An open letter to Marcia Langton and Noel Pearson

Rather than blame others for the failure of the Yes case and accusing others of base motives, when will you both take responsibility for that loss?

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Your recent observations some 18 months after the voice referendum are a cause for both sadness and disappointment. You have profoundly misunderstood the reasons most Australians voted against a race-based permanent body in the Constitution, and you have profoundly maligned Australians.

The vote was a simple one: Should modern Australia divide people by race in our Constitution? Or should our civic rights under the Constitution be equal for all Australians? That was it. Your misinterpretation of this shows a deep disrespect for Australians.

To you, Noel Pearson; describing the voice as “a dog worth kicking … every yelp of pain, every broken rib … Kicking the voice was a gift that kept giving” may satisfy your inner Paul Keating. But this was tawdry.

Once again, it demonstrated your failure to understand that this was a debate about our Constitution, about how we govern ourselves, about equality. The only thing being kicked around was a very big idea – that’s what a healthy democracy does, so we can properly test that idea. We needed to understand the power, reach and effect of this proposed body being inserted into the nation’s instruction manual for the way we are governed. We wanted to know what would be done differently with such a body? Would the same group of activists who have dominated Indigenous policies for decades be running it? How would that change the lives of disadvantaged Indigenous people? Would it have created a two-tier Australia? And didn’t we need to take at face value the Uluru Statement from the Heart that placed the voice as a necessary first step towards reparations and treaty? And how could we ignore the work of academics making it clear the ultimate aim of the voice was co-sovereignty?

The Uluru Statement from the Heart

Instead, too often details were withheld. Those asking questions were accused of being immoral if we planned to vote No.

Noel, you still don’t appear to understand that good and decent people can disagree about what should go in our Constitution. When you segued from describing the voice as “a dog worth kicking” to saying “kicking blackfellas is the easiest and most lucrative politics in Australia” you lost the plot. You disparaged Australians. This accusation demeans you.

Marcia Langton, you recently suggested something similar in this newspaper. You said, in the wash-up of the voice referendum, you wanted the Prime Minister and his cabinet to “stare down those who think it is OK to allow the horrific disadvantages faced by far too many Indigenous Australians: skyrocketing incarceration and child removal rates, unemployment, food insecurity, and stubbornly high chronic disease”.

Who thinks this is OK, Marcia? Accusations like these should have evidence behind them. Or are you, in common with Noel, segueing from your disappointment with the voice to empty claims that Australians don’t care about Indigenous disadvantage? It is a heinously wrong allegation.

Both of you are undermining your positions as role models and reformers, risking your legacies.

Over many, many decades, Australians have supported a large part of our state and federal taxes being used to fund policies aimed at helping disadvantaged Indigenous Australians. Billions of dollars have been directed, with bipartisan support, towards closing the gap between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people.

Clearly, money hasn’t solved the problems of family dysfunction, alcohol and substance addiction, child sexual abuse, domestic violence and other serious crimes, not enough kids going to school, getting people into jobs and off government handouts, incentives to own your own home. But Australians have enormous goodwill for Indigenous Australians and are prepared to keep trying. They just didn’t believe that embedding preferential rights in the Constitution for Indigenous Australians would make any difference to this terrible situation.

It’s one thing to remain disappointed that a proposal you helped design and advocated for over many years failed. But I don’t understand why two highly educated people would resort to baseless accusations. Before the vote, Noel, you said the message to Indigenous people from a No vote would be “we don’t want you, we don’t like you, we don’t need you”. That was emotional nonsense. To keep talking like this, of kicking blackfellas, and saying Australians don’t care about Indigenous disadvantage will only encourage Indigenous people to see themselves as victims.

Noel, for years I have admired the work you do in schools, reforming broken teaching models, introducing explicit instruction so young children will be empowered early in life by learning to read, write, do sums, and so much more that a good education should offer every child – regardless of their skin colour. Just days before the federal election you said we need to stop plonking cross-curriculum priorities, including Indigenous issues, into every school subject.

You are a tremendous warrior for evidence-based teaching. Why, then, make evidence-free accusations about the referendum and about Australians?

Marcia, your early work as an activist for Indigenous people was a great contribution to the country. Your work as an academic has been important too. Rigorous debates must be had for the best ideas to rise to the top. But healthy debates are undermined by empty claims. Worse, every time you each unload on Australians, I can guarantee you that many people are saying, “God help us if the voice had succeeded”. If we tested or challenged a demand by the voice, would we suffer more slanderous claims that black people are being kicked, that we don’t care about Indigenous people?

While Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was the ­undisputed star of the No campaign, Noel Pearson calls her ‘a one-trick pony’. Picture: Gera Kazakov

Noel, your attack on Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, describing her as a “one-trick pony”, was tawdry too. You accused her of taking up “the mantle against her own people”. Who’s really kicking who here, Noel?

Nampijinpa Price is a formidable, smart, committed Australian who happens to disagree with you on the voice. She has suggested a wholesale audit of spending on Indigenous policies and projects to ensure that scarce resources (for that is what tax dollars are; money doesn’t grow on trees) is used where it will genuinely make a difference. What a brilliant idea. Instead of praising Nampijinpa Price for this, you chose to attack her.

The pity is that other Indigenous leaders like you and Marcia haven’t offered bipartisan support for this evidence-based approach to policy. It’s not too late. Evidence-based spending could deliver real change for those living dire lives.

Noel, “the biggest victim of the failure of the voice” was not, as you claimed, Peter Dutton. The referendum attracted a roar from the Australian people in favour of equality. Dutton sided with that. The Liberal Party, and Dutton, failed at the federal election because they were not bold about offering a vision different from the Labor government. Many electorates that voted No to the voice also said “no” to Dutton. Simple as that.

Marcia, you said last week that you’re not “not so sure” Australians voted against culture wars when they delivered Labor a second term. May I remind you that everything is about our culture – from economics to education, from aspiration to productivity, the question is: What kind of culture do we want to nurture for future generations? There is no shame in that. Australians should be given different visions to choose from.

Finally, to both of you, rather than blame others for the failure of the Yes case and accusing others of base motives, when will you both take responsibility for that loss?

Surely you must both understand it is time to move on, to pass the mantle of reform to a new generation of Indigenous leaders who won’t stoop to denigration and threats about withdrawing welcomes to country, leaders who understand that a project premised on separatism is doomed to fail everyone.