The Voice

I will be voting YES. My reason for voting yes is that the Voice enshrines in the constitution a principle that does not just apply to indigenous Australians but applies to all of us. That principle concerns the importance of ensuring that when decisions are made that impact on our lives, governments take proper account of our voices.

The Bushfires of 2019-20 and Covid taught me a lot about our community. We demonstrated our compassion and concern for one another. We learnt that in a crisis we lean on each other. Be it the simple act of asking someone if they were OK or by volunteering our skills and expertise to help the community get back on its feet.

Catastrophic disasters have exposed a weakness in the way we support communities. In our community much of the support both to the fire victims and subsequently to those suffering under covid was driven by spontaneous action on the part of volunteers. Of course there was some government support but we quickly found that as governments belatedly came to the party the initiatives of those volunteers were sidelined. For example, an unemployed single mum had set up a support network from here home that delivered meals and other items to those in need. The value of her initiative was recognized and the LGA decided to employ someone to run this. The person who had kick started it did not get an interview – the successful applicant did not last long and the scheme collapsed.

Was her Aboriginality a factor? Perhaps it was that she had no qualifications? We will never know. But this was by no means an isolated example. In the wake of the 2009 Victorian fires Monash university published a Compendium of Victorian Community-based resilience building case studies.The experiences that we faced in 2020 were mirrored here. Of particular relevance to the discussions about the Voice is this comment from the Centre of resilience from Emerald. It stated that "We have learned that true resilience is enhanced when an organisation feels free to comment critically about government actions, free from worry about financial penalties being leveraged."

The art of government seems to be to create the illusion that people's voices are being heard but there is no room for criticism about government policies. For over 200 years governments have created the illusion that they listen to Indigenous voices – when the comments become too difficult it is easier to abandon the attempt at listening. It is not difficult to find reasons. All it usually takes is to bring in a bean counter to identify that government has been misspent. That is what got ATISIC undone. A government committed to the idea of an organization such as ATSIC would have responded by putting in place the administrative guard rails that could ensure it would not happen again.

If we look at the NO campaign it is a thinly disguised attempt to protect government from the silent voices. These silent voices include those who are geographically isolated, disabled, the homeless, and other minority groups. The calculus of democracy means that you can ignore them without a great deal of political risk. Indigenous Australians are also represented in each of these groups. Yet for them they are doubly disadvantaged – their Aboriginality serves to further silence them.

It comes as no surprise therefore that there are two main threads to the No campaign. On the one hand there are those who do not want public policy to be held to account – they are concerned that a YES campaign will not just impact Indigenous Australia, but it will impact on all Australians whose voices are so often ignored.

The ideas in the other thread have been articulated by Warren Mundine. Over the past five years or so we have made great strides in encouraging Australians to be proud of their Aboriginal heritage. The various sporting codes have been committed to addressing racism in sport. Just as there was a time when Australians wanted to deny any convict ancestry so until very recently you kept quiet about your Aboriginal ancestry. Mundine recognizes that a successful Yes vote will probably make it more difficult to get Australia to get a treaty or compensation for past injustice and so he is pushing for a No vote on the basis that it does not go far enough.

Policy makers rarely belong to any of the silent voices. The collateral benefit of the voice is that these silent voices will also be heard. The voice will sharpen our understanding of the complexities associated with living in a socially and culturally diverse society.

We should vote yes to underline that injustice matters. It is our opportunity to address over 200 years of injustice and lay the foundations for an inclusive, supportive society.