A cringe-worthy slam dunk for the voice nay-sayers

In a demeaning display, Shaquille O’Neal has suddenly blown out the odds on a historic constitutional change.

Basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal with Anthony Albanese and Linda Burney last Saturday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Monique Harmer

Few things are as soul-destroying as watching politicians fritter away the tirelessly constructed altruism of the people they serve. There is no amount of consultation and deliberation they cannot unravel with their penchant for focus group approval and Twitter meme adulation.

And so it is with the Indigenous voice. Decades of consideration, activism, compromise and consensus-building are squandered for the sake of a picture opportunity with a former US basketball star turned online gambling spruiker.

At the Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL on May 21 when Anthony Albanese claimed victory and surprisingly put the Uluru Statement from the Heart front and centre of his historic speech – “We can answer its patient, gracious call for a voice enshrined in our Constitution” – the crowd cheered. But off to the side I winced, not because I disagreed with the aim – I have been invested in it for years – but because enveloping it in leftist emotionalism and partisan triumphalism could only jeopardise broad support.

To be fair, the Prime Minister’s subsequent advocacy has been measured, if lacking in detail, and he has run a nice line about manners as he has extended the hand of bipartisanship. That is, until he went with the cringe-worthy Shaq attack. An issue that was not about skin colour but redressing Indigenous disadvantage was suddenly ripe for ill-informed intervention from an African-American celebrity who fronted gambling commercials for television. Why? Because he is black?

This played to the misconception of the critics, rather than to the intellectual and historic truths. If you want to play identity politics, at least get your identities right. What could Labor’s spin doctors offer next? A special voice podcast with Meghan Markle, the actor formerly known as the duchess discussing the country formerly known as terra nullius?

Voice opponents ought to encourage Albanese down this path. He did more in that one episode to damage the credibility of the voice than their months of racial and constitutional scare campaigns.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders who have toiled for years at a task fraught with legal and political challenges felt as if they had the air knocked out of their lungs. Shaquille O’Neal had suddenly blown out the odds on a historic constitutional change.

This sacrificing of substance in favour of celebrity culture was demeaning to all Australians but especi­ally to Indigenous Australians. Perhaps Albanese will enlist Homer Simpson in the energy debate or Cate Blanchett on climate (whoops, Kevin Rudd beat him to it) – $10 for the trifecta.

Cate Blanchett was enlisted by Kevin Rudd to convince Australians action on climate change was needed. Picture: Dominique Charriau

It is one thing to downplay the sin – a green office staff and a new leader falling under the spell of fame – but you cannot sweep away the damage. If the voice is seen as tokenistic it will fail – why change the Constitution for a stunt? It needs to be carried on substance. To that extent, the debate that has been ongoing in this newspaper is the one that matters.

A forensic focus on the possibility of constitutional overreach and unintended consequences is all that matters. Why? Because we can accept widespread good intentions, everyone invested in the debate wants practical reconciliation and an end to Indigenous disadvantage, just about everyone has signed up to an advisory voice on Indigenous matters, and most people also support Indigenous recognition in the Constitution. So the only outstanding question is whether a voice is enshrined in the Constitution as a substantive act of recognition.

Therefore, the question of whether this can be done in a way that is constitutionally safe and nationally unifying – as opposed to legally reckless and socially divisive – is the paramount, perhaps only, matter to be settled. While I disagree with those who have raised what I think are exaggerated and even hysterical claims about High Court activism based on the current proposal, I accept the debate they are focused on is the one that matters. It should be settled with sensible debate, not celebrity picture opportunities.

As the situation now stands, after decades of consultation and compromise, there will not be constitutional recognition without a voice. A broad consensus of Indigenous Australia has decided this is the only appropriate way to recognise the original Australians in our founding document – to give them the voice in their own affairs they were so long denied.

To argue now for recognition without a voice is to ignore the Indigenous consensus position on the issue. In other words, you are left to argue a paradoxical position that you will seek to recognise Indigenous Australians while declaring you will ignore them.

Each of us must agree that a voice is a fair go – parliament has the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians so it should also accept representations from them on those issues – or you do not. Either you disagree with that, or you have to convince us that somehow it is impossible to do this without sullying or unsettling our Constitution, leading to ugly consequences.

Despite some strident fearmongering in the media, even obscenely invoking the notion of apartheid, there has been no plausible demonstration of legal risk. The current proposal – which is open to revision if more foolproof words are suggested – has been endorsed by two former High Court chief justices, Murray Gleeson and Robert French.

There are three reasons the voice is worth pursuing. First is the issue of constitutional recognition – completing the document, as Tony Abbott put it – by including the people originally excluded and recognising “their special, though not separate, place within a reconciled, indivisible nation”, as John Howard expressed it in 2007.

Second is ensuring that recognition is meaningful and practical. A voice gives Indigenous Australians an opportunity for redress, to own problems and solutions, and to be guaranteed that discrimination against them, conducted under the Constitution in the past, cannot happen again.

Third, is reconciliation. This reform can be a landmark, where a nation strives for unity, em­braces what we share, and commits to make our nation better.

“Even the greatest democracies are a search for a better unity,” Noel Pearson said in A Rightful Place, his 2014 essay on an Indigenous voice. “Ours is a journey to perfect our commonwealth and the unity it is intended to represent.” He eloquently relayed how this was not about racial division – “We are a human race” – but something quite opposite. The Constitution is a practical rule book for the power relationships between the states that make up our federation. But it left out the original inhabitants. The voice retrofits a mechanism for their non-binding representations, on their issues, to the national government.

Had it been proposed in 1967 as an addendum to giving the federal government power over Indigenous affairs, it would have been uncontroversial. It makes sense. In our parlance, it delivers a fair go to the original inhabitants. It is not about race, identity, separation or special rights – just a fair go for the mob who had this place first.

We need to be careful about the constitutional wording, that is a debate worth having, but if we believe in the project we cannot possibly contend such an arrangement is beyond us. The parliament has the power to legislate a voice right now, and all recent governments have formulated Indigenous advisory bodies of one form or another, so all that changes is the constitutional requirement, and the expectation that Indigenous people will choose their own representatives.

The debate should be meaningful and respectful. Just as opponents should not exaggerate risks, advocates should not pretend away the gravity of changing the Constitution.

Opponents should not flippantly throw around the toxic tag of apartheid; it is obscene to liken a well-reasoned project aimed at redressing disadvantage and creating equality of opportunity to an abhorrent system of organised discrimination and repression.

John Howard. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Nor should opponents pretend this proposal injects race into the Constitution; it has included race powers, race-based language and racial exclusions from day one – a voice does not establish this constitutional history, it aims to repair it. Indigenous academic Anthony Dillon has complained about the rampant invocation of the racism slur in the debate.

“There appear to be two extreme arguments where the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is concerned – however both are lazy and facile at best,” he wrote in The Epoch Times. “The first is from the pro-voice group who suggest that opposing it is racist. The second is from the anti-voice group who suggest that supporting it is racist. I support neither of these arguments.”

No matter the pressing and overwhelming challenges of energy, regional and economic security, Indigenous reconciliation must remain a national project. We must aspire to be the best country we can, and self-evidently we cannot do that without overcoming Indigenous disadvantage.

Howard reflected along these lines in his landmark 2007 speech about Indigenous recognition. “For my generation – Australians who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s – it has been ever present, a subject of deep sorrow and of great hope. The challenge, and unfinished business, of our time. It is the place of Indigenous people in the profound, compelling and unfolding story of Australia.”

I do not seek to co-opt Howard to the voice cause. He has supported constitutional recognition in a minimalist way, not through an enshrined voice, and we know he remains more than capable of speaking with insight, clarity and good timing on the issues that matter. But his higher ideal remains pertinent. The aspiration is worthy and reconciliation is essential for our national project. So now is not the time for stunts, hardened hearts or entrenched positions. Now is the time for reasoned, respectful debate.

Chris Kenny will host The Voice Debate on Sunday.