Thus
Spake Mungo: The betrayal
Scott
Morrison really likes quiet Australians – as quiet as possible. So
it was really no surprise that his response to his minister, Ken
Wyatt’s modest and tentative proposal to consider reviving an
Indigenous Voice through the Uluru Statement from the Heart was
simple and direct: bloody well shut up and do what you are told.
We
will decide who speaks for Indigenous Australia and the circumstances
in which they speak, and by we, I mean me, and Eric Abetz and Peter
Dutton and the Institute of Public Affairs and Andrew Bolt – not
Indigenous Australians. They can do what they are told.
So
the glimmer of hope last week was extinguished as soon as it began.
Wyatt knew it probably would be – when he delicately referred to
‘reticence’ within his party room, he was prepared for a
backlash, but maybe not one as cynical, hypocritical and downright
vicious as the one that transpired.
In
nanoseconds the same old lies were trotted out, most outrageously the
one about the Voice being a third chamber of parliament. If the
deliberately ignorant ever thought that was the case, they have
certainly been informed by now that it never was and never is – the
proposal is for a Voice, an advisory body with no power to legislate
or veto whatever the parliament decides.
This
must have been clear even to Dutton. But this did not stop him
repeating the fabrication on national television. What he actually
means, of course, is that the truth is irrelevant – what matters is
that it can be turned into a massive scare campaign to deceive the
gullible in much the same way the coalition devised the invention of
Labor’s death taxes, which worked on May 18.
And
if that involves rejecting, traducing and misrepresenting the long
and tortuous process that led to Uluru, well they can just suck it
up. Everyone knows there are no votes in Aborigines.
So
Wyatt meekly surrendered to the inevitable and will now go back to
what he called pragmatism, negotiation, compromise – we must have
consensus before we even think about going to a referendum, otherwise
there is a risk of it failing.
And
indeed there is, but only because of the intransigence of the
reactionary rump that now holds sway over his government. The deep
strain of latent racism that prevails throughout the joint party room
and its acolytes is not confined to the fringes of the National Party
– it has infected Liberals as well, some of whom call themselves
the protectors of mainstream Australia.
They
are worried about what they regard as causing divisions – offering
rights and privileges to one group to disadvantage the rest. This is
precisely what they demand for the religious zealots, but no matter.
As they well know, there are no votes in Aborigines. And there is a
sneaking suspicion that their predicament, while deplorable, is
somehow their own fault – if they could just forget the past and
get on with it, the incarcerations, the mortality rates, the
unemployment, the homeless, the poverty and despair would simply
disappear.
So
we have the always predictable Craig Kelly say he did not want to
spend money on a referendum – he would rather spend it on closing
the gap (actually he would rather spend it on a coal fired power
station, but let that pass). Barnaby Joyce says the solution is to
break up the senate to bring in more rural members. Amanda Stoker,
apparently attempting to remake herself into a transgender Peter
Dutton, is against anything even vaguely progressive on principle.
And
she is not the only one – come in Morgan Begg, of IPA, which by no
coincidence is secretly funded by a large chunk of the mining
industry, a traditional enemy of Indigenous rights. Begg sprang into
the pages of The Australian (where else?) to claim that a Voice would
violate all principles of racial equality. And he went back to the
hugely successful 1967 referendum to boost his thesis: by agreeing to
count Aborigines in the national census, Australians voted to remove
race from the constitution.
But
that was only part of that they voted for. They also voted to give
the Commonwealth Parliament the right – even the duty – to
legislate specifically for Aborigines, a considerably more
substantial outcome. This was the power John Howard used in 2006 to
bring in his military intervention of allegations of child abuse.
There is no record of Begg inveighing against such blatant racism
division, illiberalism.
And
his hypocrisy is echoed by many conservatives, including Morrison,
who is determined to avoid embedding any suggestion of a Voice in the
constitution – the key, the non-negotiable plank in the Uluru
Statement. Morrison says that if there is to be a Voice – and mind
you, he is not saying there will be – an advisory body established
by parliament will be quite sufficient.
But
this misses the point: not only would such a body be vulnerable to
political interference, in the same way Howard abolished the former
Australian and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 2004, but the
whole idea is that the Voice should be endorsed by the Australian
people, not just by the politicians of the time.
This
after all, was the argument of the conservatives over same sex
marriage – the change was so important it had to go to a
plebiscite. But obviously reconciliation with Indigenous Australians
can be regarded as relatively trivial – there are no votes in
Aborigines.
In
the end, Morrison and Wyatt will probably be able to cobble together
some anodyne words, some impotent tokenism he can take to a
referendum
In
the end, Morrison and Wyatt will probably be able to cobble together
some anodyne words, some impotent tokenism he can take to a
referendum which may or may not pass, and who cares anyway. But it
will be a travesty of Uluru, a betrayal of the painstaking months of
good faith the delegates invested in the hope that this time, at
last, someone would listen.
Wyatt
has been lauded as the first of his race to join cabinet as the first
Minister for Indigenous Australia – Morgan Begg and Andrew Bolt
would no doubt call this divisive in itself. But the task was too
much for him or probably anyone else. Ken Wyatt could have been a
hero – not only an Indigenous hero, but a hero for all Australians
of goodwill, the majority who are willing to support the long march
to real reconciliation. Instead, he has become just another casualty,
yet another victim of the casual racism and cruelty of the right wing
rump……
Read
the full article here.
