Vikki Campion: Debate on the Voice to Parliament not helped by Anthony Albanese’s guilt trips

The Voice to Parliament debate is not being helped by Anthony Albanese and his self-righteous responses to anyone who dare question it, writes Vikki Campion.

If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, it appears guilt is the last refuge of an Albo without an answer.

If you ask questions about the Voice, or ask for details about Treaty and Makarrata, you are a racist.

If you want to see the Voice legislation, you are a divisive conspiracy theorist.

Even when the Prime Minister was asked in Question Time if the Voice is as described in the Calma-Langton report, Albo went straight for the righteous heartstrings.

His sombre guilt trip to parliament began with: “Imagine how Indigenous people will feel, waking up to a failed referendum.”

Since leading voices against the Voice are Indigenous people, I imagine it would be a relief.

And this howler: “Imagine how our economic partners will perceive us if the Voice doesn’t go through.”

How will China, which has enslaved the Uigher people and doesn’t give anyone a vote feel about us having proper oversight of democratic changes to a constitution that its citizens don’t have?

Anthony Albanese needs to stop being self-righteous if people want to question the Voice, writes Vikki Campion. Picture: Martin Ollman/Getty Images

How will India’s 1.4 billion people who are increasingly vulnerable to a religiously dominated form of government under the BJP, where non-Hindus suffer a slow erosion of democratic liberties, feel?

Or Japan, where there is cultural discrimination against people of mixed race, derogatorily named “hafu”, where questions are asked if they will ever be considered whole?

Or our first trading partners, the British, who were the first colonisers and still have a subtle but evident class system clearly seen if you have the wrong accent trying to get into the right club?

It is an imperfect world.

Far from feeling guilty, we should be proud that people are treated equally in Australia.

If you listen to Indigenous voices in parliamentary inquiries this week, most problems with achievable solutions are not an issue of race but an issue of regional living.

An Indigenous person at Manly has few problems that need fixing, compared to an Indigenous person in Maningrida in the NT.

Evidence to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Joint Standing Committee inquiry this week was not of skin or heritage, of black or white, but of hopeless phone signal, no internet, impassable boggy dirt roads, no doctors, no police, airstrips unusable in the rain – all symptoms of regional Australia that no city person would accept.

Vikki Campion

West Arnhem Regional Council had to bring in dogs and security to stop break-ins because the cops wouldn’t come. Like most Indigenous councils, they want training, economic development, safety, and health investment.

Instead, they get Australia Post bags with a new line to write “traditional place names (if known)” or a neon billboard across three lanes of traffic to confuse tourists who think they have mistakenly landed in the wrong place: “Welcome to Gamay, home of Sydney Airport”.

To corporate Australia, the Voice means adding the country you are working on to your website and email signature, an Acknowledgement of Country before meetings and presentations, or changing your social media to a picture of Uluru.

The unions and companies that have declared they are for the Voice could make a massive difference in remote communities by giving Indigenous people jobs – online, if they installed Elon Musk’s satellite internet for them.

But they believe the solution is to put an Aboriginal flag in their lobby.

What about listening to the voices of West Arnhem? The council’s total budget for the 2022-23 financial year is $25m, where some 4 per cent of the entire budget will be spent on private security.

The 4000 people in Maningrida have no hospital, no medical centre and one unsatisfactory renal chair. That could be changed right now.

If the mega-corporations, wealthy councils and state governments who want to dance on tokenism put their money where their mouth is, they could fix it tomorrow.

Immediate changes that don’t need a referendum are not so enthusiastically pursued.

Unsurprisingly the pro-Voice teals holding the wealthier seats of Wentworth, North Sydney, Kooyong and Goldstein have the smallest number of Indigenous voters. Even Albo’s home seat of Grayndler is in the bottom third of seats by proportion of Aboriginal population.

Lidia Thorpe has defected from the Greens. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

If they want to make a firm statement and live their virtues, work out a housing policy that allows Indigenous people suffering in remote communities to live in their electorates where they can benefit from jobs, training, public transport, schools, police and doctors.

Like wind farms, it’s what Tiffany-teals want to talk about passionately but don’t want in their electorates.

If you listen to Indigenous locals, they call for funding to stop being deployed to a series of groups and clogged in capital cities for dispersal without accountability.

Instead, West Arnhem’s Mayor Matthew Ryan wants it handed to local government. But this is the same federal government that doesn’t believe in giving constitutional recognition to local government – letting local communities manage their local area.

If the PM wanted to change things simply with the evidence provided to current inquiries, to directly fund councils to deliver infrastructure and services on the ground, he could do so without so much as a legislative change. The instruments already exist.

The Voice is not where it stops – it is where it starts.

Pay attention to former Green Senator Lydia Thorpe’s comments. She believes that since sovereignty was never ceded, you don’t own your place – you rent it and payment must be made to the person who owns it, which will be defined by racial identity.

Where does this leave the poor white person in the electorates with the highest portion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders – in Kennedy, New England, Lingiari, Parkes, Durack and Leichhardt – suffering the same issues as the poor Aboriginal person next door?