I
take no pleasure in writing this piece. I have spent my life
campaigning for recognition and reconciliation in this country.
Through all that time, I have found ways to feed hope. I have
believed often in our better angels.
Now,
though, I can see the truth: whatever the outcome of today’s vote,
whether the double majority required to make this alteration to the
Constitution is achieved or not, reconciliation
is dead.
Australians
had the opportunity to accept our invitation in the Uluru Statement
from the Heart. Only they had the power to decide whether to accept
or reject constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people by voting “Yes” or “No” on a representative
body enshrined in the Constitution.
I
hope I’m wrong, but everything around me is saying that today
Australia will reject that invitation. It will choose to leave our
hand outstretched.
In
a recent column, Chin Tan, the outgoing race discrimination
commissioner, rightly identified a key lesson from the referendum
campaign: “What we do already know and what has been reinforced
during this referendum is that Australia urgently needs a national
anti-racism framework and bipartisan response to racism.”
It’s
a rational response, based on the overwhelming evidence of the surge
in race hate and anti-Semitism during the referendum, not just from
common or garden-variety race haters, who think we’re going to take
their backyard, again, but Neo-Nazis spreading vile falsehoods in
videos and memes online, threatening the lives of not just Senator
Lidia Thorpe but numerous Indigenous and non-Indigenous campaigners
for the “Yes” vote.
I
agree with Chin Tan intellectually, but if he’s talking about
bipartisanship in overcoming racial discrimination, he is dreaming.
The
nation has been poisoned. There is no fix for this terrible outcome.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has made racism his calling
card. He has injected fear and race hate into his campaign against
the referendum proposal with such gusto, such deceit, there is no
hope that a national stance against racism is within reach for
generations.
Dutton
has cemented race hate into the body politic in a way we did not
foresee last year but that now is very clear. He has killed any hope
of reconciliation, ably assisted by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
and Nyunggai Warren Mundine.
Dutton
began his “No” campaign by claiming the referendum proposal would
“re-racialise” Australia. He has been a member of cabinet for a
decade, a parliamentarian since 2001 – it is improbable that he has
not read the Constitution or at least been briefed on it,
particularly the “race power” at section 51 (xxvi). He was a
minster in a government that used that very power to harm Indigenous
Australians.
His
other lie to Australians was “no detail”. Again, he was in
cabinet when both the interim and final of the Calma–Langton Voice
co-design reports, totalling more than 400 pages, were tabled and
released for further consultation. It’s doubtful he read them
because the detail he keeps asking for is right there in the pages.
Beyond
this, the key message sold by his “No” case is that we, the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia, are
entirely to blame for our predicament. “Colonisation,” Price said
at the National Press Club during the campaign, had a “positive
impact”. She elaborated with another monstrous lie: “I mean, now
we’ve got running water, we’ve got readily available food.” She
said there were “no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation”.
This
was just one of the extraordinary, baseless statements made during
her appearance at the National Press Club. She clearly does not know
or care about the enormous body of evidence that contradicts her, nor
the people to whom this evidence refers.
Just
last year, a report from the Water Services Association of Australia
showed that tap water in more than 500 Indigenous communities was not
regularly tested and often wasn’t safe to drink. In remote areas,
communities are receiving drinking water with unacceptable levels of
uranium, arsenic, fluoride and nitrate. Fixing this is estimated to
require an investment of $2.2 billion.
Price
also rejected the suggestion that colonisation has led to generations
of trauma and suggested families of convicts faced similar struggles.
Again, the medical evidence for trauma and intergenerational trauma
is substantial and very much a part of the allied health initiatives
that are available to those who have access to a health service.
We
know from this evidence that trauma causes high blood pressure and
stress, which leads to heart problems and shortens life. It reduces
one’s capacity to engage in normal social interactions, such as in
the workplace or in school and in the family.
I
don’t know a single Indigenous person who hasn’t encountered
these issues, who hasn’t come from families that struggled and were
discriminated against in profound ways. The denial of these realities
by the likes of Mundine and Price, and the motives of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people willing to back their views, is truly
difficult to understand. Getting to this point in the logic of your
argument deceives the public in the face of centuries of knowledge,
understanding and experience from those of us who have done the hard
yards for decades. It is denying the real experiences of Indigenous
people.
Of
course, there are hundreds of dedicated and passionate
community-controlled organisations across the country that are doing
the invaluable and gruelling work, not only on the frontlines caring
for the people who are experiencing these dire realities, but also
gathering the data and evidence to present to each successive
government to try to advocate for change in these areas. It’s a
slow and often ineffective process. These people are doing the work
that would become the work of the Voice if the country sees fit to
enshrine it.
In
the event of a “No” vote, it will be these organisations that
will continue to experience the dual trauma of witnessing the
real-world, real-time consequences of ineffective and discriminatory
government policy and decision-making on their communities, while
simultaneously trying to work and advocate within that same system.
The “No” campaign and the architects of it will have a political
win that will only further entrench structural racism in our lives.
They will gloat about it. They will go out of their way to make our
lives worse simply because they are filled with a hatred of the
marginalised. This is a curdled view of the world, based on a
perverse neoliberal agenda that divides people into those who deserve
support and those who don’t. Pull up your socks, get a job, the gap
will be closed.
In
the highly unlikely event of a successful referendum outcome, Prime
Minister Anthony Albanese has committed to establishing a
parliamentary committee chaired jointly by a representative from
Labor and from the Coalition who will work together to legislate the
Voice. How the Voice will look – its membership and functions –
would be decided by parliament, as plainly stated on the ballot paper
and in all official statements of the question.
The
Voice would make representations to the parliament and to the
executive government, the barest measure imaginable that would give
Indigenous Australians a formal say in policies and legislations that
affect us, an opportunity to advise against using the “race power”
to discriminate against us. This would be nothing more than advice:
the parliament would retain absolute sovereignty in legislating all
matters, as it has constitutional powers to do so.
But
who from Indigenous Australia would serve with Dutton’s
appointments to this parliamentary committee?
If
the majority of Australian voters agree with the “No” campaign
and laud the New Right version of racism, the approach to Indigenous
Affairs will be poisoned from the top level of party policy to the
bottom of the bureaucratic chain. Thousands of pages to the contrary,
the data from medical specialists, epidemiologists and other experts
will be out the window in favour of cheap, nasty, false, racist
sloganeering.
Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people themselves will be ignored and
excluded from policy decisions because the electorate has said “No”.
No to including us in the constitutional fabric, no to empowering us
to advise on our own futures. No to submissions to parliament and
executive government to avoid using the “race power” to
discriminate against us. Any Indigenous person with an iota of
self-respect and regard for the futures of other Indigenous
Australians will stay well away. To be a puppet for the foul vision
created by Dutton and his mates, the great replacement theory
advocates, would be conceding to their core belief – that we are
members of an inferior race and incapable of making decisions for
ourselves. Only political grifters such as Price and Mundine, both of
them incapable of understanding the import of the Closing the Gap
statistics, will sign up for a tour of duty with this vision.
Dutton
has cemented race hate into the body politic in a way we did not
foresee last year but that now is very clear. He has killed any hope
of reconciliation, ably assisted by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
and Nyunggai Warren Mundine.
Both
major parties say they support the recognition of Indigenous
Australians. This is not true in practice. In fact, the appearance of
policy agreement on Indigenous constitutional recognition is a saga
of deceit and treachery, kicked down the road for more than a decade.
The prime minister is erring on the side of good faith in citing
Coalition statements in support of recognition, when those of us who
have been along for the ride have watched in dismay as each
government manoeuvred out of their commitments by delaying until the
next election and then tossing their responsibility to the next
government.
Since
the Council for Aboriginal Affairs was established in 1967, in
response to that year’s referendum, there have been 11 Indigenous
representative bodies in total, operating with varying degrees of
success. Each one of them has been dismantled on a political whim.
With each election, the advances we make are swept away and new and
far too often inappropriate policies replace them, policies in which
we have little to no say. For more than a decade, we have had no
representative body, no single group to give advice on our behalf to
the parliament.
Both
major parties have been responsible for abolishing these Indigenous
representative bodies. The Council for Aboriginal Affairs reported
directly to then prime minister Harold Holt, but following his death
it was redirected to report to a new minister in charge of Aboriginal
affairs, William Wentworth, and received little cooperation from the
rest of the government. It was dissolved by Malcolm Fraser in 1976.
To
support the aims of Aboriginal self-determination, the Whitlam
government in 1973 created Australia’s first elected Indigenous
representative body, the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee,
to provide advice on Aboriginal policy. More than 27,000 Indigenous
people voted to elect the 41 members of the committee. As it was
created administratively, no parliamentary action was necessary when
it was abolished in 1977. It was succeeded by another “administrated
program”, the National Aboriginal Conference, which was abolished
by the Hawke government in 1985.
One
of the more longstanding representative bodies, the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Commission, was created by Bob Hawke in 1989.
This commission, known as ATSIC, was intended to combine
representative and executive roles by taking over the
responsibilities of the former Department of Aboriginal Affairs.
John
Howard vocally opposed the creation of ATSIC, saying its legislation
struck at the heart of the unity of the Australian people. In what is
now an old familiar argument, re-run by Price, Mundine and others, he
said: “If the government wants to divide Australian against
Australian, if it wants to create a black nation within the
Australian nation, it should go ahead with its Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Commission legislation and treaty.”
To
no one’s surprise, when Howard became prime minister, he conducted
multiple reviews and audits in an attempt to expose fraudulent
activity that would justify the shutting down of ATSIC. Following
discretionary funding cuts, the commission was abolished in 2005.
That same year, Howard appointed the National Indigenous Council.
There was no consultation with Indigenous people. The council was
dissolved by the Rudd government three years later.
So
appalled were many Indigenous people at this, they began consulting
across the nation on the structure of a replacement body that would
be constituted by its Indigenous members and independent of
government and legislation. The consultations and design process were
led by Professor Tom Calma, Tanya Hosch and others, and resulted in a
corporation rather than a government body, specifically so it could
not be dissolved by government fiat. The National Congress of
Australia’s First Peoples began operating in 2010 and its members
voted for the representatives on the national body. However,
following the global financial crisis, the government refused to
create a permanent endowment to fund its ongoing operation and by
2013 the body was relying on paid subscriptions from Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander members and organisations. (The congress went
into voluntary administration and ceased operating in 2019.) Also in
2013, the Abbott government appointed a new Indigenous Advisory
Council, chaired by Nyunggai Warren Mundine. This body was never
formally abolished but appeared to stop operating after the 2019
election.
This
chronology demonstrates the absolute commitment of the conservative
governments to ignore the grassroots Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander voices and appoint their own hand-picked favourites as a
foil for ignoring the majority.
Not
to be deterred by “identity politics”, in 2018, then prime
minster Scott Morrison appointed Tony Abbott as his “special envoy
for Indigenous affairs”, with a focus on “improving remote school
attendance”.
In
addition to representational bodies, our leaders have developed
umbrella organisations or federations of community-controlled
Indigenous corporations and sector-specific bodies in the fields of
legal services, health and housing during the past 50 years to
prosecute their policy and service approaches with Australian
governments. In 2018, the largest of these, the National Aboriginal
Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) brought these
bodies together to form the Coalition of Peaks as a non-incorporated
non-government organisation. It comprises more than 80 Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander community-controlled peak and member
organisations across Australia. Other bodies became members because
of the urgent need to address the failure of the Closing the Gap
strategy. These included the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Elected Body and several large Aboriginal land councils.
The
formation of the Coalition of Peaks was in response to concerns that
governments were proposing a new Closing the Gap strategy without any
involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The
chair of the Coalition of Peaks has said the proposed Voice to
Parliament is complementary to its role.
This
revolving door of Indigenous advisory mechanisms has an
extraordinarily destructive impact on our people and their
communities. The ability of representative bodies to provide
independent, evidence-based advice to make a lasting impact is
extremely limited when the body itself is under constant threat of
abolition.
What
has been notably absent throughout these decades of political
football is bipartisanship on policies based on evidence, policies
and programs that are allowed to run long enough to show some success
in reaching parity in health, education, employment and income
levels. What is also noticeable is the persistent refusal to
acknowledge success in Indigenous affairs. The narrative of failure
is wheeled out repeatedly to bolster the larger Australian narrative:
Indigenous people will inevitably die out or be assimilated;
Indigenous people are incapable; Indigenous people must be governed.
Marcia
Langton is an
Aboriginal writer, a descendant of the Yiman people of Queensland.
She is professor of Australian Indigenous studies at the University
of Melbourne.
