In Australia we are justifiably proud of the egalitarian society we have built. We pat ourselves on the back that we’ve left the injustice of class distinctions in the lands we departed from: here, Jack is every bit as good as his master. Swear allegiance today as an Australian citizen, and at that very instant you become the equal of any other.
Nevertheless – and inevitably in a society shaped by immigration – length of tenure has long been judged an unofficial measure of authenticity, even of worth. There were millions of “new Australians” whose welcome to this country was not in reality as warm as we like to remember, although we’re happy now to enjoy their food and weave their colourful traditions into our multicultural tapestry.
Those who were born here, however recently, know no other home; but that didn’t spare them the xenophobic nicknames bestowed by earlier waves of newcomers, eager to pull up the drawbridge after their own safe entry. A few can track their forebears more than two centuries to the First Fleet’s gaolers and convicts, a bloodline many of their ancestors were ashamed of, but that these days is fancied to confer a pseudo-patrician precedence.
As the years and generations go by, your status and sense of belonging grows; unless, that is, you happen to be one of our Aboriginal people, compared with whom we’ve all just stepped off the boat.
Amid all the arguments, polite or otherwise, advanced by advocates on either side of the forthcoming referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament, one certain point of agreement emerges. No one with the slightest knowledge of this country’s history could be unaware of, or unmoved by, the wretchedness that plagues many of our Indigenous communities; nor would they question the vital need to solve the problems that underlie and feed that misery.
It’s fair to assume that most of us more recent arrivals bear true goodwill towards fellow citizens who trace their origins to the first inhabitants of this continent. We take a degree of vicarious pride in their tens of thousands of years of unbroken culture, while also recognising that their sudden, shocking encounter with the Western world occasioned great suffering. That such suffering continues almost 250 years later is to most eyes a disgrace, and should be rectified. It’s essential, as the referendum closes in and the temperature of the debate rises, not to lose sight of that important shared goal.
When I was a child I had a favourite book filled with tales of the mysterious Aborigines who lived on the other side of the world, particularly the almost supernatural trackers who could read the earth and the passage of animals and humans across it as though the land were speaking to them, which in a sense it was.
By today’s standards the book was simplistic, patronising and paternalistic, but for a boy surrounded by the filth and noise of an industrial dockside cityscape, where every trace of nature had been overbuilt time and again, it was a window into a magical land and people, an invitation to indulge in the romantic fantasy of the “noble savage”. That ancient European notion, which held that exotic natives untainted by modern civilisation enjoyed a gentle, agreeable, innocent life, was challenged by a contrasting theory that their lives were, in 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s famous words, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.
The truth, as always, is found somewhere in between; but the sentimental myth was erected, I suspect, on some atavistic longing for a past when we were all in closer communion with the earth. Most societies lost that closeness so long ago that only the faintest echo remains, but for some Aboriginal Australians it existed within living memory and the dislocation must – and clearly does – feel brutal.
The semantic discussion continues over how to characterise that first contact – was it discovery, colonisation, settlement, invasion? – but there can be little doubt what it felt like.
Some of us make a reckoning of developments since 1788 from the Western side of the fence. Consider all the blessings we have showered upon your ungrateful heads, we say to our Indigenous people: housing, sanitation, agriculture, electricity, democracy; a mocking, Pythonesque “What have the Romans ever done for us?” challenge. Those whose ancestry predates conventional history are entitled to see it from a very different perspective. Look what you’ve taken from us, they might reply: our land, our languages, our customs, our identity, our dignity; we were happy until you arrived, with no need of your so-called gifts.
The happiness may be overstated (although much anthropological research suggests the hunter-gatherer lifestyle allowed a surprisingly generous amount of leisure time), but that’s not the point. It heaps insult upon outrage to shatter a millennia-old society and then demand gratitude for replacing it with what you perceive, by your own values, as improvements.
What was imposed on our Indigenous people’s way of life was an irreversible, irresistible tsunami of change, a force so powerful that it would overwhelm any single culture, and did so here with devastating efficiency. That they survived at all is tribute to their resilience, but the experience has been destructive and crippling.
If Australia is to live up to its glowing self-image, its failure to protect the first inhabitants of this continent has to be addressed. At a minimum, formal recognition of them is long overdue. Research indicates that something clear and simple, along the lines of the constitutional preamble first suggested years ago, would be agreeable to almost all Australians; but many of those same people are puzzled by the idea that such recognition can be achieved only through the mechanism of a permanent voice to parliament.
Proponents of the voice insist Indigenous Australians are not like any other special pleading group; they are a unique case whose grievances merit a unique hearing and response. The Yes advocates argue that our Indigenous people deserve that special treatment because of their historical alienation and dispossession; they are the only Australians to have been so abandoned in their own country. The ambitious desire to end intractable, decades-long iniquities at a stroke is understandable, and is expressed with the urgency of people who believe the best chance of improving Indigenous fortunes is slipping through their fingers.
Their opponents adopt a strict definition to declare that any preferment along racial lines constitutes “racism”, pure and simple. If it is racism, it’s of a rare, benevolent kind, and not the obscenity we’ve always understood that word to mean. It used to be called positive discrimination, but in the ugliness of the discussion the “positive” qualifier has been ignored.
Nonetheless, it is possible, and reasonable, for decent people to mount an argument against any degree or form of discrimination, no matter how virtuous its intent.
Nothing so far attempted has closed the gap that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes in almost any arena, despite the efforts of governments, bureaucracies and a range of advisory bodies across many years and iterations, and despite the vast sums of money expended.
This is why Yes advocates request not just the magnificent symbol of a place in Australia’s founding document but also a substantive, ineradicable right for the Indigenous to make their case directly to government and executive. It would not be buffeted by the vagaries and whims of the public mood, or distracted by the swirling kaleidoscope of political parties and alliances.
But to combine that double ambition, recognition and voice, in a single referendum question is a bold, all-in gamble: it risks the suffocation of both dreams.
Objectors see the voice component of the proposed change as way beyond symbolic. They believe that in substance it would enshrine a form of racial discrimination, however benign, in the Constitution by providing favourable treatment to one specific race and their descendants in perpetuity, rather than through easily enacted (and easily repealed) laws. They are disturbed by the lack of detail on the structure, costs, powers and remit of the voice; they wonder what racial qualifications (a reminder of earlier, darker times when that kind of calculation defined a person’s value) will determine its members and delegates; and they decline to trust official promises that these matters will be dealt with to their satisfaction after the referendum. How is this different from a blank cheque, they ask; surely prudence demands we decline to sign it.
Some of the more vocal No-voting commentators predict an Aboriginal super-parliament second-guessing and overriding the government of the day, deciding foreign policy and imposing a second-class citizenship on 97 per cent of their fellow Australians; some on the other side demand reparations and treaties under threat of punishment; others say the voice is nowhere near enough and want a separate sovereignty for those who can claim some Aboriginal heritage.
Many of the loudest are of mixed ancestry, leading them to the seemingly conflicted position of favouring one branch of their family tree while seeking restitution from another.
Most right-minded citizens discount those inflammatory extrapolations, but while many accept assurances that the proposal is modest and the voice’s role merely advisory, others are concerned that imprecision in the wording of the constitutional amendment would allow some unanticipated and unwelcome legal interpretations, even if a long way down the line.
Unfounded or not, if their doubts are not eliminated they will not vote for something whose bad consequences, they fear, could outweigh the good. We should credit them with having given the matter serious thought and arrived at what may well be a painful conclusion. It’s disingenuous and counter-productive to denigrate those who think this way as somehow immoral; tell people over and over that they’re racists and you might close otherwise open hearts and minds.
There are appeals to emotion from both sides. Proponents of the voice ask, “If not now, when?” The No advocates reply “Never”, pointing to the fundamental democratic principle of one person, one vote. The Yes side makes grim prophecies about our diminished status in the world’s eyes when we’re revealed to be a nation of racists.
The stated aim of the reform is to unite the country, to “walk forward together”, but that hope, creditable as it may be, looks forlorn.
Regrettably, there’s no denying that the referendum is divisive; with opinion apparently split almost 50:50 it’s the very definition of the term. It didn’t need to be brought on so hastily, and there could and probably should have been extensive popular consultation well in advance, but that ship has sailed.
The result is that the No side is left with a relatively straightforward case to make. They need only persuade their compatriots that the Constitution as it stands serves all Australians – or, in accordance with our democratic principles, the majority of them – well enough not to warrant this amendment. We’ve worked hard to achieve genuine equality in Australia, they declare; it’s why we attract refugees from the myriad lands that don’t enjoy it.
But the attempt to bring our Indigenous people in under that egalitarian umbrella has been fraught. They have been variously excluded, ignored and neglected. At times (mercifully now passed) their disappearance was expected, if not encouraged; the 19th-century view was that the best that could be done for them was “to smooth the pillow of a dying race”.
It’s not surprising that many are wary of invitations to participate fully in today’s Australia, suspicious that it’s assimilation by stealth, an attempt to absorb and dilute away their heritage until nothing is left but a homeopathic trace of yet another vanished civilisation. No surprise, either, that some would prefer a concrete assurance of a permanent position in the one place that outranks parliament.
What endures, after all the rhetoric, pontificating, emotion and abuse, is the plain fact that a small but precious section of our population lead lives mired in parlous circumstances that are disgusting and intolerable. Their condition is a stain on the national conscience that, no matter our individual guilt or innocence in creating it, we need to erase.
For my part, I feel we are obliged to do whatever we can to improve the lot of Aboriginal Australians because it is the duty of a conscientious citizen of this country. None of us should feel comfortable so long as their anguish continues; it affects only a few but diminishes us all. It would be an expression of gratitude for everything Australia has given us to take up our shovels to level the playing field for others who labour under historical disadvantage beyond our comprehension.
In the end, and despite those who would make it so, it’s not just a racial issue. The differences between poor and wealthy are more marked than those between black and white, and the desperation of the impoverished is largely colourblind. Where I grew up, in the whiter-than-white north of England, some families were in their fourth generation of unemployment, their survival entirely dependent on welfare handouts.
Their impotent lack of purpose, of self-respect, led to shame and resentment that festered into criminality, drug and alcohol abuse, and then violence, inside and outside the home. It was contagious and vicious, and its spread continues today, mirroring the devastation wrought on many Aboriginal communities.
The harsh reality is that the opportunities for a fulfilling life have vanished from many such places, crushed by the economic impact of factories shut down or mines exhausted; or perhaps by an unviable ambition to overlay the benefits of an urban environment on isolated ancestral land.
The best – albeit dauntingly difficult – way to reconcile the opposing sides, to reunite the nation, is to neutralise the causes of grievance. It’s a herculean task, and one that will require the combined forces of the whole country.
To that end, voice or not, one of the first pieties we need to rid ourselves of is the idea that only those directly affected by the poor conditions in Indigenous society are capable of fixing them.
Consistent with Australia’s demographics, it’s a mathematical near-certainty that the most effective actors in most fields will not be Indigenous. We should accept that fact and start recruiting our finest minds to address the dysfunction in Indigenous society. I have a close friend who, as he winds down his distinguished legal career, is redirecting his efforts to work with an Aboriginal men’s group, mainly recovering drug addicts and newly released prisoners. There are very few people, black or white, with his intellect, experience, compassion and energy, and the organisation he helps is profiting enormously from his assistance.
There’s no victory to be celebrated by either side if, as appears likely, the referendum is decided by a narrow margin. If it passes, there is a vast job to be done settling the nerves of almost half the population; if triumphalism provokes resentment, or worse, in a sizeable mass of Australians, the good the amendment is designed to foster will be frustrated. And if it fails, better to show some humility and try to convince the many millions of honourable and wounded Yes voters that even if their voice to parliament is lost, their cause is not; for it should become the nation’s cause.
One thing we know is that the problems that inspired this movement for change are not going anywhere soon. After the vote, whatever the result, it is incumbent on all of us to set aside accusations and recriminations and put our 26 million heads together with common purpose.
It would be a perverse irony and a cruel disappointment if all the passion and energy expended in recent months come to nothing. If a heartfelt attempt to unite us ends up sowing deeper discord, it would be a hollow success only for the extremists on both sides who infuse the argument with the odour of racism and prefer to stoke the fires of conflict.
Decades of failure show Indigenous adversity is not susceptible to an easy or quick fix, but remediating it should not be beyond us if we maintain the focus this debate has forced upon us: its one clear benefit.
We will often, inevitably, disagree about the best route and the best leaders to follow, and what steps we should take along the way, but we can surely agree on the destination: the betterment of the most marginalised in our society, and thereby the betterment of our society as a whole.
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