Voice of reason must be heard

Campaigning over the Indigenous voice to parliament finally is starting to zero in on the priority issues that must be addressed to achieve the high ambitions both Yes and No advocates claim to champion. These are the changes in life experience for Indigenous communities built on a foundation of health, education, physical safety and respect.

In her address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney gave examples of the priority areas where she expects the voice to concentrate its efforts. These included improving school attendance at a local level, improving the design and operation of the work-for-the-dole scheme with better training of the skills demanded by local communities, and support for birthing on country that embraces tradition and language to reduce the number of premature childbirths. But Ms Burney could not explain how, if enacted, the voice could be compelled to listen to government wishes. Nor did she answer the central question of why a large bureaucracy that costs taxpayers $30bn a year has been unable to deliver results expected of it. And why an Indigenous voice enshrined in the Constitution would yield a different result.

Voice architect Megan Davis made a valuable contribution to the debate on Friday. She said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates at Uluru in 2017 had asked for a voice because ­bureaucracy and politicians had failed them. “The Productivity Commission at a national level has said that of the $30bn that is bandied around, probably 27 per cent hits community,” Professor Davis said. “The rest of it is a huge industry where a lot of people are making a lot of money off of disadvantage and they don’t want the status quo to change because they are … going to lose business as a consequence of people getting control back over their lives.”

Professor Davis has put into words what mainstream Australia intuitively knows to be true. Everyone involved, including those who are likely to take a central role in the voice should a referendum succeed, must look deep into themselves and ask whether they, too, have been part of the problem.

Interviewed in The Weekend Australian, Indigenous South Australian senator Kerrynne Liddle echoes a similar concern. She says she fundamentally disagrees with a constitutionally enshrined voice because it is not clear how it will work or what it will achieve in a practical sense. Senator Liddle is worried about permanence, about another layer of bureaucracy. The result, she says, would be divisive and based on race.

Writing on Friday, Indigenous academic Anthony Dillon said the Yes camp is right to say change is needed, but argues the voice is not that change. He says the proposed solutions to the problems facing too many Indigenous Australians will be effective only when they are premised on the idea that their fundamental needs are the same as those of non-Indigenous Australians.

Dr Dillon poses some hard questions. He says if it is difficult to bring services to the people, should the people not be relocated to where the services and opportunities are? Alice Springs principal Gavin Morris wrote of the heartbreak of sitting in a hospital emergency department with a six-year-old student who had attempted suicide, trying for hours to reach a family member who wasn’t drunk or cared enough to turn up.

These are thoughtful contributions to debate put by Indigenous leaders that have first-hand exposure to widespread concerns. They deserve a better response than what has so far been on offer from the Yes campaign. Certainly they deserve more than the derogatory view of opponents presented by Ms Burney at the press club with her warnings about post-fact Trumpian politics.

As a paper, we have outlined repeatedly our support for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. As we editorialised this week, decades spent reporting from remote communities have given us a strong sense of the disconnect that exists between what is happening on the ground and out of sight and the fashionable preferences of policymakers and urban sophisticates.

The failure of bureaucracy should be common ground in the referendum debate. Fixing this is the springboard through which the greater ambitions of constitutional recognition can be achieved. How practical things will be improved for ordinary people through a voice to parliament that is enshrined in the Constitution is the detail that is still desperately required.