inserted and twisted by both men coming out all guns blazing against it.

But likewise Mundine and Price have also been powerful and pragmatic advocates for the grassroots needs of their people only to have the elite urban left — Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike — pour scorn on them at best and ritually abuse them at worst.

Clearly there is a visceral sense of betrayal on both sides.

The result is that each camp sees the other as traitors and haters. Conservative No campaigners are cast as liars, racists and rednecks. Progressive Yes campaigners are cast as dangerous radicals or out-of-touch elites. And so when the Yes and No camps are arguing about the Voice they’re often not really talking about the Voice. They’re talking about their enemies.

That is understandable, perhaps even inevitable, but it is also wrong.

Because if you strip all the personalities and personal politics out of the Voice debate and simply look at what is being proposed, then all you see is a very humble, harmless and — dare I say it — even humdrum offering.

So let’s look at it. Let’s look at the simple, actual fact of what is being voted on. These are the exact verbatim words of the proposed amendment:

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia: There shall be a body to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

That is it. That is all.

No binding power, no requirement for the Parliament or government to even consider the Voice’s representations let alone act upon them. Simply an opportunity for representations to be made where there is no representation at all.

And the Parliament has complete, wholesale, unequivocal power to change, dissolve, reconstitute, instruct or ignore the Voice at its slightest whim. It’s all there in black and white and the overwhelming majority of legal opinion has declared it safer than a Swiss bank.

In short, the Voice is able to inform politicians on the needs of Indigenous communities but has no power whatsoever to make them do a single thing.

It offers limitless potential for better insight and outcomes and literally zero risk of any interference or control.

Anyone who reads me must surely know that I despise radicalism, wokeism, wankery and virtue signalling in all their forms. The Voice is the very opposite of that.

It is simply the overwhelming majority of First Australians asking to take some measure of responsibility for their own lives. It is the most personal thing that any human being can ask.

And the only true answer for such a great and gracious nation as ours is yes.