Indigenous voice will divide us all, says Alexander Downer

Far from uniting Australia, Alexander Downer fears an Indigenous voice will do the exact opposite.

Former Liberal leader Alexander Downer.

Former federal Liberal leader Alex­ander Downer says an Indigenous voice would prove “divisive” and Australians should be free to express concerns about the proposed advisory body without fear of “abuse”.

Delivering the 10th John Howard lecture to the Menzies Research Centre, Mr Downer said he believed establishing an Indigenous voice would be a triumph for identity politics.

“We are confronted with a decision over establishing the voice, a forum for people of one race and only for people of one race,” he said on Tuesday night. “To ­assume that a percentage of Australians based on their race alone, not the myriad characteristics which make up an individual, can set up a separate institution is inevitably going to become divisive.

“It says something for the proponents of this policy that they think a particular race of people is likely to have one set of opinions in clear distinction from the rest of society: that their opinions are based on the colour of their skin.

“It speaks volumes for the success of the progressive left that those who fear the voice will be divisive are cowered into silence by an avalanche of abuse and denigration.”

Mr Downer likened the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory body to federal parliament, which Australians are likely to vote on in the second half of 2023 in a referendum, to race-based politics. “For most of my life, right thinking people have regarded a society structured around race as anathema,” he said at the event, hosted by the University of Melbourne. “In recent years, the progressive left has shifted society to a new era of discrimination. Now we are to discriminate against men, against white people, against what is rudely described as cisgender people.

“If discrimination was wrong, well, it still is. What is more, pitting people against each other on the basis of their gender and their race is deeply divisive.”