Say 'No' to 'Recognise'

Only lawyers would be clear winners, apart from those people wanting to look active on the issue while avoiding hard decisions.

The constitution is the legal framework that sets out how we will be governed. It is not the plaything of self-righteous people trying to show how nice and anti-racist and kind they are. What would be next? All the professional ethnics demanding that the constitution name all the nations from which migrants have come to Australia, and that we name all their languages? Or maybe we should give gays, transgender people and anyone else who has a lobby group a quick mention in the constitution, just to show we care.

But perhaps the worst aspect of 'Recognise' is that it entrenches a racist view of the world. It springs from the 'multicultural nation' idea. Everyone is supposed to be from a particular culture and to be treated as if they are mono-dimensional.

In fact Australia is a nation of multicultural individuals.

If a person is of Aboriginal, Italian and Irish heritage, was born in Australia and has a high paid job in a global industry in a large city, what culture are they? If a person has a Peruvian and an Iranian parent and grew up in Australia, what culture are they? If a person is of German and New Zealand ancestry, was born in Chile and did not arrive in Australia until the age of nineteen, what is their designated culture? This last example was Chris Watson, the first ALP Prime Minister. The others are people living in Sydney now, and there are many more such combinations.

To try and cast three per-cent of the Australian people as 'ATSI' people, separate from the rest of us and needing public campaigning to make them feel better, is appalling. More than most of us, they are multicultural. Pride in the original family culture is certainly necessary. But mostly they need help to raise their living standards, not to be condemned to the impossible task of pretending to live a stone-age culture while watching TV and surfing the internet. Their problems revolve around jobs, education, health care, global warming and all the other issues that beset us all, not the lack of a mention in the constitution.

'Recognise' should be allowed to quietly fade away. The Australian people will never vote for this pointless nonsense.