There comes a time when someone can be silent no longer, when despite the difficulties, the hesitancies, one must do that difficult thing, and speak.
Not to disagree with something — that’s easy — but to utter those fearful words: I Don’t Get It.
For me, with regard to the Uluru Statement, one year old this week, that time is now: IDGI.
Or one part of it.
The treaty I get, absolutely. The treaty has been round for decades. It’s a symbolic process, but a real symbolic process, and matters.
Constitutional recognition, well … Indigenous people seem to want it. It’s always seemed to me paradoxical to have “recognition” in a document, the Australian constitution, that constituted a state entity excluding Indigenous people as citizens. That seems like the opposite of recognition, but OK.
But the Voice to Parliament, part three of the Uluru deal, has defeated me. IDGI.
For those of us not involved, but who’ve supported the recognition-treaty deal, the Voice to Parliament proposal seemed to come from nowhere: an elected chamber of Indigenous representatives to lobby, advise, propose to parliament.
The first thought on seeing this was that it cut against the grain of the other two proposals, and especially against the treaty. A treaty constituted first peoples and settlers/arrivals, as equals, and in proposing that equality, established a simple universality. Recognition was easily done as part of a treaty process. Both could be presented in referendum pretty much in toto.
The Voice to Parliament is a complex particularist measure, not a simple universalist one. It raises hundreds of questions as to what its form would be, and its character would vary completely with the final form. A referendum on recognition and treaty tells you what you’re signing up for. A Voice to Parliament is something of a blank cheque.
But above what IDG about it is, that it seems to be a tough struggle against large odds — to create a body that has no independent power. As I understand it, and maybe I’ve got it wrong, this would be a pseudo-parliament with no statutory power, no executional budget for programs, no devolved responsibilities from federal departments, and no legislative or regulatory capacity.
Have I got this right? Because, I have to say, this sounds like a really, really bad deal.
The obvious points seem to me to be this:
- If it’s an elected body, there will have to be a prior body deciding who qualifies as Indigenous, to vote, and that institution will be part of the settler state;
- If it’s appointed, it will be appointed by the settler state;
- With no power, no capacity for threat, it will be parliament’s punching bag for both major parties, to be condescended to, ignored, given lip service at will;
- With no real power, and a talking shop, it would be subject to the same pressures as radical exile politics: bitter division, because the stakes are zero;
- With incomplete understanding of its role, it would be blamed by Indigenous people for the continued lack of improvement in their conditions;
- News Corp would make it target No. 1 from day one, for racist campaigns about “do-nothing Aborigines”;
- Having an operational budget, but no real power, as the frustration grows, so too would the petty rorting — the expense-account lunches and dinners, air travel used for relatives, a few rub-and-tugs at Canberra knocking shops: it would all end up on the front page of the Tele and the Hun.
All this, for no power at all.
Am I wrong about this? Because, given the idea that a treaty should lead to forms of sovereignty, the Voice to Parliament appears to take things in the exact opposite direction.
I mean, these sorts of institutions were proposed in Africa during the decolonisation period of the 1950s. But they were proposed by the British empire, as a way of preserving settler-plantation power, and rejected by leaders such as Nkrumah and Kenyatta.
So IDGI, and I wonder if a lot of other people DGI it either, and are just going with the flow. I’m happy to be corrected, but for the moment it seems like one of the worst ideas ever, fighting hard for a body that announces its powerless dependency as part of its constituting establishment.
IDGI.
Anyone?
IDGI either Guy. I’m aware that I’m white with no background in Indigenous culture, so it isn’t necessarily mine to “get”, and the problems you have outlined seem obvious to me as well but it might be worth co-writing this with someone in a better position to talk about those criticisms and whether there is an answer from the point of view of Indigenous Australians or whether the average Indigenous Australian in the street is as non-plussed about it as you or I.
There is only one solution for Indigenous people in Australia. …..abandon racial identity politics and join the modern world. We have been watching 40 years of white guilt throw money at the ‘problem’ with little or no result.
We have seen Indigenous ‘self’management’ of taxpayers money through ATSIC; an entity mired in graft and corruption and dissolved by the agreement of both sides of politics.
The hard truth is that Indigenous people need real jobs, and self sufficiency which cannot be had in the outback communities and the only solution is to get the able bodied off the communities to work in the real economy elsewhere.
If Tongan workers can be imported to pick fruit and trim plantations in Australia, why cannot Indigenous people on Communities do likewise?
Here’s your proof of point 6, Guy.
Thanks Bob for calling out Jim. He simply doesn’t get it, does he? We’ve had 230 years of this bullshit – so I guess Australia simply doesn’t get it.
IDGI either Guy. Where are the legal minds able and willing to interpret, advise? “There comes a time when “someone” can be silent no longer . . . . and speak”. Where the (expletive) are the leaders hiding? Thanks Guy / Bernard who have both come out today because so many Australians DGI; but more importantly, don’t care.
As an analogy “A treaty constituted first peoples and settlers/arrivals, as equals, ..” that worked so well for Palestinians.
The land was stolen, there can never be an equitable arrangement with the conquerors.
Rob a bank of a mill, give back a couple of grand – yeah, that’s fair.
And this is before we consider the intrinsic racism of saying genes rool, KO.
I do get it, Guy. The proposal is for a VOICE to parliament, in circumstances where most aboriginal peoples Australia have been treated as outcasts in their own land. All the legislative stuff is beside the point.
It is true that most Australians have little voice. The loudest, most far reaching voice in Australia is that of the US citizen, Rupert Murdoch. Somehow, the legislation against foreign influence will ignore him. Some Australian citizens have a little say through Fairfax, local papers, Crikey and the Guardian and also on broadcast media. Many with a voice on broadcast media say little on anything of importance. On the other hand, the ABC and SBS give some voice to Australians on matters of importance (eg. “The Drum”, “Q&A”) and also give some voice to descendants of our first peoples.
While Australian democracy is pretty hollow for most Australians, it has until recently been completely hollow for our first peoples. The voice to parliament will give them a significant voice for the first time. In the distant future, when all Australians have an equal say in our laws and policies, there will be no need for an aboriginal voice to parliament and people like that US citizen, Rupert Murdoch, will not have a disproportionate influence over what we think.
In the meantime, I do get it
Ian
But the points i’m suggesting – that it will be a voice with no power, no budget, nothing to implement….doesn’t that set it up to be nothing other than a target? Does it not structure dependency and subjection into the arrangement. You havent really responded to any of my suggestions about how this might go.
Depends Guy on what is needed, which is to give public prominence to Aboriginal views and to give them the ability to make representations to parliament. If it is set up, it will have to have a budget to do that, just as Rupert’s resources give him his unfairly influential role. Still, if their role is not to provide daily propaganda and diversions in favour of the interests of the wealthy, they will not need the resources that Murdoch has for his role, exerting foreign influence on our government.
So, of course it will have a budget for that role but not for other roles that flow from parliamentary legislation.
And, of course, Murdoch will attack any voice that challenges his interests. So yes, to improve the position of aboriginal people will involve struggle and there may be set-backs as well as victories. But why would we suppose that a voice to parliament will be useless? Why should we suppose inevitable victory for those vested interests that seek to have aborigines continue as outcasts in their own land?
I don’t get why you don’t get that I disagree with your defeatist assumptions about a first people’s voice to parliament, although I don’t have a pollyanna optimism about it either.
Ian
But it’s not funding a newspaper or a TV channel. It’s an assembly. Assemblies usually have power. This will have none.
So it will look like the sort of things that will have power, but be subject to the whims of the actual parliament.
It’s not ‘defeatist’ to suggest that a particular strategy is a bad idea. If all you’ve got in response to my criticisms is that, then it seems to be part of the problem i’m highlighting
Dear Guy,
You’re right that it is not defeatist to say that something is a bad idea. I don’t think that an assembly that promotes aboriginal viewpoints on legislation and policies is a bad idea. It would be a bad idea if it had no means to publicise its views but I see no reason why it would not have the budget required to publicise its ideas. I agree also that publicity does not guarantee a good response from government but I do think it is defeatist to assume that such publicity would never put the government under pressure and would always be successfully countered by MSM, such as Murdoch media. Perhaps we are on different wavelengths and do not understand each other’s points. That would be a pity but it can happen
I should add that one does not need a newspaper or TV channel to get the public to listen to one’s view. You just need the capacity to make announcements that some newspapers or TV channels will respond to because the announcements come from a body that commands attention. I can express all the views I like in Crikey about human rights but I will not get the attention that Gillian Triggs got. And, of course, the government and Murdoch tried to suppress her views but they were not completely successful. They will get more successful if they privatise all media outlets, as in New Zealand, which probably has the world’s most boring TV programming courtesy of the neo-liberal fetishes pursued there for so many years. I hope Jacinta Sdern means that stuff is at an end.
Having a voice in itself is a form of power.