A confected display of hatred

Cool, wise heads need to assert themselves after Victorian Greens senator Lidia Thorpe used so-called invasion day rallies on Thursday to split her own party, Indigenous people and the nation over the proposed Indigenous voice to parliament. On Wednesday night, at the Australian of the Year ceremony on the eve of our national day, Anthony Albanese said the function was “an uplifting moment of national unity’’. The Prime Minister hoped the voice referendum, to be held later this year, would be the same. Far from being advanced by a surge of community goodwill as most Australians enjoyed celebrating our national day, however, the voice was dealt a major blow on Thursday by an Indigenous woman who already has a highly paid voice in parliament, Senator Thorpe, the Greens’ First Nations spokeswoman.

At Melbourne’s rally, she screamed “this is war’’, brandished a stick and claimed: “They are still killing us. They are still killing our babies. What do we have to celebrate in our country?” By coincidence, or not, similar rallies around the nation also got behind Senator Thorpe’s opposition to the voice. She wants “a sovereign treaty’’, rejecting the idea of putting “the colonial Constitution on top of the oldest constitution on the planet’’. A treaty, she said, “could put 10 independent Blak (sic) seats in the parliament today. We want real power and we won’t settle for anything less”. By a curious coincidence – or not – the incendiary rallies, not only in Melbourne but in other centres, echoed Senator Thorpe’s anti-voice, pro-treaty position. If the baying mobs simply went along with a few loudmouths like Senator Thorpe, it was a disgrace. If the responses were carefully organised and orchestrated, it was sinister. Such snarling and hatred, reminiscent of the Falls and Shankill roads in Belfast during the Troubles or the southern US in the days of segregation, have no place in Australia in 2023. It was a far cry from Bondi Beach where a pale grey navy Seahawk, towing an enormous Australian flag, drew sustained, spontaneous cheers. For all the drama, our national day, as always, united more than it divided.

Australians rightly outraged about the ugly demonstrations that took over our major cities need to think about what they indicate about the proposed voice. Is it too moderate and reasonable for hotheads such as Senator Thorpe, screaming like a banshee? While many watching the histrionics might be inclined to vote no, that is what Senator Thorpe and her hangers-on want. Voters yet to make up their minds would do well to consider the arguments of older, wiser leaders with practical experience on the ground with the problems facing Indigenous communities. Writing in Thursday’s paper, Marcia Langton, associate provost and foundation chair in Australian Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University, foreshadowed the kind of ‘‘confected outrage’’ the public could expect from Senator Thorpe, who, Professor Langton wrote, is the leader of a new faction in the Greens party – the Blak Greens – and ‘‘knows how this culture war works … and has done more than her fair share to wreck the chances of Australians voting for a voice’’. Confected political outrage, she wrote, does not help “the families and children of Alice Springs or any other community blighted by the alcohol industry’s greed”. The voices of the local women pleading for alcohol restrictions and other measures to enable them to live in a safe environment and allow their children to thrive have been undermined by warriors from the right and the left for three decades. “Most Indigenous Australians genuinely familiar with these situations have had enough and want a formal voice giving advice to parliament to stop this political slugfest of ideological vanities while our people are suffering and dying,’’ she wrote. “We want a voice. We want local people who live with these problems to co-design solutions. We want governments to listen. We want action, not confected media outrage from cultural warriors.’’

Australians need Mr Albanese to step up and provide much-needed detail on how a voice would work. For Indigenous people whose health, education, jobs, welfare and quality of life too often fall far short of what non-Indigenous people expect, the voice would have a major responsibility to represent their interests well and facilitate practical reconciliation. That is a good reason for voters to consider the views of Professor Langton, Noel Pearson, former coalition minister Ken Wyatt and our Senior Australian of the Year, Tom Calma, who led the Voice Co-Design process with Professor Langton. What Australians will not tolerate, on any day, however, is the race-driven hatred that besmirched Australia Day 2023.