Indigenous voice to parliament: three objections to voting Yes, and why they matter

A member of the public casts an early vote at a polling centre in the Sydney CBD

Each of us must vote Yes or No at the voice referendum this Saturday. Enormous effort has gone into persuading us that we should all vote Yes. But polls indicate the number intending to vote Yes has fallen steeply. I have educated friends and family on both sides of the debate. My own opinion has long been undecided.

Yet I must decide – and the issue is complex and contentious. It’s easy to get rattled or diverted by polemic or detail. What is needed, especially in the next few days, is clarity and engagement. No one should want a divisive referendum or angry outcome – Yes or No.

Why would anyone vote Yes? There are several reasons. For decades now there has been a political movement insisting that colonisation was destructive and oppressive. Recognition of land rights, treaty-making and reparations have been called for. Explorer James Cook and others have been denounced. There are objections to Australia Day being January 26.

History wars have been fought and are still being fought. Read historian Henry Reynolds’ book Truth-Telling and you’ll be clear about what is at stake. The voice comes out of this context and a Yes vote concedes all this and seeks to rehabilitate and embrace the First Nations people of this continent.

Much ink has been shed over whether the voice would entail a follow-on set of demands for treaty, a division of sovereignty and huge reparations. Both Yes and No camps seem divided on this. It makes a big difference. Constructive consultative mechanism or ambitious and angry agenda?

Why would anyone vote No? They may do so, as activists insist, because they are in wilful denial of the historical truth, or suffer incorrigible ignorance of the proposal on the table, or because – as academic Marcia Langton has vehemently insisted – the campaign is “racist and stupid”. They may vote No because they distrust “elites” or they think it is objectionable to be patronised by all those voices insisting they really ought to vote Yes. So it goes in referendums and in politics more generally.

But however widespread they may be, these would all be bad reasons for voting No since they fail to address the basic issues.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price meet No campaigners at a polling booth in Hobart. Picture: Linda Higginson

If, between now and Saturday, you have the time and want to get a bit clearer on what is at issue, read Megan Davis and George Williams’s Everything You Need to Know About the Voice, especially chapter Six, Voice, Treaty, Truth. Your questions will, pretty much, be answered. But your mind may not be made up.

This, in fact, is where the concerns of more thoughtful No voters begin. Assume, for the sake of argument, that Reynolds and other well-informed scholars are telling the truth about Australian history, does it follow that voice, treaty, truth is the path we should take? Or even just the voice? It doesn’t follow. Wilful denial, incorrigible ignorance, racism and stupidity aside, there are substantial objections to the voice.

Ironically, one reason the Yes vote appears to have been shrinking is that the Yes camp has refused to allow that there is a bona fide case for the No vote. Advocates don’t debate the matter on its merits. They insist on propaganda and hectoring. They denounce No voices as lying deplorables. They are impatient to get to Yes.

Here are my three objections. First, the voice is an Orwellian fiction. There are many voices. An attempt to shoehorn them into one will not work. And putting it in the Constitution will make it all but impossible to rectify when it doesn’t work. Hence the opposition of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine.

Second, ironically, the voice would institutionalise racism in Australia by privileging a tiny minority and its cultural past in a country with millions of people from dozens of ethnic and cultural backgrounds from around the world.

Third, the voice will propagate Makarrata: a claim to sovereignty over vast swathes of the continent and huge reparations for fewer than 3 per cent of the total population, raising intractable questions about procedural justice and economic viability.

If you accept the premises of the activist movement, you may bridle at these objections. But if you are unable to answer them, you won’t persuade the doubtful to vote Yes. Don’t get angry, get savvy. Democratic government, since the Athenian revolution of the sixth and fifth centuries BC, pivots on a break with tribal affiliation and the development of individual rights, freedom of speech and public deliberation. The whole First Nations movement internationally disavows this reality on ideological grounds.

Members of the public attend an early polling centre in Sydney.

Democracy means multiple voices, not a voice. It means citizen votes, not tribal or clan votes. It won’t do to reject Athens as “Western” or “racist”. The issue is one of liberty, equality and citizenship. We need to draw disadvantaged Indigenous Australians into that kind of politics, not anchor them to Dreamtime clans. The lamented gap cannot be closed in a Dreamtime and grievance narrative. Or so a No voter will argue.

These are the objections to the voice that are cutting the ground from under a Yes vote on Saturday. If the referendum is to get over the line, its advocates will need to persuade the sceptical and uncertain it can work, perhaps by reference to the Sami parliaments in Norway, Sweden and Finland, which appear to have handled such challenges relatively well.

Had the Yes camp simply argued we should create a version of what Scandinavian countries have done, this referendum might have got up. Right now it seems likely to go down.

But let’s not allow that to deflect us from seeking a solution to the problem. Let’s dust ourselves off and seek honest, constructive and effective ways to bring equity and advancement to our First Nations. Yes?

Paul Monk is a Melbourne-based writer and author of a dozen books, including Dictators and Dangerous Ideas.