The Guardian recently reported that in the eyes of the American conservatives the ‘pink haired liberals’ are killing the New York Pizza. Unsurprisingly, the conservatives have added 2 and 2 and got 5, helped by News Corp’s New York Post.

The real story is in 2016, New York City legislated that filters be installed on the kitchen exhaust chimneys belonging to commercial kitchens, including pizza restaurants. The requirement was to reduce potentially carcinogenic particulate matter (smoke and dust) being emitted from the chimneys and being trapped in the lungs in nearby residents. A lot of New York pizza restaurants use coal or wood as fuel in their pizza ovens, producing considerable smoke which is sent up chimneys.

Conservatives have pounced on the regulation claiming that it is carbon emissions reduction by stealth and the filters are affecting the taste of the pizza. According to The Guardian’s report

What’s being asked of traditional oven pizza restaurants is simple: install a type of air filter in their chimneys to keep their cancer-causing dust from blowing into their neighbors’ homes. The city originally asked kitchens to do this by 2020, then postponed the plan until this year due to the pandemic. But many restaurants had already made the changes, some of them years before the rule was even drafted.

The filters are installed in the chimney close to the exit point and use a water vapour to wash the soot and particles out of the exhaust, then it collects in a tank connected to the sewer system. It also has the added benefit of cooling the exhaust air before the leave the chimney.

However, conservatives with an axe to grind can’t let the truth or logic stand in the way of the ongoing quest to enforce their political and social philosophy. There is no logical reason why the pizza taste should be affected if the particulate matter generated by the cooking fuel is removed from the exhaust airflow half way up the chimney. It is a ridiculous argument. Almost as ridiculous as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s claims about ‘The Voice’ referendum.

Dutton claimed he spent some time ‘attempting to understand’ the proposition and then he has claimed that the referendum is going to divide the community. He is going out of his way to be divisive, create straw men and cherry-pick the facts to suit his needs. If you think it sounds like the playbook of the conservatives in the USA, you could have a valid point. As Nine Newspapers suggests, Dutton [is] saying no with an American accent.

Dutton talks of ‘the Canberra voice’. The Voice proponents have recommended that a number of people from across Australia will comprise ‘The Voice’. Assuming they might meet in Canberra, they would make their way to Canberra from the area they represent, similar to Dutton making his way to Canberra to represent his constituents who reside in his electorate in the northern outskirts of Brisbane. It really doesn’t matter where they meet. What does matter is that the Committee has to be referenced in the Constitution so that future governments can’t abolish ‘The Voice’ without going back to the population for approval.

Dutton talks about what will happen if at some point in the future ‘The Voice’ Committee provides advice to the Australian Government of the day to move Australia Day from 26 January. January 26 was not always the Australia Day public holiday. Regardless that the proposal for ‘The Voice’ is to ‘recommend’ rather than ‘legislate’ on matters affecting our indigenous peoples to the government of the day, Australia Day was not a National Holiday until 1988 and was the Monday after the last weekend in January (to create a long weekend), only becoming a fixed date in 1994. If it did change again, the governments of the day would be making the decision – as they can ‘legislate’, not a group that constitutionally can only ‘recommend’. Quasi religious fervour for ‘national imagery’ is ‘Trump style’ conservative Americanism. 

Dutton is claiming that the drafters of the Australian Constitution had almost ‘godlike insight’ which makes changing the Constitution heresy, similar to the US conservative claims regarding the drafters of the US Constitution. Our Australian drafters were clever people but neglected a number of important provisions, including making 26 January a nationwide public holiday for Australia Day (as that is now apparently sacrosanct), and discussion how our indigenous peoples 65,000-year-old civilisation should be recognised and celebrated by all Australians. If either ours or the US constitution drafters envisioned no change ever – they would not have put a procedure in the respective documents to enact change when required.

As Nine Newspaper’s article suggests:

There were further American echoes when Dutton dramatised the dangers of the Voice. Here, he cited three scenarios: potential disputes over the expansion of defence bases; funding allocations in the federal budget; and, most tellingly, what is taught in schools. In arguing that the “Voice may make a representation seeking that a particular version of Australian history be taught in classrooms”, he seemed almost to be channelling Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and alluding to one of the American culture war’s angriest new fronts: critical race theory.

If the Indigenous Voice to parliament came into being, Dutton warned of “an Orwellian effect where all Australians are equal but some Australians are more equal than others”. Again, this has parallels with the argument heard especially vehemently during the Reagan era against affirmative action, a debate in which whites were portrayed as the true victims of discrimination.

While some apparently have genuine concerns about the forthcoming referendum not going far enough or the need for treaty with our indigenous peoples prior to a ‘Voice to Parliament’, Dutton is playing us all for fools. Dutton is using the US conservative playbook to create fear, uncertainty and division in our society for his own ends. What those ends are is anyone’s guess.

The question Dutton won’t answer is who is better placed to recommend effective action to improve the lives of indigenous communities than a group of people representing the communities? If he has a different answer to recognition, a ‘Voice to Parliament’ and treaty, perhaps he could tell the rest of us how it would work. Because the Coalition’s famed ‘interventions’ in recent history certainly haven’t.