Peta Credlin: In striving to come together, we’re given too much away

Australians got a taste this week of just how difficult indigenous issues could become over the next few years, writes Peta Credlin.

Australians got a taste this week of just how difficult indigenous issues could become over the next few years.

First, there was the Greens leader Adam Bandt’s repudiation of the national flag on the ground that it’s “hurtful” to indigenous people.

Then, there was his colleague, Senator Lydia Thorpe’s announcement that she saw herself as an “infiltrator” trying to overthrow a “colonialist” parliament.

To his credit, PM Anthony Albanese swiftly told Bandt to pull his head in, and a chorus of indigenous leaders said he’d put back the cause of reconciliation.

Still, this is a sign of things to come because quite a few indigenous activists — like Thorpe — regard the whole Australian project as fundamentally illegitimate; and quite a few non-indigenous Australians — like Bandt — are inclined to agree with them.

The PM told Greens leader Adam Bandt to pull his head in aftter he said the national flag was hurtful to indigenous people. Picture: Richard Walker

With schools more-likely-than-not to tell young Australians that January 26 marks “invasion day”, as part of a national curriculum pitched to erode faith in our country, it’s hard to see us avoiding a period of counter-productive national navel-gazing while our economy flounders and our security diminishes.

Enter the so-called “voice to the parliament”, which unlike changing the flag, but like becoming a republic, is official Labor policy. And prior to the election it was sort-of Liberal policy too, with Morrison government ministers saying that they hoped to establish one through legislation.

The very fact that some Liberals thought a voice would fail if put to the people via referendum, so they needed to get around voters via the parliament, says everything. At least under Labor’s plan all Australians will get their say about a new body designed to divide us by race rather than just MPs in Canberra.

It is an absolute certainty that anyone who opposes a special indigenous voice to the parliament will be labelled by some as racist; even though the presence of eleven individual indigenous voices in this term of parliament now (all chosen by parties and elected by the people in the normal way without any affirmative action) shows that institutional racism is now amongst the least of our worries, and surely makes a separate and singular indigenous voice redundant?

It’s easy to sympathise with the Uluṟu “statement from the heart” which was an eloquent plea for indigenous people to be more heard.

A large gathering of indigenous leaders substantially supporting an institutionalised indigenous voice has to be taken seriously; but shouldn’t necessarily be deferred to, especially as the number of indigenous MPs has almost doubled since then.

Peta Credlin

A separate indigenous voice is one of those “good ideas” that doesn’t actually withstand serious scrutiny – unless, of course, you think that Australia is essentially two nations: an indigenous one; and a morally lesser non-indigenous one of very dubious standing.

The most fundamental problem with a special indigenous body to consider the impact on indigenous people of any legislation that affects them (namely, all of it), is that it sets up two categories of Australians based on race: the ninety-six per cent of us whose ancestors all came here since 1788; and the four per cent of us (or thereabouts) who have some indigenous ancestry.

Both classes will elect members to the national parliament; but then the parliament of all of us will be second-guessed by the voice for just some of us.

When he was PM, Malcolm Turnbull described this as a third chamber of the parliament and it’s hard not to agree.

Worse, it’s a third chamber comprised of people of a particular race, elected by a race-based electoral roll, to consider the impact of laws on just one race. Just because this race-based distinction is well-intentioned doesn’t make it any less wrong in-principle than the odious racism of the past.

Then there’s all the practical difficulty: how would people’s entitlement to vote and stand for the voice be established; on what criteria would the voice choose laws and on what basis would they be considered; and most importantly, what impact would the voice’s verdict have and would that be different depending on whether its decision was more-or-less unanimous? Further, there’s the resourcing that the voice would need to inform its decisions and whether that would become almost a shadow government?

Given there were something like 500 different “First Nations” , rather than a single homogenous body, are we talking about a voice with (say) 500 seats, with one to represent the Gadigal people of Sydney, perhaps, and another for Melbourne’s Wurundjeri people, and for Brisbane’s Turrbal people and more? Or should it be proportional representation based on current or pre-1788 numbers?

The Australian flag was moved from the backgroundof a Greens media conference.

Working this out in advance would be near-impossibly contentious but it would be the height of folly to agree to a voice without having a very good idea of exactly what it would entail.

Honestly, It’s hard to think of a deeper quagmire; all to leave us more divided as a country, and to make the processes of government even more constipated than they already are, with the Commonwealth and the states tripping over each other, governments never having a majority in the senate, and everything mired in endless analysis paralysis.

It’s to our credit as a nation that we’re almost uniformly decent people who want the best for everyone, especially for the first Australians.

The very fact we have just elected a parliament with a much higher percentage of Aboriginal people in it, than in the broader Australian population shows we are a much more egalitarian and fair-minded country than our detractors might want you to believe.

But, still, here we are, headed down a path that seeks to entrench race into our nation’s foundation document, rather than abolish it.

Yet echoing in my head always, is that immortal dream of Martin Luther King, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Out of misplaced politeness, as Australians genuinely striving for a nation that comes together as one, we’ve made too many concessions on a whole range of propositions that are simply wrong in principle.

And none is more wrong in principle than reinstating racial divisions that should remain consigned to history, and never again be a part of a nation like ours.

WATCH PETA ON CREDLIN ON SKY NEWS, WEEKNIGHTS AT 6PM