Requiem for The Voice

The No result is not a return to status quo.  Far from it. The First Peoples are put firmly back in their place, again: with a few of their middle-class noticeables, feted by the rearguard of White Australia, now preening as the new patrons for the 80% who had wanted a Yes outcome.

As a Chinese Australian, forever- outsider, despite 60 years of uninterrupted residence in what was to be God’s own country, I am stuck with Donald Horne’s take on The Lucky Country: a nation run by second rate leaders who share its luck.

This time it is the failure of leadership and our adversarial winner-take-all political culture that has put our nation backwards.

I came late to the black history of Australia.  Henry Reynolds’ The other side of the Frontier (1981) did not really get me into gear. I was still knee deep getting to the place of the Chinese in the mindscape of White Australia.

Then in 2001, whilst researching for my book, I asked a prominent Aboriginal leader in Brisbane what Reconciliation meant.  My concerns were not allayed.

How could you have reconciliation without repentance? During my teens the Marist Brothers at the Sacred Heart School in Sibu, Sarawak, were adamant about that.

“Reconciliation”, officially introduced in 1991, was all about respect for and understanding of the First Peoples of this nation. Have empathy and pity? But not a word on restitution for past injustices and institutionalised oppression.

The Chinese in Oz have been perpetual outsiders since the19^th century. As a latter day Chinese Australian, I could be persuaded to consider that the legacy of our First Peoples today evokes that of the unbleached landscape of a failed genocide.

Reconciliationneatly avoided admitting the sins of the past. How hypocritical can you get?  But the losers, so deplete of numbers and wherewithal, just had to grin and bear it.

The Voice, the result of wide-consultations amongst the First Peoples over years, was a gentle petition when compared, say, with William Cooper’s petition in 1937. In retrospect the Uluru Statement from the Heart could be seen as fraught compromise amongst diverse leaders of the First Peoples, to ask for something that would not upset anyone in power. Noel Pearson in the aftermath of the No outcome lamented that henceforth no more “obsequious” strategies, presumably to placate the white powers, could be useful.

A Yes23 outcome would have opened a new page for our nation to move forward, with dignity, forgiveness, and hope.

It is a tragedy that we did not have the national leadership to grant the dispossessed original inhabitants that gentle Voice. It is the least we could have done for the monstrous crimes the nation had committed over 200 years.

Albo bears a huge burden for its failure. He should have taken heed of the historically dismal success rate of referenda, shown uncompromising leadership, and done something audacious, “Disruptive”,  and inspiring. Sadly it was business as usual for him. “It’s a modest proposal ... Everything to gain, nothing to lose”, he cajoled the nation.

Had he taken the high ground, and proclaimed our moral duty to make restitution for past injustices, it would not have left a vacuum for Dutton and his fellow No camp dissemblers to sow seeds of doubt, and to spread outright lies under a cloud of fear.

Regrettably Albo’s timidity in Opposition, lest he be politically wedged, has become his trademark as Prime Minister. For instance, he had no need to embrace Morrison’s last minute AUKUS so fulsomely and with such haste; he had no need to unequivocally endorse Israel’s right to defend itself, a de facto code for turning a blind eye to Israel’s long history of oppression of the dispossessed Palestinians now living in Gaza, which some commentators have said to be the biggest open air prison since the Warsaw ghetto.

All this does not speak well for his Prime Ministership. And not seeing the need to take the moral high ground might transpire to be his Achilles heel.

As for Dutton, handed the poisoned chalice of a Party cleansed of its moderates, a process begun quietly by John Howard and completed by Morrison with drums and cymbals, he took what might be the only chance he had to land a body blow on his opponent. No one should be surprised. The winning-is-everything mentality has long afflicted our 2-Party-Preferred electoral system.  Parliament is so often just a gladiatorial pit.

Two gladiators, just one winner.

That is the other critical cause of our Voice Referendum failure.  

What was in it for Dutton to join forces with Albo?  He would have be seen as a traitor to his political handlers – the entrenched conservative caucus; the mining lobby; and the Murdoch mercenaries. 

And luck was with Dutton. Some who have done well for themselves as fair dinkum “representatives” of the First Peoples, as consultants and compradors, might have been worried about their position in the Australian economy should a well-organised and well-consulted Voice for all First Peoples have come into being, distinctly and with integrity, for diverse groups of First Peoples living under vastly different circumstances.

Empathy did not intrude, not close. “They” just don’t want the First Peoples to be a nuisance, to have a seat at the table. The lie of terra nullius must live on, despite the 1992 Mabo judgment. So much White privilege could be lost! Remember how backyards were going to be lost to Native Title claims?

We sorely need a political leader who has the courage and the stature to lead our nation out of this quagmire.

The dismantling of our 2-Party-Preferred electoral system, now resembling two mafia-doms perpetually fighting for control, seems unavoidable for that future to come about.  Just imagine if the Greens had had their quota of 15 to 18 MPs in the last few Parliaments! Would Morrison, as a minority government PM, have got away with the immoral and incompetent Robotdebt scheme?  Would Albo, ever timid, have got away with not putting a temporary cap on rent-gouging when the housing crisis is getting worse by the day, with 30% of households renting?

I live in hope that Proportional Representation will be introduced in the foreseeable future. That would civilise our Parliament, reinstall integrity into public life, and improve the quality of MPs towards the standards set by the Teals and Independents. Their wide-ranging life experience outside the confined political nurseries of two old Parties, their well-seasoned intellect and their fearlessness have allowed them to pursue what is good for this country with integrity.

And with that civilised, uplifted, and nourished parliament, restitution for the First Peoples will become not only possible but a matter of course.