The Voice

[TimeISmoney]

But can anyone explain why someone such as Ray Martin, for example, needs special representation to government?

I reckon they need more encouragement than free handouts or special treatment. What happened in the past is the past, they don't have the same impediments in life as they had 200 years ago. Life is what you want to make of it.

Meet the Aboriginal painter who can't read or write but battled an alcohol addiction to make millions selling paintings and now drives a convertible RED FERRARI​

He said: 'I started selling boomerangs down at the St Kilda Market. Someone would ask me a question about it and I couldn't even look at them.

'But as I sold the first, then the tenth, then the hundredth, I became more confident.

'And then I had the opportunity to start paying the didgeridoo, and the next thing I know I'm on stage next to Stevie Wonder and he's singing Superstitious.

'My culture has given me the opportunity to do all of this, because I put the bottle down and picked up the paintbrush.

 

[Smurf1976]

MAN WITH HAT SEEKS ANOTHER DIVISIVE ISSUE

My observation of politics is it always seeks to create division. That goes for all sides and most issues.

Racism, climate change, economics, violence, poverty, transport and on it goes but the basic approach is always the same. Politics seeks to fix some of the problem but forcefully resists fixing all of it.

Just my observation but the biggest critics of fixing all of a problem, those who'll absolutely resist any attempt to do so, are the ones who make the biggest noise about it needing to be fixed.

It seems to apply to pretty much anything. Correctly identify some problem that few would deny is real, then come up with a solution that fixes only part of it noting that in order to do so, in order to only fix it for some, is usually harder than it would be to just fix it outright.

Why have a vibrant economy when you can restrict that to selected industries?

Why have cheap electricity for everyone when you can limit it to homeowners with money and a suitable roof?

Why educate everyone to their potential when you can restrict that to university?

Why eliminate poverty when you can restrict that to selected individuals?

And so on. That seems to be the political approach to pretty much everything. Correctly identify the problem but make sure the solution is as minimal and restricted as possible, even when doing so costs more time and money than just fixing it outright.

Why not just fix the problem wherever it occurs?

Just my observation but I see this a lot in another context. Fix part of a problem and those demanding it be fixed will give you a pat on the back and say well done. Propose fixing all of it and they'll fight tooth and nail to make damn sure you don't. That seems to be a consistent theme across all sorts of issues.

 

[IFocus]

But can anyone explain why someone such as Ray Martin, for example, needs special representation to government?

They don't and never the intention which has been clearly laid out, as an aside means testing applies to Aboriginals as well.

 

[JohnDe]

"If the voice referendum is successful, will “the people” of Australia continue to be sovereign? Or will the High Court declare the First Peoples are sovereign? How far will this sovereignty extend? Will the sovereignty vested in the First Peoples extend to the power to prescribe and enforce criminal law against their own tribal members, as American courts have found? What obligations will the High Court find the Crown owes to the First Peoples? Will it be a form of fiduciary duty, as Canadian and New Zealand courts have found? Most fundamentally, how will the High Court define the First Peoples? Will it return to a pre-1967 preponderance of blood test? Or will it convert the test into one of subjective self-identification and communal acceptance?​

​

"No one knows the answers to these questions. But without protection against judicial adventurism, they would be resolved by the seven members of the High Court from time to time. Do we really wish to permit a majority of four unelected judges to determine these questions rather than the millions of Australian people acting through their elected representatives? What if these future judges are the same lawyers who today prefer virtue signalling over cold-eyed and hard-headed legal analysis?​

​

"In truth, permanence and recognition (without the protection of a “no legal force” clause) are the strongest arguments not for but against the voice.​

​

Entrenching into the Australian Constitution a special interest body and a First Peoples (whose scope and rights depends on the rulings of the High Court) deprives future generations of the freedom to easily frame the country’s governance as they see fit. This proposal for constitutional change is not only legally unnecessary but also intergenerationally inequitable and unjust."
Stuart Wood is a Melbourne-based King’s Counsel.​

The voice referendum is a constitutional solution searching for a constitutional problem. The referendum is legally unnecessary.

The charade begins with the Yes case’s legal brigade misrepresenting the effect of the 1967 referendum to promote a false premise for constitutional change in 2023.

Contrary to the myths frequently promoted (including by the Indigenous Australians Minister), the 1967 referendum did not give Aboriginal Australians the right to vote, make them citizens or require them to be counted in the census. These achievements came years before the 1967 referendum.

Instead, the 1967 referendum perfected the commonwealth’s power to legislate in relation to Aboriginal affairs. Before 1967, the states had such power, with the commonwealth’s direct power limited to the territories. After 1967 it became Australia-wide. Every federal government since 1967 has used that federal power over Aboriginal affairs to provide for a series of voice-like consultative bodies.

From this history, it is obvious to lawyer and non-lawyer alike that there is no constitutional impediment to the commonwealth legislating another voice-like body. It has been done many times before. It can be done again because the 1967 referendum enabled the commonwealth to effectively do whatever it likes in relation to Aboriginal affairs.

David Jackson KC, Australia’s finest constitutional silk, repeatedly expressed this obvious but crucial point before his untimely death in May. In a submission to the joint select committee on the voice, Jackson observed how the commonwealth’s legislative power was “widely enough expressed to empower the making of laws creating and regulating a body of the nature contemplated by the proposed referendum … The short fact is that there is no reason at all the parliament cannot now legislate to establish a body which has features similar to those proposed for the voice in proposed s 129.”

This basic constitutional teaching is ignored in the federal government’s “neutral civics education and awareness activities”. Most disappointingly, there has not been any convincing response from the coterie of Yes case lawyers to Jackson’s ultimate point: the voice referendum is legally unnecessary.

Some members of the legal clans of Naarm and Gadigal country – who think of themselves as the traditional owners of all legal authority in Australia – have decried legal arguments made by lawyers supporting the No case as “being racist”. They have said “the emphasis on questions of law and constitutional interpretation have already been excessive” and suggested practitioners should not speak as lawyers but as “citizens”.

In the rare instance of Jackson’s point being met, University of NSW law professor Megan Davis, in her Quarterly Essay, gave two answers. One is permanence.

Davis says “since the 1967 referendum … the chopping and changing of (previous voice-like advocacy) mechanisms has (had) a destructive impact upon communities”. However, the “chopping and changing” criticised by Davis is an ordinary incident of Australia’s democratic system. Placing future generations in a legal straitjacket is a fundamental realignment of the values underpinning our system of government. The principle appears to be: “If you change the government, you change the country – but never the voice.”

Future parliaments should be able to abolish or amend special interest bodies as a matter of intergenerational equity and fairness. Successive generations ought to be able, through parliament, to implement the societal architecture appropriate to that generation.

Davis’s second answer is recognition. But there are solid empiric reasons for concern with the model of recognition now proposed.

At last month’s Samuel Griffith Society conference, constitutional scholar Nicholas Aroney warned what might follow from elevating the First Peoples to the same level as other constitutionally entrenched concepts: the Australian people, the Crown, the parliament and the executive. Out of all the legal pundits, ex-judges and solicitors-general to opine in the past months, Aroney provides the deepest legal analysis.

He notes how the voice referendum fails to provide the legal protections offered in the 1999 referendum. In 1999, the proposed preamble was specified to have “no legal force and shall not be considered in interpreting this Constitution or the law in force in the Commonwealth or any part of the Commonwealth”. In the absence of the same protections in the voice proposal, the answers to the questions raised by Aroney, drawing on recent international developments in constitutional Indigenous recognition, are dispiriting.

If the voice referendum is successful, will “the people” of Australia continue to be sovereign? Or will the High Court declare the First Peoples are sovereign? How far will this sovereignty extend? Will the sovereignty vested in the First Peoples extend to the power to prescribe and enforce criminal law against their own tribal members, as American courts have found? What obligations will the High Court find the Crown owes to the First Peoples? Will it be a form of fiduciary duty, as Canadian and New Zealand courts have found? Most fundamentally, how will the High Court define the First Peoples? Will it return to a pre-1967 preponderance of blood test? Or will it convert the test into one of subjective self-identification and communal acceptance?

No one knows the answers to these questions. But without protection against judicial adventurism, they would be resolved by the seven members of the High Court from time to time. Do we really wish to permit a majority of four unelected judges to determine these questions rather than the millions of Australian people acting through their elected representatives? What if these future judges are the same lawyers who today prefer virtue signalling over cold-eyed and hard-headed legal analysis?

In truth, permanence and recognition (without the protection of a “no legal force” clause) are the strongest arguments not for but against the voice.

Entrenching into the Australian Constitution a special interest body and a First Peoples (whose scope and rights depends on the rulings of the High Court) deprives future generations of the freedom to easily frame the country’s governance as they see fit. This proposal for constitutional change is not only legally unnecessary but also intergenerationally inequitable and unjust.

Stuart Wood is a Melbourne-based King’s Counsel.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-locks-up-future-generations-in-legal-straitjacket/news-story/ce4f660e042a3e8f6206ce7976722bd5

 

[wayneL]

Sidebar:

This is great news.

 

[The Triangle]

I just saw a commercial about how the voice is going to advise the government on how reduce infant mortality rates.

I'm wondering what exactly they're waiting on? do they only give the advice if we vote yes? What prevents them from advising people, hospitals, doctors on reducing infant mortality rates at the moment?

Could have refurbished a few hospitals and trained a few doctors with all that money wasted on this referendum.

 

[Smurf1976]

They don't and never the intention which has been clearly laid out, as an aside means testing applies to Aboriginals as well.

So why not just make the whole thing means based and be done with it?

The "Yes" campaign has seriously failed to convince the Australian people that there's a compelling need for race to be a criteria. Versus wealth, education, health or location that few would take issue with as a basis for assistance in whatever form since even conservatives generally accept that at least some level of welfare is reasonable in the Australian context.

Consider the outrage if something, anything, were proposed in a manner that specifically sought to exclude Aboriginal people. Even if justified on some basis, they'd be screaming incredibly loudly that it's racist which is exactly what it would be.

Meanwhile, while society is tearing itself apart, there's a housing crisis, inflation, threat of war, debt, environment, education, hospitals and a long list of other serious things needing attention or precautions taken.

 

[Smurf1976]

I just saw a commercial about how the voice is going to advise the government on how reduce infant mortality rates.

This is partly where it's lost me.

Shouldn't it be doctors giving that advice?

Actual doctors, people with bona fide qualifications and who've either been involved with or who are at least referring to proper research on the subject.

That's not a subject that ought be politicised or handed to someone who won a popularity contest.

 

[farmerge]

So why not just make the whole thing means based and be done with it?

The "Yes" campaign has seriously failed to convince the Australian people that there's a compelling need for race to be a criteria. Versus wealth, education, health or location that few would take issue with as a basis for assistance in whatever form since even conservatives generally accept that at least some level of welfare is reasonable in the Australian context.

Consider the outrage if something, anything, were proposed in a manner that specifically sought to exclude Aboriginal people. Even if justified on some basis, they'd be screaming incredibly loudly that it's racist which is exactly what it would be.

Meanwhile, while society is tearing itself apart, there's a housing crisis, inflation, threat of war, debt, environment, education, hospitals and a long list of other serious things needing attention or precautions taken.

@Smurf1976 Nah the B/S Voice is far more importnt than those other mundane things.
Thankfully the weekend is nearing.

 

[basilio]

Fact checking ... But who needs facts in a debate on opinion ?

Fact checking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side​

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

Voice referendum: factchecking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

www.theguardian.com

 

[SirRumpole]

Fact checking ... But who needs facts in a debate on opinion ?

Fact checking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side​

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

Voice referendum: factchecking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

www.theguardian.com

Point 3. "The Voice will divide the nation"

It will because it gives special privileges on the basis of race.

Point 5. "There are no details"

There aren't because the details will be left to Parliament and who knows what they will come up with ? The don't know themselves otherwise they would have told us.

 

[moXJO]

Fact checking ... But who needs facts in a debate on opinion ?

Fact checking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side​

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

Voice referendum: factchecking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

www.theguardian.com

What a trash article.

 

[basilio]

As I said. This is a fact free opinion based thread.

What a trash article.

Really ? Did they miss some of the lies and misinformation ?

 

[moXJO]

As I said. This is a fact free opinion based thread.


Really ? Did they miss some of the lies and misinformation ?

I like how they referred back and cited their own articles as "proof". Do you use crayons for their word jumble section?

 

[moXJO]

This view that all's good in NZ isn't true. My tribe was fighting the elites out of a big city who were power grabbing from the other tribes. The elders of some of those tribes were pressured. We are not one big harmonious group.

Some of the shifty politics that go on from the grubs that are lawyers shines through. These dogs then side with government to create opportunities for themselves while screwing those that need the voice or assistance.

Elitist scum should not be making decisions. Especially leftists. Get in bed with the devil and its a lifelong regret.

Lots of Aboriginals want independence not this tacky bs grandstanding gesture.

 

[wayneL]

This view that all's good in NZ isn't true. My tribe was fighting the elites out of a big city who were power grabbing from the other tribes. The elders of some of those tribes were pressured. We are not one big harmonious group.

Some of the shifty politics that go on from the grubs that are lawyers shines through. These dogs then side with government to create opportunities for themselves while screwing those that need the voice or assistance.

Elitist scum should not be making decisions. Especially leftists. Get in bed with the devil and its a lifelong regret.

Lots of Aboriginals want independence not this tacky bs grandstanding gesture.

Yes, that's how it would be here... *IS here even without this voice.

Humans are all the same no matter which race, self interest rules.

 

[TimeISmoney]

Fact checking ... But who needs facts in a debate on opinion ?

Fact checking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side​

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

Voice referendum: factchecking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side

In a brutal referendum campaign, the same debunked claims from the no camp have popped up time and time again. Guardian Australia takes a look

www.theguardian.com

1. Who is saying that Australians will lose ownership of homes, I've yet to hear anyone say that. They'll certainly end up paying more in taxes and land rates to pay the rent and repatriations. It's also a proven fact that many of us have lost public land use that also came out of nowhere.

2. There have been quite a few people from the legal profession come forward with this. If legal practitioners can disagree on something it's challengeable in court.

3 Too late already done.

4 Oh, the voice is separate now, how wonderful. Weren't people like Noal Pearson saying it was the first step to the other things mentioned in the Ululru statement?

5 Speaks for itself.

6 Laugable

7 If you can double vote without your vote being dismissed I guess it is incorrect. Proven by AEC with facts.

 

[TimeISmoney]

What a trash article.

 

[basilio]

I like how they referred back and cited their own articles as "proof". Do you use crayons for their word jumble section?

I certainly don't get my information from the stuff you and most others peddle in this thread.

The Voice proposition is of a simple advisory body that could offer input to Parliament and Government of issues affecting the indigenous community. Advice that can be taken, modified or rejected. The most critical element is the organsiation itself can't be simply closed down at the whim of a government because it's existence is now part of our Constitution. Mind you anoother referendum could reverse The Voice

There are currently hundreds/thousands of such advisory bodies across our community and in politics. Student Representative Councils for example offer their schools ideas on how the student body may view aspects of their education.

The Business Council of Australia sees its role as offering advice to Government on what it sees as its interests. Community advocacy groups, environmental groups, sporting organisations. One could fill a book with the bodies that take the opportunity to lobby Government on behalf of their members. That's democracy.

But what happens when one proposes such a simple non threatening idea like a body that could offer input to Government on issues affecting the indigenous community ? Yep the pearl clutchers come out in droves. What if. What about. How dare they. Costs too much. Too divisive. Won't do anything. Will undermine our entire way of life. A communist/radical/socialist/elitist front.

 

[SirRumpole]

The Business Council of Australia sees its role as offering advice to Government on what it sees as its interests. Community advocacy groups, environmental groups, sporting organisations. One could fill a book with the bodies that take the opportunity to lobby Government on behalf of their members. That's democracy.

Yes and they do it with their own money not the taxpayer's and they don't have a guaranteed right to exist no matter what.

So what is stopping them from giving advice now ? The Minister is aboriginal why wouldn't she listen ?