A Lasting Voice to Parliament: The Yes Case
A Lasting Voice to Parliament: The Yes Case
Australia's upcoming 2023 constitutional referendum
[Political posters for the Yes campaign. Click and zoom in for the grafitti on the left and right posters. My prize goes to the centre effort: In Your Face Black and White]
Published: 2023-10-10
Introduction
This article concludes the pre-voting series on Australia's 2023 Constitutional Referendum. It is preceded by a legal and constitutional analysis and a dissection of the emotional abuse contained within the parliamentary No case. Below, the 'Yes' case article follows the structure of that adopted for the No case. From the last article the contractions of the parliamentary ‘No’ case as p-No and the same for the affirmative case as p-Yes are re-used.
The main section examines the case submitted to the Australian Election Commission by parliamentarians for inclusion in the AEC's referendum booklet.
The summary of the 'No' case was:
If you don't know then vote no.
There is a reason why you may not "know".
This was beautifully explained by Professor of History Henry Reynolds during a presentation at the Byron Writers Festival a few weeks ago in August. He recounts his move to a new obscure tertiary education institution in north Queensland in the early 1960’s. He notes his surprise when realizing that the knowledge among the people around him of Australia's recent past was completely absent from Australia's authoritative history texts of the time.
He relates what he learnt, his relationship with Eddie Mabo and some of the content which went into his landmark book "The Other Side of the Frontier". Details the Frontier Wars were made available to him by those who still had direct knowledge of them in the early 1960s.
If you dont know, listen to Henry Reynolds who "discovered" the complete lack of mention of Australia's first peoples in its official histories in the 1960s. You may recall from the initial article in this series that first peoples were given the option to vote during the same period in 1962. They were being invited to vote while the massacres were still in living memory.
With the background provided by Professor Reynolds one can read the playful and razor sharp writing of Don Watson to be yanked out of the political rhetoric playing on Australia's media and place the referendum in a greater geopolitical context. Recall that the issue at hand, the recognition of Australia's first peoples and the creation of ATSIV is legally minuscule. Mainstream conservative publications like the Australian Financial Review have published articles asserting this minimalist legal consequence position.
A summary of the argument provided in Watson's witty article could be:
For how long do you want to keep voting on the recognition Australia's first peoples? Vote yes and save yourself a return trip a few governments down the track.
Finally, if one has examined the three articles presented in this newsletter and the sources to them one should have a basic grasp of the implications of this constitutional referendum. They are political, not legal.
This is a chance for Australia to begin the process of re-learning its history, learning from the survivors of the continent's first peoples and joining the small collection of settler colonial nations that has started its journey towards a reconciliation to recreate their nation's understanding of itself in unison with their first peoples.
p-Yes
Whereas the p-No case begins in bold with:
If you dont know, vote no
p-Yes begins by explaining what a Yes vote means, the implications of the vote, what it represents.
It begins with Recognition, Listening and Better Results, ideas and phrasing from the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The last, "better results", are the last words from the Statement.
The parliamentarians behind the p-Yes submission continue to employ language derived from the Uluru Statement with "Constitutional Recognition through a Voice". They then expand beyond the language of the constitutional amendment to describe some of the manner which the current government would codify ATSIV (the 'Voice') describing that committee membership would be elected by ATSI people for fixed periods from geographically diverse parts of Australia.
p-Yes then describes the motives behind ATSIV in "Why we need it" by listing some of the prevalent demographic disadvantages for first peoples. Then the potential benefits which ATSIV's advice to a government could provide are listed, including an argument which may resonate with fiscally conservative Australians, that through ATSIV governments will be able to deliver policy which is more cost effective. Their main point is in the first two of the three improvements, again echoing the Uluru Statement, better decisions, better results.
The p-Yes introductory summary concludes with a list of facts. The first six of which restate points, then adds an age and gender diversity policy intention for ATSIV membership and concludes with the key constitutional understanding: parliament will be responsible for ATSIV.
The introduction summarizes the political aspirations written in the Uluru Statement and the core ideas behind how the current government sees those being implemented after a Yes vote requires the government to legislate ATSIV. The p-No'ers are correct that many details are missing, which is entirely appropriate. You don’t put policy details in a constitution.
What the government has laid out in p-Yes is the motivation for, the mechanism of and the intended direction of travel for ATSIV so that citizens can vote on it.
As in the No case article, next, the first three reasons presented in p-Yes will be examined.
1 ATSIV came from ATSI (This idea came directly from Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people)
As they write in bold:
The call for a voice did not come from politicians.
This is straight out of the Uluru Statement. p-Yes is asking voters to support the initiative requested by a sector (3%) of the electorate. They conclude with a statement calling for unity, a direct counter to the discord which they expect from p-No.
2 Constitutional recognition for concrete results
In reason two p-Yes merges several ideas of history, recognition, unity and 'concrete' real results. While each of these components have value, the manner in which they are merged here dilutes their potential impact.
Good intentions are mixed with poor expression. It fails the 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' test.
3 Ensure people have a better life
In reason three p-Yes goes into detail examining the demographic problems faced by first peoples, acknowledging that repeated well intentioned governments have spent 'billions' and essentially failed to achieve lasting results. They assert that a core reason for this is that policy has been made by politicians and bureaucrats. As has been the case many times in public policy formation, involving the people who will be affected by it tends to produce policy better tailored to address the problems being felt 'on the ground'.
To re-reinforce the point they use quite a lot of their '2000 word limit' real estate to list 3 success stories in government provided services which have benefited from first peoples' advice.
While one could criticize the amount of space used, this 'reason' is probably the strongest of the first three judged on quality of argumentation.
Of the three reasons, a cynic could dismiss 1 as 'if ATSIV goes wrong its not our fault' and 2 as word salad of different ideas poorly mixed. 3 stands alone. It is very difficult to argue against.
The remaining 5 points variously express ideas already presented in the introductory summary.
Could p-Yes have been better organized or expressed, and if so how?
While not a political strategist, with 20-20 hindsight and a little knowledge of Australian constitutional reform I can offer a different, though riskier strategy which could have been taken by the p-Yes authors.
First one can understand that constitutional reform in Australia only succeeds if both major political parties support it. It was obvious from the outset that Australia's politically conservative party would not support this proposal. Thus, it was doomed from the outset. If one accepts this rather grim reality, and one is prepared to take a political risk one could have been braver in making the Yes case.
The described p-Yes case rests on a fairly poor assumption, that a very significant percentage of the Australian voting population actually have the breadth of historical and legal understanding which sits behind the proposed constitutional amendment. The braver strategy would acknowledge this lack of understanding and begin with informing the populace in broad strokes of this background.
The path which is to be set is one of reconciliation, and ATSIV is not the body to achieve that. If created it may be an effective input to government policy, as one would hope. Whether it gets created is up to the people and whether it is effective is up to the government and the representations ATSIV makes.
The p-Yes case does begin with the 65 000 year history of the first peoples of this continental nation. The authors are too meek to continue from there and inform the electorate that more than two centuries of first State and then national governments have attempted to remove these people and their culture from the continent.
This history needs to be reckoned with. It cannot be changed. Some elements of this history are attributable to only a tiny minority of Australia's current electorate. This constitutional reform vote is not an exercise in the attribution of blame. One must, nonetheless, begin with a honest telling of Australia's history.
The reason that most people are unaware of this history is as laid out by Reynolds. It has been assiduously kept from Australia's history for all but the last few decades. Many steps can be taken to bring this history into light. One can look to other nations, like our good friends and sporting rivals across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand. Should not the Australian War Memorial devote quite some space to documenting and acknowledging Australia's frontier wars? Could not Australia's school curricula include both the treatment of first peoples and some of their successes? Would it not be valuable to explain the legal limitations placed on native title as judged by the Supreme Court in the Mabo ruling?
Yes, of course. The problem is that many people do not wish to confront this history. It is painful.
How can we inspire compassion with the generational suffering of first peoples? One must employ the language of empathy and love, not of rhetoric or analysis. Today's first peoples and their elders were children once too. Many of them have suffered difficult upbringings away from their cultural lands in difficult circumstances. Before we start to point our fingers at their parents, in which circumstances were they raising their children? Every parent understands the struggle of child raising, having to compromise and the difficulty of not always being able to provide the best care or opportunities one may wish for one's children.
With this compassion and the knowledge that almost none of this history is yours to bear, fellow Australians, we can take this opportunity to give first peoples the recognition and voice for which they are asking. With this compassion and knowledge we can understand the party political nature of the p-No campaign, understand its divisiveness and discord and reject it for the future health of the nation.
With this understanding and the knowledge that citizenship comes with responsibility the Australian people can choose to begin a process of reconciliation. ATSIV is a small, though perhaps valuable thing. Of far more value to Australia is access to and inclusion of the cultural and practical knowledge still maintained by first peoples, despite all of the difficulties they have endured in preserving it.
This is the Yes case. To celebrate the beautiful history and culture of the first peoples which overwhelms the short period of terrible policy by largely European settlers. We return to the strongest part of p-Yes, its introductory summary. The 65 000 years of history, the opportunity which is given to us, the chance to heal, unify and celebrate.
Our nation's first peoples are still asking for this. Let's join them, respond to their invitation and walk with them by saying and voting
YES
Sources
Referendum 2023: Your official referendum booklet, Australian Electoral Commission, 2023
Why Henry Reynolds had to find out what really happened on the frontier, Late Night Live, ABC, 2023-10-02
A modest proposal for submarine money, Don Watson, The Monthly, 2023-08
The Voice is low risk but high return, Robert French and Geoffrey Lindell, Australian Financial Review, 2023-02-04
Uluru Statement from the Heart, representatives of Australia's indigenous peoples at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, 2017
Henry Reynolds (historian), Wikipedia
The other side of the frontier : aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia, Henry Reynolds, Archive.org, published 1982
List of massacres of Indigenous Australians, Wikipedia
A Lasting Voice to Parliament: A Constitutional Legal Analysis, YesXorNo, 2023-09-20
A Lasting Voice to Parliament: The No Case, YesXorNo, 2023-10-03
Frontier, Race, Nation: Henry Reynolds and Australian History (review), Dr Frank Bongiorno (King's College London), Reviews in History, 2011-02
Frontier, race, nation: Henry Reynolds and Australian history (review), Professor Tom Griffiths, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009
Necklace of Pearl. "North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australia's North" by Henry Reynolds. (review), Nicholas Jose, Australian Book Review, 2003-11
Culture
A.B. Original & Paul Kelly ''Dumb Things'' for Like A Version, triple j, uploaded 2016-11-25
Nope