The Meanjin essay: The Voice and Australia’s democracy crisis
With Stephen Charles AO KC
The dire state of truth in Australia’s civic space crystalised in 2023. We had seen the waning influence of News Corp’s impact on our elections and assumed it meant that enough of us were becoming inoculated against the propaganda. The defeat of the notoriously mendacious Coalition government might have signalled a ceasefire, a moment for the ‘conservative’ parties to rediscover their integrity. We had underestimated, however, the strategising of vested interests. The year also revealed starkly what happens when the world’s instant communication platform, X (formerly Twitter), is owned by one malevolent billionaire. All these forces converged in a grim battle over the Voice to Parliament referendum.
The overwhelming rejection of Scott Morrison’s Coalition government in 2022 had been in large part an indictment of its lack of transparency and integrity. Revelation had followed revelation about the brazen pork-barrelling undertaken with the help of colour-coded spreadsheets kept in a ministerial office.1 The flood of deception, echoing Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, was such that Bernard Keane assembled a whole book on it.2 Solid gold Liberal seats were lost to community independents known as the ‘teals’ who were focused on climate action and integrity.
Anthony Albanese’s government was sworn in with the expectation that it would move efficiently to introduce the integrity platform it had promised, including an anti-corruption body and whistleblower protections. So, 2023 saw the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) enacted and its commencement. In the first months, it received over a thousand submissions, which it had to cull to the few it can investigate.3 Of course, Australia won’t know which claims of corruption are being tested because Labor was seduced by the Liberals into constraining public hearings: they will only take place in ‘exceptional circumstances’.4 Public hearings are vital for such bodies in fulfilling their primary object of exposing public sector corruption; they educate the sector about the nature of corruption and deter others from future misconduct. The fact that the NACC will only rarely exhibit its work causes Australians to be less confident that corruption is being pursued at all. Other reforms remain stalled. It is scandalous that whistleblowers Richard Boyle and David McBride continued to face court action for their heroic efforts to expose serious wrongdoing to the public. The 2023 Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme was a brilliant demonstration of the debasement of our public service; that the few bravest truthtellers among them should continue to be persecuted instead of celebrated is a blight on Labor’s record.
This year, Peter Dutton’s Opposition could have chosen to build itself up as a more electable proposition by developing policy directions and proudly declaring that corruption was in the past. Instead, Dutton put all the Opposition’s chips on the culture wars: the Albanese government was to be made a one-term proposition by defeating the Voice referendum using whatever weapons were available. Dutton’s party worked alongside activist groups and News Corp to foster chaos and confusion.
The fact that disinformation and misinformation around the referendum seemed so often to tie back to the mining sector was revealing. Clive Palmer spent $2 million of his own money on swaying South Australia and Tasmania in the final weeks of the campaign.5 Gina Rinehart attended the glamorous ‘No’ team victory party at the Hyatt Regency in Brisbane.6 While some of the mining sector supported the Voice as part of their environment, social and corporate governance goals, behind the scenes the fossil fuel sector continued to play its long-term wrecking game.
The war on the Voice – and the chance it might strengthen First Peoples’ protection of their Country – is emblematic of the long game of alliances of sector interests, big donors and canny strategists. The battle against the regulation of tobacco from the 1950s became the campaign to disrupt certainty about the science of climate change.7 The goal was public confusion. Now, epistemological chaos is set to damn us all. Information has been weaponised to divide the public and steal victories for vested interests. The damage done to democracy by cyclones of disinformation tearing through social media is only compounded by the leaders who legitimise it.
Just as US Republicans tried to ride the tiger of populist nativist fury to power over the Obama years, the Coalition in Australia is hoping to regain power by fuelling suburban and rural anger at the so-called ‘inner-city elites’. Conspiracists enraged by pandemic health measures united with culture warriors against ‘woke’ to fight any project that signals empathy, justice, expertise or inclusion. This year also brought to public attention the growing Christian right takeover of ‘conservative’ party branches that has infused Pentecostal cultish ideas into that mixture.8
The Voice to Parliament referendum hijacked by lies
The shame of 2023 was the No campaign against a Voice to Parliament becoming enshrined in the Australian constitution alongside an acknowledgement of First Peoples’ existence in the country before European settlement. The plan to place the Voice in the constitution rather than merely legislate it emerged from the long consultation that formed the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart. First Peoples representatives asked Australians to grant them a permanent body to advise on matters relating to them. By placing it in the constitution, the body could be reformed over and again, but not axed without another referendum.
The decision of the National Party to oppose the Voice took place before the wording was finalised. The Liberal Party, in the wake of Peter Dutton’s embarrassing loss in the Aston by-election, declared its intent to follow and campaign against the body. These choices were not surprising. The fossil fuel sector has a decades-old architecture of influence working assiduously to muddy debates; one of its targets is Indigenous communities taking environmental action to obstruct resource- extraction projects. The Coalition has acted for decades to deter genuine climate action in Australia, and its attack on the Voice was, in part, another gift to the fossil fuel sector.
The right’s lies about the Voice began when the Uluṟu Statement was first issued in 2017. It was almost immediately labelled a ‘third chamber of Parliament’, a ridiculous mischaracterisation.9 In 2023, the Opposition’s parliamentary leaders depicted it as an inchoate power grab with ‘insufficient detail’. Experienced politicians know that the constitution only provides the barest outline: the working consequences of a constitutional amendment are forged by legislators, which would have happened in negotiation with First Peoples representatives. The inaugural legislation could be renegotiated as limitations or problems became apparent.
The Voice had approximately 60% support before the referendum campaign began. By the end of the campaign, the No majority stood at roughly 60%. A percentage of that No contingent was a ‘progressive No’ that believed Treaty should come first or that no cooperation with the coloniser could be helpful. The Voice was to have no ability to compel action; the very modesty of the proposal – likened to a school student representative council – drove these voters to campaign against it. The Yes campaign faced the typical challenge of Australia’s hesitancy regarding constitutional change. Moreover, it would have inescapably faced social media disinformation about the body, but the decision of political leaders around the country to fight – and fight dirty – was disastrous. What should have been a campaign above politics was dragged into the culture wars, with First Peoples as the most damaged casualties.
News Corp was at the centre of the media campaign against the Voice. While the organisation claimed to be explaining both sides…
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5 comments
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Terence Mills
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Teireaias
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Andrew Smith
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Teiresias
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Clakka
Return to home pageWhen South Australia decided to go it alone on a VOICE after the national referendum failed, I thought this will be a good time for the voices of the First Nations people of SA to lead the way as, the SA parliament had already legislated that there would be a VOICE no matter what.
The SA legislation set out six regional voices across the state, with 46 representatives to be directly elected by their local communities.
Each local voice having two presiding members, one female and one male, who will chair local meetings and act as their region’s representatives in a 12-person state voice.
Electoral officials in SA had estimated that 30,000 people were eligible to vote, but on the day only 2,583 formal ballots were counted. In other words less than ten percent on those registered on the indigenous electoral roll turned out to vote.
It has been reported that the low turnout was due to the indigenous community in SA not being engaged in the non-compulsory vote held on March 16.
But is there an underlying more fundamental reason that we are not recognising : is the VOICE just a ‘white fella feel good thing’ ?
There have always been attacks on First Nations people. Charles Massy in his book “Call of the Reed Warbler'” quotes Jared Diamond: “It is probable the Indigenous population in 1788 was somewhere between 750,000 and one million or so. Within only 140 years (six generations at most), Australia’s Indigenous population had collapsed to but six to to eight percent of 1788 levels. or to a mere 60,000.” Massy, p31)
Historian James Boyce at Tasmanian University quotes from a book by Keith Windscuttle”The Fabrication of Aboriginal History”, supported by the Murdoch press. John Howard had already opposed the Black Armband of history. Robert Manne wrote “”Whitewash” in 2003 and showed the Windschuttle had read little of primary sources, had methodological flaws and numerous errors.
Chris Kenny claimed (5/8/2023) that “Attacks on the Indigenous voice to Parliament are an ugly attempt to wound Anthony Albanese” He goes on to say, “…under Morrisson they compiled a 275-page report, based on an extensive national consultation, about what the legislative voice would look like (I was in that process.) They know more that they pretend.”
Has any one seen that Morrisson report?
On Kenny’s comment ‘“Attacks on the Indigenous voice to Parliament are an ugly attempt to wound Anthony Albanese’.
Suggest that the RW MSM, influencers and LNP have given up on promoting policies for electorates and the nation vs. looking for ‘wedges’ and ways to denigrate the leadership of any forward looking and rational centre.
The ‘shooting messengers’ while the LNP or right stand back, has become the modus operandi in the Anglosphere MSM e.g. on ongoing Israel – Palestine focus has been on Biden in US, Starmer in UK (not even in govt.) and locally two birds with one stone, PM and FM Wong.
When Russia initially invaded Ukraine in 2014, SBS ran a Fox News feed whose people were almost ecstatic with joy because it would make Obama and the Dems look ‘weak’ in the eyes of low info and ageing RW voters; Fox still…. runs the same anti-Ukraine messaging along with too many GOP, RWNJs and faux anti-imperialist or ‘tankie’ left.
One’s concerned at how ageing above median age and/or low info voters and electors are being used by the right to try crash everything, now, through what Bannon describes as ‘agents of chaos’ to ‘accelerate’ change eg. crash the economy, functioning parliament and democracy, then rebuild in the eyes of corrupt nativist Christian &/or corporate authoritarians; interests shared with Putin and a whiff of fossil fuels.
Not just The Voice (replicated similar in Canada on miners/drillers accessing native lands) via Atlas – Koch, Koch’s GOP making US democracy dysfunctional via both the state and national level, Hungary as ‘Trojan horse’ to split the EU (shared with Putin?) and the UK/Brexit to avoid EU constraints.
For example, now competing with Abbott for turning up at offshore events is former UK PM Liz Truss whose policies were not so much incompetent, but an attempt to implement via Atlas-Koch Tufton St. think tanks, ‘Kochonomics’ for chaos and permanent change a la Project 2025 with vetted RW legislators, public servants, more fossil fuels and RW MSM cartel in support with comms and PR.
Paul Kelly (also 5/8/2023) writes: “The reality is that the Voice once created with a constitutional guarantee, will be the complete master of its destiny. No body will tell the Voice what to do. No body can prophesy its operations.”
Kelly, check the Voice to Parliament Handbook. Listen more carefully to Linda Burney, who has said very clearly, that the Voice has no powers and advises only to government, which has the power to accept the Voice, reject it or negotiate it.
Grattan on Friday (3/8/2023) says: “But when a minister is in trouble, they have nowhere to hide. Burney unconvincingly trying to stick to the narrowest script, was caught in the headlight the Opposition was shining on the issue of treaty.
“Meanwhile Albanese was all over the place…The expectation is there would be a treaty…Albanese in his comments was trying to erect a solid fence around the Voice debate.”
So what does the Handbook say about Treaty? See p.68. In part it says: “Around the country Treaty processes have begun…A Voice has already begun…A Voice to Parliament can also achieve positive outcomes in education, health, justice and housing, to name a few examples. without waiting what what may be decades for a treaty settlement”
Which is what Burney had been saying.
Right-wing commenters were excited about writing about “Dark Emu” by Bruce Pascoe. They thought Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, both anthropologists, had criticised Pascoe. But they had not
.For examplle, Pascoe had used explorers’ journals. but explorers were “the forward scouts for the army of land-hungry farmers who would come in their wake,” (p.21)
“They [the Aboriginal people] left a far better Australian environment than we have now, given that so many native species are now extinct, so many feral introduced species are creating havoc, and huge regions have been domesticated under mono-culture cropping and thereby degraded in ecological richness.” (p. 200)
The LNP has degenerated into a disgraceful rabble of liars, schemers and designer morons. So craven now with their sensation-seeking wrecking ball m.o., that they have surpassed the vacuous self-serving ineptitude of the Abbott / Morrison era.
Their degeneration from small-l liberal conservative to vengeful RWNJs began with the desperado vote-seeking pork-barreller, John Howard, 1995-2007. After his wreckage and trouncing, it struggled through its olde worlde irrelevance and policy-free zone with Nelson, Turnbull and Abbott.
That is until Abbott opportunistically re-ignited the notions of entitlement to the old Howard pork-barrels and a vote-buy quest via an exploitative economic model plus a full-blown wrecking-ball attack on the ALP and any others of environmental and equity-based conscience.
Whilst there were social, health and education reforms and pursuit of climate change abatement during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, its stumbles and bumbles on the critically important industrial reform policy gave Abbott the very opportunity to carve up the ALP with gross misrepresentations and out-and-out lies on climate change abatement, primary industry and industrial policy. He attacked remorselessly, funded by the mining lobby and fossil fuelers and via the treasonous attacks of the feckless profit-at-any-cost mainstream media. During and after the GFC, massive global changes were afoot, and folk were nervous, he resorted to base personal attacks and doubled down.
He had set the LNP wrecking-ball mold, satisfied his exploitative backers, set back climate change abatement and duped the electorate … 2013, he won.
The succeeding 9 years of LNP in power via Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison, saw treachery and incompetence, a party held to ransom incapable of managing its internal politics, centerist MPs leaving, a near policy-free zone, lack of competent executive management, a status quo of multi-dimensional graft and corruption, destruction of the public service replaced by extortionate consultants affirming bad policy, economic propping via skyrocketing debt and under-payment for labour, and rolling back of social, health and educational services, introduction of criminals and near slave-like exploitation via the corrupted immigration system.
By 2022, with a massive increase in suicide and despair wrought by the LNP, the ALP came to power. What an abject mess to clean up, amid the need for urgent reform brought by headwinds from stagnation of economies world-wide, and climate change, and the march of war and democracy crushing FRWNJ culture wars and neo-conservative, Trumpian filth mills.
The irony is that the environment wrecking, toxifying, deadly fossil fuel / chemical industry is on its knees due to lack of viable resource, including fresh water and energy for processing, and the monied evangelists in politics, because of the effects of their culture wars are losing ground and experiencing an intensification of backlash. In both cases, their ability to fund their narrowing agenda is facing attrition.
And what does Oz get for an alternative government, a further degeneration from the twin Foghorn Leghorns, Death-Star Dutton and the Beetrooter, the bantam-weights, Ley and Birmingham, and Chicken Littleproud. The rest have fled the coop or gone missing inaction. With no imagination or insight at all, it’s just beaks transfixed to the fading line of Howard and Abbott, taking crumbs from those scratching billions from our land, and the retarded advance.
It seems they’re hell bent on destroying plurailst democracy in pursuit of the reforming Albanese ALP. They haven’t a wise word to say, just appealing to funders and an ignorant swinging fringe. Perhaps the msm gives them airtime only to highlight their absurdity? It can only be for the benefit of their parliamentary trough, for demonstrably they nor any of the combined cross-bench has any chance of running effective executive government. It seems all the LNP can do is pick on ordinary workers, unions, refugees and the indigenous and their children. Seems only to satisfy the engorgement of their funder trillionaire / billionaire ground scratchers.