Australia’s template-led opinion pieces cause harm and reject nuance

This year is one of Australia’s most consequential for public debate: complex, fraught and momentous.

Discussion around the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, for example, challenges us all to take a more rigorous and respectful approach to cultural matters. But instead of rising to this task, we too often see a cavalier approach to the harm caused by baseless, misleading or racist commentary.

I’m beginning to suspect, for example, that Nine newspapers The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have developed a template for first-time opinion pieces — one that unfairly exposes unsuspecting writers to attack. Such pieces saturate lead paragraphs with search-engine-optimising outrage triggers before outlining the writer’s personal struggle, centring themselves in a debate that’s not theirs.

Two recently published pieces follow this pattern.

Hazel Edwards is the author of the popular 1976 children’s book There’s a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake. Her February opinion piece — whose headline reads “After more than 200 books, don’t tell me who I can write about” — begins: “I’m not Indigenous. I’m not Muslim. I’m not a refugee. I’m not transgender. I’m not disabled. And I’m not a hippopotamus who eats cake.”

Edwards claims writers who can’t work with a contemporary level of cultural competence are facing “censorship”, leaving “science fantasy satire [as] the only ‘safe’ way for an author to portray a culture other than their own”.

Confusing commercial success with cultural authority, Edwards then contrasts “sensitivity” readers and “expert” readers, implying there is no expertise in identifying presumptions and bias in representing another culture. (Meanjin published Özge Sevindik Alkan’s response, who disputes Edwards’ claim that their co-authorship relationship began at her invitation.)

Academic and writer Yannick Thoraval begins his March opinion piece — headlined “I’m a university lecturer and wokeism is stifling free debate in my classroom” — by listing what he calls “trigger words” such as “ ‘faggot’ (as in a bundle of sticks) and ‘racism’ ” with all the nonchalance of explaining away a swastika as an ancient good luck symbol.

Thoraval dismisses students’ cultural awareness as “woke sensitivity” without exploring the nature of their concerns, instead suggesting that any discussion of “appropriate” ways to navigate cultural difference must be “Orwellian”.

He does reveal a self-awareness, avowing he “felt ill-equipped to manage” such debate. It is important to note that universities offer formal training in this area. And that’s not Orwellian, it’s professional development for facilitating the sophisticated debates that should characterise every Australian classroom.

One of the opinion editor’s greatest challenges is to avoid causing further harm by conferring the authority of the masthead on to writers who feed structurally entrenched prejudice, whether intentionally or otherwise.

When the impact of such harm is made clear, intention is routinely offered as a get-out-of-jail-free card. It was just a joke; I didn’t mean it; you’re misunderstanding me — we’ve heard it all before. Thoraval also goes down this path, suggesting that “teachers and students need to trust in each other’s beneficent intentions”.

Offence and harm aren’t negated by intention, of course. You’re not magically granted a debating gold star because you didn’t mean to cause harm.

Individuals are harmed when their cultural or gender identity is subsumed by someone choosing to centre their own experience and/or represent theirs. Harm is caused to communities when they’re marginalised from a debate that’s theirs to lead. Harm is caused to a nation when racist political commentary is normalised.

Which brings us back to the Voice.

The Voice is an important opportunity to publish pieces that enrich our understanding of democratic processes, countering the rampant simplifications and obfuscations we’re seeing. This puts non-Indigenous opinion editors in an arduous position. It’s impossible to overestimate the need for high-quality published opinion ahead of the referendum, and that means fostering constructive debate without causing harm.

There is no public value in baselessly attacking an Elder as “not completely Indigenous”, or maligning the Voice as “racist at heart”, or discrediting decades of nationally distributed collaboration behind the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart as a “Canberra voice”.

The misleading, deceptive or false claims in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s No strategy have already been analysed by too many commentators for me to list.

A healthy public debate needs a broad diversity of views, argued from unique perspectives that offer evidence. The subject-matter experts and cultural leaders quoted by journalists are essential to daily news stories, but they tend to be just short quotes within a brief piece. Beyond this, we need the deeper insights afforded by opinion pages.

As well as offering us those deeper insights from new or established voices, opinion pieces also validate that most critical of civic questions: what do you think? Of course we can disagree, but only when arguing in good faith, not parroting sensationalist nonsense. (Nor is Crikey above a little clickbait — just ask Guy Rundle.)

When we see complex matters debated with rigour, our confidence in democracy grows. We can respect cultural perspectives, argue on the basis of evidence, and talk about sovereignty, treaty and truth-telling.

We might not be able to access what’s unconscious in our bias, but we can ask ourselves who is being centred in a debate, who is being spoken of and spoken for, and whose voice is not being heard.

So let’s keep asking the big questions, and go looking for answers in publications whose integrity we can trust. What will a Yes vote mean for Australia? What does the No case really propose, and why? Whose views are displaced by that high-profile person claiming they’re being silenced? Is that really an opinion piece, or just a rant?