While it is not true to say that every Australian who votes No in the Voice referendum is a racist,you can bet your bottom dollar that every racist will vote No.
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The great pity is there are those arguing for No who will,by failing to frame their arguments respectfully or back their claims with facts,further embolden and provide succour to the racists and bigots among us. They are fomenting the very discord they claim will be triggered by the Voice,presumably in preparation for saying “told you so” if the referendum succeeds.
Making unsubstantiated or misleading statements about the purpose,structure and origins of the Voice,or wilfully ignoring the weight of legal opinions from former High Court justices and past and present solicitors-general which says we can do this without wrecking the Constitution or life as we know it,won’t help anyone except the maddies. It certainly won’t help the Liberal Party.
The Voice might not work,particularly if the wells of goodwill are poisoned by the time of the vote. Surely,given the failures so far of every government at every level,it is time for a different approach.
Data shows in three critical Closing the Gap measures – life expectancy,infant mortality and completing year 12 – Indigenous people have either fallen further behind non-Indigenous people or made precious little headway.
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In his excellent bookTelling Tennant’s Story:The Strange Career of the Great Australian Silence,Dean Ashenden chronicles the terrible consequences of colonisation for Indigenous peoples,including the arming and deployment by Europeans of the Queensland Native Police to fight other Indigenous people. Anyone who reads Ashenden’s book without feeling angry or ashamed has lost all humanity.
His retelling of gruesome events,woven into his personal story (his family lived in Tennant Creek for a time) won the Australian Political Book of the Year award in 2022. The judges commended Ashenden for placing his own story in “a much wider and more troubling context,both over time and into the present day,with a knowledgeable and clear-eyed view of the failings of the legal system,the degradations of political opportunism,the battle over history and the confronting question of why most of us know so little of this story”.
Speaking of political opportunism,Dutton admitted in a major speech in Adelaide last week,attended by just 40 people,that his approach on the Voice was “grounded in pragmatism”. Ain’t that the truth.
Yet this issue demands so much more from leaders. A leader in tune with the mood of the wider community rather than an inexorably narrowing base would recognise the moral imperative and know that it requires engagement of both head and heart.
Colleagues describe Dutton’s approach as shambolic,triggered by the shocking Aston byelection loss. They nominate his refusal to give frontbenchers a conscience vote,thereby forcing (or engineering) the resignation ofJulian Leeser;the distribution in the party room of a policy committing to a national Voice agreed to by MPs which Dutton ignored when announcing his decision;his failure after camping out inAlice Springs to provide evidence to support his claim that abused children were returned to perpetrators;then finally appointing the Nationals’ articulate and ambitiousJacinta Nampijinpa Price as opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman,granting the supposedly junior partner an extra spot at the expense of Liberals and guaranteeing conflict over the Voice stays front and centre.
Peter Dutton and Jacinta Price in Alice Springs.Credit:ABC News
Rivals are either openly displaying their wares (Dan Tehan,Sussan Ley) or telling friends they believe they can replace Dutton (Paul Fletcher) or quietly reviewing numbers (Angus Taylor). Andrew Hastie,in the running to be the prime minister who welcomes the first nuclear submarine,can afford to wait. Others likeSimon Birmingham continue to tread a fine line between loyalty to Dutton and loyalty to principle.
Karen Andrews,a significant loss to the frontbench,could have been a contender,but foreseeing a dismal future for the Coalition,told Dutton before Aston that she would not run again.
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Andrews reckons there is a goat track – not a pathway – back to government,or at least to potentially regaining some heartland seats with her pick for leadership,Josh Frydenberg,winning Kooyong. Right now,the chances of that are between zip and zero.
She has seen little progress on policy positioning or party restructuring to make that happen.
With the budget only days away,she and others believed Dutton ensured the Voice would remain dominant,prompting the question:what about the economy,stupid?
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