Ray Martin has spoken an uncomfortable truth about Indigenous affairs

His remarks will no doubt outrage many Australians who consider themselves caring and decent, but what he had to say is far more important than placating easily offended types.

Veteran broadcaster, seasoned journalist, and five-time Gold Logie winner Ray Martin, I have concluded, has spoken an uncomfortable truth about Indigenous affairs. His remarks will no doubt outrage many Australians who consider themselves caring and decent, but what he had to say is far more important than placating easily offended types.

“There is $34 billion going out there every year somewhere and it’s doing next to nothing,” Martin said in January 2019, referring to the Productivity Commission’s 2015-16 estimate of the total spending by the state, territory, and federal governments on Indigenous Australians. “You can’t just keep calling the ‘poor bugger me’ card and blaming whitefellas when kids don’t go to school and get their faces and noses wiped.”

Dead right, Ray Martin. You cannot realise sovereignty without self-responsibility. And to think that nearly five years after you made that observation, the Albanese government wants to entrench the poor bugger me presumption in our constitution forever more. Something to do with making progress and moving forward, we are told.

Illustration: Johannes Leak

But that was the Ray Martin of 2019. The one of 2023 is far different. As reported last week, he spoke last month at the pro-Indigenous Voice to Parliament ‘West Says Yes’ rally in Marrickville, Sydney. There he derided the No campaign’s slogan ‘If you don’t know, vote No’.

“What that asinine slogan is saying is if you’re a dinosaur or a dickhead who can’t be bothered reading, then vote No,” said Martin, to the cheers of the crowd. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who was present, told ABC radio the next day that Martin had made a “great speech”.

Let’s briefly recap the Voice concept. As Paul Kelly noted in this masthead last week, even its proponents admit it goes far beyond constitutional recognition. “The Voice to parliament is a structural reform,” note referendum working group member Professor Megan Davis and fellow constitutional law expert Professor George Williams. “It is a change to the structure of Australia’s public institutions and would redistribute public power via the Constitution, Australia’s highest law.” And through its representations, Davis informs us, the Voice “will have a lot of power”.

So what does Martin say in response to the many questions concerning the composition, function, and governance of this prestigious and powerful institution, the membership of which 96.2 per cent of the Australian population would be ineligible because of their race? An institution, I should add, that cannot be abolished by parliament.

“At this stage of the game, the details simply don’t matter,” he said. “They never did matter, honestly. They’re irrelevant.”

As for the details Albanese and Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney have provided regarding the Voice, little needs to be said. Picture: Emma Brasier

Details, schmetails. That breezy dismissal says much about the man who is supposedly the pinnacle of Australian journalism. Do not concern yourself with asking government ministers about the intricacies of constitutional changes that will transform how parliament and the executive operate. It does not matter. They are irrelevant. To quote Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the late former Queensland premier and exemplar of open and transparent government, “Don’t you worry about that”.

My response in such matters is straightforward. If the government wants us to vote Yes in a referendum but refuses to hold a convention or otherwise provide us with sufficient information to make an informed decision, I will vote No. I have no interest in playing constitutional charades. As for the details Albanese and Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney have provided regarding the Voice, little needs to be said. Comparatively speaking, we would have received more information from a comatose and limbless Marcel Marceau.

Incidentally, it does not bother me that Martin labels my ilk a dinosaur. Many of those majestic creatures were native to Australia, dating back around 250 million years. Contrary to Martin’s anthropocentric biases, they were intelligent animals. And they lived in harmony with the environment on these lands for millions of years, long before humans set foot on this continent – but I digress.

As for Martin’s tirade against “nonsensical and stupid” referendum slogans,” I am all for calling them out. Here are a couple for starters: “It’s just a modest request” and “Our nation’s birth certificate should recognise this”. How many times have we heard Albanese say, “It is a generous and gracious invitation”? Thank goodness the referendum campaign ends this weekend, otherwise there would be a real risk of death by platitude.

Likewise, Martin should be pleased to learn voters are heeding his exhortation “If you don’t know, find out what you don’t know”. Given the Albanese government has been so reticent, Australians have made a special effort to find out where the Voice could take us. For example, referendum working group member Thomas Mayo: “Some might criticise that it can only give advice to parliament but advice coming through firstly a referendum of Australian people saying, ‘this Voice must be respected and its advice acted upon’ is a powerful thing.”

Fellow working group member Professor Marcia Langton: “People who are opposing [the Voice referendum] are saying we are destroying the fabric of their sacred Constitution. Yes, that’s right, that’s exactly what we’re doing”. And as Albanese himself said, it would be “brave” of government to defy the Voice’s advice. Advisory body my hat.

Professor Marcia Langton. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

You would swear that Martin has been secretly commissioned to bolster the perception that the Yes campaign is one of pretentiousness and elitism. “If we wake up on … October 15 and Australia has voted No, what will the New York Times and The Times of London and the best media in Europe and Asia and South America, what will the world say about us,” Martin asks rhetorically.

Let me respond to that by providing an example of what this so-called “best media” is already reporting about the referendum. From the BBC last month concerning a rise in support for the No vote: “Though some argue the shift reflects public sentiment, Yes campaigners blame it on an ecosystem of disinformation – which they say is being led by figures in the No camp”.

It quotes Mayo thus: “People are going to suffer throughout this campaign. I think the most shameful thing is what the opposition has done to this conversation, and history will reflect that.”

That same news item also quotes Marjorie Anderson, national manager at 13 Yarn, a crisis support line for Indigenous Australians: “We won’t know the scale of the damage until after the referendum. Think about the responsibility if the Aboriginal suicide rate goes up and we can link that back to disinformation around the Voice”. Sorry, Ray Martin, but if people overseas are so gullible that they believe this alarmist claptrap, I could not care less about their opinion.

On a closing note, mention should also be made of this government’s curious priorities. This week we witnessed the vilest public display of mass anti-Semitism in this country. The fear and disquiet have been exacerbated by the failure of federal ministers, particularly those whose electorates are in Western Sydney, to condemn its genocidal ideology.

You might ask what Albanese was doing when this was happening. He was in Uluru, campaigning for the Voice. So moved was he during this visit that he burst into tears.

When you reflect on the fracturing of this country and the knowledge that we have another two years before the next election, you could be excused for doing the same.