NATIONAL REFERENDUM 2023: from this point onwards it may be less safe for people of goodwill to venture into public spaces - so tainted with malice and misinformation has the debate become courtesy of those parliamentary dissenters

 

For months now the entire country has known the exact wording of the national referendum question and text of the constitutional amendment which will create a permanent advisory body composed of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander representatives of the First Nations peoples of Australia.

National Referendum Question

“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

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Text of additional clause to be inserted in the Constitution if referendum question is answered by a double majority in the affirmative

“Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.”

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On the morning of Wednesday, 31 May 2023 the second and third reading of the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 Bill occurred in the House of Representatives and was passed by a majority of the House with just 25 members out of a total of 145 members dissenting.

The parliamentary dissenters in alphabetical order were:

Birrell, Sam. J. Boyce, C. E. Buchholz, Scott (Teller)

Chester, Darren J. Conaghan, Patrick J. Coulton, Mark M. (Teller)

Gillespie, David A. Goodenough, Ian R.

Hamilton, G. R. Hawke, Alexander G. Hogan, Kevin J. 

Howarth, Luke R.

Joyce, Barnaby T. G.

Landry, Michelle L. Littleproud, David

McCormack, Michael F.

O'Brien, Llewellyn S.

Pasin, Anthony Pike, Henry J. Pitt, Keith J.

Wallace, Andrew B. Webster, A. E. Willcox, Andrew J. 

Wilson, Richard. J. and

Young, Terry J.

A majority of these dissenters took it upon themselves to organise and conduct a “No” campaign against the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament once the referendum question had been approved by a majority in the House of Representatives.

Advance Aus Ltd formerly Freedom Aus Limited, Advance formerly known as Advance Australia & Fair Australia (both associated with Advance Aus Ltd), Recognise a Better Way, Whitestone Strategic Pty Ltd, Texas-based RJ Dunham & Co, Matthew Sheahan, Vicki Dunne, Laura Bradley, Simon Fenwick, Marcus Blackmore and former Liberal MP Tony Abbott are among the companies & persons which assist the dissenters in their apparent aim to sow doubt and division ahead of the referendum.  [AFR, 10.04.23 & The Guardian, 13.07.23].

In this they appear to have had some measure of success.

According to custom, the parliamentary dissenters have also produced the official “No” campaign pamphlet titled “The case for voting No” which can be read in full and downloaded at:

https://www.aec.gov.au/referendums/files/pamphlet/the-case-for-voting-no.pdf

The first page summary text is as follows:

“REASONS TO VOTE NO – A SUMMARY

This Referendum is not simply about “recognition”. This Voice proposal goes much further.

If passed, it would represent the biggest change to our Constitution in our history.

It is legally risky, with unknown consequences. It would be divisive and permanent.

If you don’t know, vote no.

RISKY

We all want to help Indigenous Australians in disadvantaged communities. However, this Voice is not the answer and presents a real risk to our system of government.

This Voice specifically covers all areas of “Executive Government”. This means no issue is beyond its reach.

The High Court would ultimately determine its powers, not the Parliament.

It risks legal challenges, delays and dysfunctional government.

UNKNOWN

No details have been provided on how members of the Voice would be chosen or how it would operate. Australians are being asked to vote first before these details are worked out.

Australians should have details before the vote, not after.

We don’t know how it will work, we don’t know who will be on it, but we do know it will permanently divide us as Australians.

Some Voice supporters say this would just be a first step to reparations and compensation and other radical changes. So, what would come next?

DIVISIVE

Enshrining a Voice in the Constitution for only one group of Australians means permanently dividing our country.

It creates different classes of citizenship through an unknown body that has the full force of the Constitution behind it. Many Indigenous Australians do not support this.

PERMANENT

Putting a Voice in the Constitution means it’s permanent. We will be stuck with negative consequences

The content of this argument (which can be viewed at aec.gov.au/referendums/pamphlet.htm) was authorised by a majority of those members of Parliament who voted against the proposed law and desired to forward such a case. This text has been published without amendment by the Electoral Commissioner“

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The official “Yes” campaign pamphlet from the majority of the parliamentary assenters titled “The case for voting Yes” can be read in full and downloaded at:

https://www.aec.gov.au/referendums/files/pamphlet/the-case-for-voting-yes.pdf?v=1.0

This affirmative campaign is assisted by YES23.

Examples of how the two very different pamphlets are being initially received in mainstream & social media:

Greg Craven furious no campaign used his previous voice concerns in pamphlet https://t.co/m1SHzOv11Q

— grace pettigrew (@broomstick33) July 18, 2023

 

Uluru Dialogue's Megan Davis and Pat Anderson, architects of the Voice, call the No referendum essay "cooked" and a "destructive agenda"

"The NO pamphlet has used taxpayers’ money to distribute misleading information aimed at holding our people back, all Australians in fact." pic.twitter.com/ByEC2JjWci

— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) July 18, 2023

 

"The No Campaign have clearly taken advantage of the pamphlet not being fact-checked and done more to embolden racists than they have to argue against the Voice."https://t.co/ZS7FATECqz

— National Indigenous Times (@nit_times) July 18, 2023

 

The Yes pamphlet says the "idea" for the voice, came from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.....no it didn't AT ALL.....it came from the U.N, and has been in the works for years...."Project UNDRIP"....they lie and lie through their teeth...it's NOT grassroots.

— R1nky d1nk (@RD1nk33775) July 18, 2023

CONCERNING POLLED RESPONSES IN JULY 2023 TO THE PROPOSED NATIONAL REFERENDUM QUESTION

Latest Newspoll conducted on 12-15 July 2023 shows 48 per cent of the 1,570 surveyed voters say they now intend to vote no to the proposal to insert an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Voice into the Australian Constitution.

Among surveyed voters from regional areas 62 per cent opposed the Voice proposal.

The survey breaks down by gender to 47 per cent of all males surveyed and 49 per cent of all females surveyed now oppose the Voice.

By age it appears that 59 per cent of those younger voters surveyed were in favour of inserting an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Voice into the Australian Constitution, while 46 per cent of all older voters surveyed were in favour of the Voice.

NOTE: The 15 July 2023 Newspoll as reported does not breakdown responses by state and, as a referendum affirmative requires a majority of the voting age population in a majority of states, it is possible that at this time there is still a majority in favour of the Voices in four of the seven states & territories.

Australian Federal Election 2022: after eight and a half years the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government has still not delivered a reliable NBN high speed broadband network

(Cartoon by Mark David / @MDavidCartoons)
INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIA, 16 February 2022

It’s been eight and a half years since the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government came to power and took a wrecking ball to key policy initiatives of the Rudd & Gillard Governments – solely on the basis that these were programs initiated by the Labor Party.

Even in Opposition, one of the Coalition's targets had been the National Broadband Network (NBN).

However, unlike the price on carbon, it could not erase the NBN but was forced to tolerate its existence.

By 23 September 2020 the Morrison Government and NBN Co had declared the initial rollout of a national high speed broadband network complete and fully operational. Apparently the only thing remaining was to plan for future increases in demand.

NBN Co then closed the door and, to all intents and purposes, walked away from most of the issues both it and the Coalition Government had created by using a patchwork of different connection types to supposedly meet the needs of over 25 million people in homes and businesses scattered across est. 7.692 million square kilometres of widely varying terrain.

In 2021 in response to Internet connection problems in his own electorate a member of the Morrison Government, 

Liberal MP for Berowra Julian Leeser, tabled a private members bill - supported by seventeen MPs and senators - which attempted to make NBN Co more accountable, build better infrastructure and improve customer service.

Julian Leeser, Telecommunications, retrieved 9 May 2022:

In response to the Bill, Choice’s Alan Kirkland said: ‘It’s unacceptable for people who live in a major city like Sydney not to have mobile coverage in their home, and even worse in a bushfire-prone area. We find it puzzling that the telco industry, particularly Telstra, has been able to get away with substandard service for so long.’

Professor Alan Fels, former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, agreed that more needs to be done. He said: ‘For many years the telco industry has failed to make access to mobile phone services universally available, even in a number of suburbs. Yet such access is an essential service and vital in emergencies. After waiting for so long, it is clear that the only solution is legislation, backed by sanctions compelling it.’

That particular private member’s bill appears to have withered on the vine.

Also in 2021 a five-member panel conducted a review of regional telecommunications in Australia. One could be forgiven for wondering about the independence of this panel given a former Nationals MP for Cowper and, a business person who worked on the 2013 Nationals election campaign and previously derived consultancy work from a WA Liberal Government are among its members.

It came as no surprise that there were 16 key findings contained in the December 2021 review report, along with twelve recommendations. Although Finding 10 (highlighted below) raised an eyebrow.

Key Findings

1. Increased coordination and investment between the Australian, state and territory governments is needed to address a ‘patchwork quilt’ approach to connectivity in the regions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2

2. Local councils and other regional stakeholders are increasingly expected to facilitate telecommunications service delivery, but are not appropriately resourced to identify connectivity need and support the deployment of suitable solutions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5

3. Supply side issues, including backbone fibre and spectrum access, are barriers to competition and innovation in regional telecommunications markets.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2

4. There is an urgent need to consider the future of the Universal Service Obligation in order to provide reliable voice services to rural and remote consumers.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8

5. There are significant issues with the maintenance and repair of telecommunications networks, particularly copper landlines, in regional, rural and remote areas.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8

6. In instances of natural disasters and emergencies, connectivity is significantly impacted by power and network outages. This reduces access to recovery and support.

Relates to Recommendations: 3

7. Mobile coverage continues to improve, but expanding reliable coverage to priority areas is becoming more difficult.

Relates to Recommendations: 9, 10

8. Increased ongoing demand for data on regional, rural and remote mobile and fixed wireless networks is not always being met, causing network congestion issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6, 9

9. Although Sky Muster Plus has improved access to data, Sky Muster users are frustrated by insufficient data allowances, high latency and reliability issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6

10. Current minimum broadband speeds are mostly adequate, but will need to increase over time.

Relates to Recommendations: 8

There is a certain irony in Finding 10 given that less than one month before the report was delivered to the Minister, review panel member Prof. Hugh Bradlow was tweeting the NBN on 1 November 2021 with this complaint: "Hello @NBN_Australia my Internet at Sandy Point, Vic has been out for 3 full days. Instead of all the excuses on your website (and don't blame the power - it is working just fine) can you actually give a committed time to get it fixed?

11. There are emerging technology options to meet the demand for data but their service performance has not yet been validated.

Relates to Recommendations: 4

12. Regional consumers, businesses and local governments experience difficulty in resolving telecommunications issues and providers are not adequately addressing the complex needs of regional users.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 7

13. Regional consumers, businesses and local government need access to independent advice and improved connectivity literacy to support them in making informed connectivity choices.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5

14. Predictive coverage maps and other public information do not accurately reflect on-the-ground telecommunications experience. There is significant misinformation about the availability of 

telecommunications services.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 9

15. The cost of telecommunications services remains high for vulnerable groups in remote Australia. This is impacting on their access to essential services.

Relates to Recommendations: 11, 12

16. Continued engagement with Indigenous Australians in regional, rural and remote communities is needed to address ongoing issues of access, affordability and digital ability.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 11, 12

Over a year after the Morrison Government declared the high broadband network a success it was very evident that it was far from having that status.

Indeed, in some quarters opinion had been scathing.

InnovationAus.com: Public Policy and Business Innovation, 4 November 2021:

This week, Telstra claimed its 5G home broadband service will offer average speeds of 378 megabits per second to homes and businesses. In contrast, the average maximum speed on Fibre to the Node is 67 megabits per second, and up to 200,000 premises on the copper NBN can’t even get 25 megabits.

Imagine spending $50 billion on a copper dominated network, that’s not delivering minimum speeds required under law, and already losing its competitiveness.

That is the anti-genius of Liberal-National Party. Deceive. Implement bad technology policy at higher cost. Then spend more money to correct their mistakes. They led us down this path on broadband, and now want to do it with energy.

In 2013 the Liberals produced “modelling” known as the NBN strategic review. This elaborate sham had a sole purpose: provide political cover for abandoning fibre.

This document was then used to claim a multi-technology mix of second-rate technologies was going to be $30 billion cheaper than a full-fibre NBN.

This untruth, repeated at nauseum, relied on two tricks.

The first was pretending the copper dominated network being rolled out costs $41 billion. False. It is costing $57 billion.

The second was to claim the original plan to deploy a fibre network to 93 per cent of Australia would cost $72 billion, rather than the near $50 billion forecast under Labor.

The latter claim, which the Liberals clung to desperately, was decimated in a front-page report in the Sydney Morning Herald in February 2021.

It revealed that in late 2013 the Liberals were explicitly told deploying Fibre to the Premises was dramatically cheaper than what they claimed in public.

That advice was redacted and kept secret for seven years, and it is clear why.

If the redacted costs for fibre, along with real-world interest rates, were fed back into the strategic review “modelling”, the original fibre rollout would have cost around $53 billion.

Notably, Minister Fletcher stopped repeating his $30 billion claim since the unredacted extracts appeared in print, because he always knew it to be false.

The NBN copper rollout has now become a business case liability and looks increasingly uncompetitive against 5G.

The NBN HFC network, which relies on Foxtel Pay TV infrastructure, is arguably the most expensive and unreliable deployment of its sort in the world.

Tens of thousands of Fibre to the Curb modems across the country are also frying during storms because lightning is being conducted over the copper that leads into the home.

The government is now saying Fibre to the Curb technology will not deliver gigabit speeds, despite promising it would only a year ago.

Every fixed-line technology deployed by the Coalition is beset by technical or business case problems, except for Fibre to the Premises – Labor’s original technology of choice.

As the 2022 federal election date drew nearer the Morrison Government on 23 March bestirred itself enough to announce that:

The Morrison Government has welcomed NBN Co’s announcement that 50,000 homes and businesses will be able to order an upgrade to their NBN connection, delivering ultra-fast speeds at no upfront cost.

These are the initial customers to have access to upgrades that will allow 8 million homes, or 75 per cent of premises in the NBN fixed line footprint, to access to ultra-fast speeds by 2023.

Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher, said the on-demand upgrades will give more Australians access to the fastest broadband speeds available on the NBN.

There is no mention of ongoing costs and pricing which remain an issue.

I am honestly not sure that this is anything more than a typical election year 'announceable' which will sink down into the pile of past unmet expectations raised concerning NBN high speed broadband.

Regardless of whatever media releases the Morrison Government is sending out, the dissatisfaction with the NBN high speed broadband network remains 12 days out from election day…..

The Guardian, 8 May 2022:

The NBN rollout may have been completed, but Richard Proudfoot is still using an old ADSL internet connection, and he has to juggle his Zoom meetings around his partner’s work.

He runs a small IT business from his home in Maleny, on the Sunshine Coast, about 100km north of Brisbane, while his partner is a part-time university lecturer.

Due to their property’s terrain, NBN Co has told him he is not able to connect to fixed wireless or fixed line. While he has the option of satellite, many users have reported poor speeds and reliability. He has stuck with ADSL for the time being because he believes the tree cover and weather would adversely effect his service.

“We are very, very dependent on a reliable internet ADSL connection. To make it work for us given the limitations, we schedule internet use based on need ... we cannot do concurrent Zoom meetings so we rearrange diaries in order to cope.”

The Coalition and NBN Co declared the rollout of the then $51bn network complete in 2020. There are now 12.1m homes able to connect, and 8.5m homes on the NBN.

The high-speed network was meant to resolve the digital divide in Australia, but two years on from its completion there remains a stark difference between the haves and have-nots; those who have a decent internet service and those still waiting or suffering from poor speeds and reliability on their NBN service.

The Liberal MP Julian Leeser wrote a scathing review of the NBN in a submission to the federal government’s regional telecommunications review last year, describing it as “too slow with countless delays”.

Leeser’s northern Sydney electorate, Berowra, is a mix of suburban and semi-regional locations, meaning his constituents are living with the spectrum of NBN technologies, from fixed to wireless and satellite.

“There is too much variability in the quality of coverage across the various NBN technologies,” he said.

The pandemic forced many people to work from home and rely on their home internet more than ever before.

Leeser said that teachers had been forced to work out of McDonald’s car parks to leech the wifi for online classes, people were unable to work from home or undertake telehealth appointments, and some had even been forced to move out of the area due to their poor NBN connection…...

Many Guardian Australia readers raised problems with the project when asked what their major concerns were ahead of this month’s federal election.

One reader, Cate, who lives in Killarney Heights in the Sydney electorate of Warringah, missed out on full fibre or cable that some nearby suburbs have access to.

She says she was originally connected via the Optus internet cable but was moved over to fibre-to-the-node (FttN) on the NBN.

“Using Optus cable we rarely had dropouts. I could count on one hand the number of times over five years that we lost internet for any noticeable length of time,” she says.

Now she says they experience daily interruptions.

“Our modem takes five to 10 minutes to reconnect so this can often mean at least 25 to 50 minutes a day of disruption to our service and this is still considered acceptable by NBN and they will do nothing to fix it.”

She says she is rarely able to get the top speeds promised. In speed test results Cate provided to Guardian Australia taken between 2pm and 3pm on a weekday, the results ranged from 1.3Mbps to 40Mbps, compared to 100Mbps on her previous Optus cable…..

Around 119,000 premises that are connected to the NBN via FttN still can’t get the minimum 25Mbps download and 5Mbps upload speeds. Due to the ageing copper and environmental conditions, FttN connections will continue to get worse over time.

In February, the NBN CEO, Stephen Rue, admitted the bit rate – the number of bits that can be transferred across the network per second – would degrade between 2% and 4% every year on average across the 4m FttN connections.

The other looming factor is people switching the NBN off. Customers frustrated with the NBN might look to 5G or another service like Elon Musk’s Starlink, and threaten the ability of the network to make a return on the taxpayer investment.…...

Something to think about standing in line at the polling booths on Saturday 21 May 2022.

Morrison & Co called out for victim blaming

Chief economist at The Australia Institute, Richard Denniss, on the subject of Coalition economic stories........

The Guardian, 5 August 2020:

Australian economic debate relies more heavily on metaphors than it does on evidence, experience or expertise. While the prime minister, treasurer and self-appointed business leaders drone endlessly about what the economy “needs”, they simply refuse to provide any evidence that they know what they are talking about. For decades the inanity of Australia’s economic debate has been concealed behind the sugar hit of surging world demand for our exports, and surging population growth on house prices and retail profits. But in the deepest recession in modern history, the shallowness of Australia’s economic debate is about to become clear for all to see.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s admission last week that his favourite politicians were Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan was as informative as the fact that my favourite Marvel heroes are Thor and Iron Man. Given that Thatcher oversaw burgeoning unemployment and Reagan doubled the US government’s debt, you can see why our current treasurer might have an affinity for his cold war heroes. But for those of us interested in the Morrison government’s actual plans to get us out of the hole we are in, the treasurer’s last big interview told us even less than his recent “mini-budget” did.

According to Frydenberg, Australia’s economy will shrink by a record 7% in the current quarter. To put that into perspective, the entire 1991 recession saw GDP fall by 1.4% and the 1983 recession, which saw four quarters of contraction in a row, saw GDP fall by “only” 3.8%. For the 60 years we have collected quarterly GDP data, the biggest previous quarterly contraction of GDP was back in June 1974, when the economy contracted by 2%. But apart from drawing inspiration from Thatcher and Reagan, what exactly is the government’s plan to create jobs for the almost million people who are already unemployed, let alone for the many more who are predicted to be unemployed by the end of the year?

In March and April, the Morrison government was more enthusiastic about stimulating the economy than many expected but, by July, it had grown tired of its flirtation with Keynesianism. In his mini-budget, Frydenberg simply turned his back on all that economics has to offer and – at the same press conference where he announced the largest ever decline in GDP – he announced his government would be cutting spending in September this year. The consequences of that decision will be disastrous for the economy and, most likely, for the Coalition.

If private demand and investment is falling (it is) and if foreign demand for our exports, including education and tourism, is collapsing (it is), the only thing that can stop GDP spiralling downwards is a big increase in government spending. That’s not ideology or theory, it’s just maths. GDP is the sum of its parts, and if the private-sector parts are shrinking (they are), virtually every economist agrees it’s a good idea for the government to spend more. Morrison and Frydenberg spent the first half of year pretending to understand and accept this most simple of economic tenets but, as of last week, they have clearly decided to put storytelling ahead of solid evidence.

In explaining why they had to cut government spending on unemployment benefits – and in turn cut the amount of money the unemployed spend in their local shops – the prime minister and treasurer dusted off old anecdotes, unsourced, about unemployed people turning down work because life was “easier”. To be clear, there are currently 13 unemployed people for every job vacancy.

The Coalition love to tell stories about what great economic managers they are, despite ABS data suggesting otherwise. But, of course, in Australia the key to being a “great economic manager” isn’t delivering high rates of economic growth or budget surpluses (neither of which the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments have actually done). On the contrary, the key to being a great economic manager is to tell great stories.

Central to the Coalition’s economic narrative is to take credit for everything good that happens in the economy and shift the blame for anything bad. When unemployment is falling, say it’s because your tax cuts are working to “strengthen” the economy. When unemployment is rising, blame the unemployed and say you need to cut unemployment benefits.

The same applies when telling stories about the budget. When times are good, cut taxes for your friends and, when times are tough, cut spending on those who never vote for you. Likewise, with productivity growth, consumer confidence or private investment. If things are looking up, link it to your tax and welfare cuts, and if things are going badly, blame it on union power and lazy workers.

Conservatives have masterfully implemented the old adage to “never let a crisis go to waste” – successfully blaming the victims of Australia’s economic system for all of its failings, while taking credit for managing all of its successes. But they have never had to tell a story about an economy that shrank 7% in a single quarter, driving unemployment to 10%…… 

Unemployment is about to rise, and the economy is not going to “snap back”. Increased training will not create jobs. Cutting unemployment benefits will not create jobs. Industrial relations reform will not create jobs. The reason that companies are shedding staff is that there aren’t enough customers with enough money, or enough confidence, to buy the things that companies sell. The only thing that will pull Australia out of this nosedive is a big increase in government spending, and the government has just announced it plans to cut spending. Strap yourself in – the storytelling is about to go fantastical as the economy goes very, very quiet.