The Voice

[sptrawler]

More to the point orr, what experience have you had directly with aboriginals apart from as you said neighbors down the street?
I have at least lived and worked with them, my second sons partner is is aboriginal with several kids, but you are a self ordained expert, actually from your posts a blind faith follower who seems bereft of independent thought, would seem more accurate.
But hey it takes all kinds, its nice to hear from experts like yourself a search through your past posts actually shows the depth of your thought processes. Lol
Just because something is all that is on offer, doesnt make it the best choice, oh sorry I forgot if it comes from Labor it must be great, I dont see it that way, my apolgies for not following the programe.

 

[Smurf1976]

Add to the above matters relating to education, health and incarceration and tell me where you can find another category of persons who suffer the same levels of disadvantage that warrant significant intervention.

I don't have the statistics but anecdotally at least, the long term unemployed. Once they're in that category they tend to be there permanently. Not always but many end up in that situation.

Children growing up in bad families much the same. Read the court lists and it's the same surnames that keep coming up over and over especially outside the 5 major capitals. It's generational crime, the whole family's trouble and the kids don't have a chance.

Just my observation but I doubt anyone, no matter how it comes about, is really going to be willing to do what it takes to actually close the gap.

Government won't do it due to fear of being accused of all sorts of wrongdoings.

Aboriginal people themselves won't do it because it largely means assimilation in practice.

 

[rederob]

So as I said another pointless exercise and a waste of money, that achieves nothing..

On the contrary - yet again - as Parliament can act on good ideas, and not act on ideas which it deems, for example, not cost effective. That's their prerogative.

For what purpose if it can only produce suggestions, that can be ignored, you are funny.

See above. Or, for example, it may not act where there seems to be contention, or where it deems the level of consultation was superficial. Or, government might have information that renders an idea impractical. There are many reasons why Parliament may not act, or might delay acting immediately, which will be valid.

Oh so now you're adopting the very trait you despise in others, when all else fails play the man.?

On the contrary - for the umpteenth time. You chose not to respond to claims you made which I know were false, and I said people are being sucked in by such claims. Would you like me to repeat those claims? If anyone makes false claims that others believe then that's dealing directly with substance and not the perpetrator.

That is the good thing about opinions, everyone has one and currently they all carry the same weight.

I expressed my belief, not an opinion.

 

[SirRumpole]

I think we have to ask if ATSIC people can't organise a representative body themselves (they have had plenty of time), why would having one imposed on them by the Constitution be successful ?

 

[rederob]

I don't have the statistics but anecdotally at least, the long term unemployed. Once they're in that category they tend to be there permanently. Not always but many end up in that situation.

Except that's not how it works. Statistically the long term unemployed have a reasonable turnover rate and only a small cohort would be regarded as "unemployable." For example, pre-covid April 2019 showed over 96k unemployed for 2 years or longer (seasonally adjusted) and this had fallen to 45.5k last month. Some 30 years ago the same cohort showed 151.4k LTU in a significantly smaller labour force.
A good article on this issue was in The Conversation a few days ago.

Children growing up in bad families much the same. Read the court lists and it's the same surnames that keep coming up over and over especially outside the 5 major capitals. It's generational crime, the whole family's trouble and the kids don't have a chance.

While that might be true, the fact remains that if you are ATSI then the quality of your family is less of an issue. Educational attainment and geography are greater impediments, eg,

Aboriginal people themselves won't do it because it largely means assimilation in practice.

That's not what proponents of the Voice believe. Better targeted policies, properly funded and managed projects, and local ownership of solutions has to be an improvement on past failures.

 

[rederob]

I think we have to ask if ATSIC people can't organise a representative body themselves (they have had plenty of time), why would having one imposed on them by the Constitution be successful ?

It's not about the representative body, it's about proposals that come from the ground up and how or if they are put forward.

 

[sptrawler]

It's not about the representative body, it's about proposals that come from the ground up and how or if they are put forward.

It makes about as much sense and will be about as much use as the 'no child will live in poverty' quote.
It's about time the Government stopped dancing around the underlying issue and manned up.
The Aboriginals have made it very clear, they are aggrieved by the fact they feel their land was forcibly taken from them and they want that resolved.
They don't want another avenue to be able to tell people their lives are sht, everyone knows that their lives are sht, it has been on t.v enough times, even the elites on the East Coast know about it.
Having it put up in lights and pretending that another committee is going to change things is just another brain fart and we will be back where we are now in 10 years time.
The same as we are 14 years after Kevin Rudd's apology, what was that about? Obviously nothing just another BS initiative that resolves FA and kicked the probelm down the road, to where we are now.
What they want is a future where they can live a life they are happy with, without having to always be putting their hand out or lining up at centrelink, which is soul destroying enough.
They wont be happy until they are sensibly compensated for what they believe was unlawfully taken from them, Bull Sh#$ng on will just add more anger and frustration, IMO it's about time they got on with resolving the issue properly and stopped the nonsense.

 

[JohnDe]

 

[JohnDe]

... as Paul Hasluck, Robert Menzies’ long-serving minister for territories, told the state premiers in 1961, the government’s overriding objective was for Aboriginal people to be “members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights, privileges and obligations as other Australians”.​

Australians expected parliament’s new power to be used to further the process of integration: any “special laws”, Hasluck had explained, were to be “temporary measures” designed to “assist (Aborigines) to make the transition” into Australian society.​

​

There was, however, nothing that restricted the amended provision to temporary measures or specified the goal it was to serve. As a result, when prime minister William McMahon suddenly announced on Australia Day 1972 that he was jettisoning the policy of integration....​

​

...Quite what that objective was remained entirely unclear; matters were not helped when the Whitlam government dubbed it “self-determination”, as if the outcome being sought for Indigenous Australians resembled the process then under way in Papua New Guinea. What was clear, however, was that the new approach involved a torrent of special measures...​

​

All that was sure to make many Australians deeply uncomfortable. After all, if modern Australia has an ideal, it is that of a country that is “one and free”, in which all citizens have – to repeat Hasluck’s words – “the same rights, privileges and obligations”. Moreover, although there are undeniable flaws in our national history, Australians are typically proud of their country, admire its record in widening the circle of citizenship and of inclusion, and resent the relentless rubbishing of its achievements.​

Why voice referendum can’t afford to repeat error of 1967

That the referendum on the voice will be among the most contentious in Australian history is beyond doubt. But for all of the harm it will cause, the proposed amendment at least forces into the open tensions that have simmered beneath the surface for far too long.
Those tensions are, in many respects, the unfinished business of the 1967 referendum. At their origin lies the almost complete disconnection between the theme that dominated the campaign leading to the vote on May 27, 1967 and the reality of the constitutional amendment to which the referendum gave effect.

Aboriginal Voting rights float during the 1967 May day procession.

The campaign’s theme was unambiguous: equal rights. Nowhere was that aspiration more eloquently captured than in the song that echoed across the country during the referendum – a song urging Australians to “Vote Yes to give (Aborigines) rights just like me and you”. And as Faith Bandler, who embodied the campaign’s spirit, declared, the time had finally come for “the original Australians” to be “treated equally with other Australians”.

Nor were equal rights at odds with official policy.

On the contrary, as Paul Hasluck, Robert Menzies’ long-serving minister for territories, told the state premiers in 1961, the government’s overriding objective was for Aboriginal people to be “members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights, privileges and obligations as other Australians”.

It was that positive vision Australians endorsed when they overwhelmingly backed the proposed change; voters were convinced the referendum would “remove words from our Constitution that many people think are discriminatory”, as the leaflet articulating the Yes case stated. Read literally, that description was correct; but the practical import of the amendment was altogether different.

The relevant change was to the constitutional provision that confers on parliament the power to legislate with respect to “the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”.

Initially, the provision excluded “the Aboriginal race in any state”. That limitation, the University of Adelaide’s Professor Greg Taylor has shown, reflected the narrow objective of the provision’s leading advocate, Sir Samuel Griffiths, which was to allow parliament to pass legislation ending the abuses associated with the forcible importation of foreign labourers, notably from the Pacific Islands.

By 1967, Griffiths’ objective had long since been achieved (albeit notoriously harshly), leaving the provision moribund. But the referendum gave it a new lease of life.

Excising the exclusion of “the Aboriginal race” from the provision’s scope, the referendum granted parliament the same powers with respect to Aborigines that it had over other races – including the power to pass legislation that was substantively discriminatory, be it to the benefit or the detriment of those affected.

Everything suggests Australians expected parliament’s new power to be used to further the process of integration: any “special laws”, Hasluck had explained, were to be “temporary measures” designed to “assist (Aborigines) to make the transition” into Australian society.

There was, however, nothing that restricted the amended provision to temporary measures or specified the goal it was to serve. As a result, when prime minister William McMahon suddenly announced on Australia Day 1972 that he was jettisoning the policy of integration, his government could draw on vastly increased powers to pursue its new objective.

Quite what that objective was remained entirely unclear; matters were not helped when the Whitlam government dubbed it “self-determination”, as if the outcome being sought for Indigenous Australians resembled the process then under way in Papua New Guinea. What was clear, however, was that the new approach involved a torrent of special measures.

To say that those measures proved unsuccessful would be an understatement. Moreover, as successive crises tore remote Indigenous communities apart, additional special measures were heaped on those already in place, both squaring the error and perpetuating it. Nor were the three attempts at creating a workable and constructive Indigenous consultative assembly any more successful, with each attempt being even more divisive than its predecessor.

To make things worse, the rhetoric justifying the overall policy underwent a subtle but important shift as the cycles of meagre hopes and dashed expectations played themselves out.

The integration policies had always been justified prospectively: each measure was presented (rightly or wrongly) as a step towards full equality. But with the new approach yielding nothing but bitter harvests, its vast cost was increasingly justified in terms of the politics of atonement – a politics that, as well as placing itself above all criticism, lacked any natural limits and could only lead to ever-escalating demands.

The fact that the new approach was championed by a prosperous, largely urban, elite that benefited from the power, prestige and patronage emanating from the flood of interventions then gave that dynamic added momentum, compounding the damage.

All that was sure to make many Australians deeply uncomfortable. After all, if modern Australia has an ideal, it is that of a country that is “one and free”, in which all citizens have – to repeat Hasluck’s words – “the same rights, privileges and obligations”. Moreover, although there are undeniable flaws in our national history, Australians are typically proud of their country, admire its record in widening the circle of citizenship and of inclusion, and resent the relentless rubbishing of its achievements.

It should therefore have been obvious that the voice would raise serious concerns. Instead of learning from past mistakes, the proposal seeks to constitutionally entrench the separate representation that has failed whenever it has been tried and that experience and analysis suggest will continue to fail in the years ahead. And if the voice opens a door, it is not to equal political rights but to institutionalised racial division.

None of that is to recommend returning to the policies Hasluck adopted. Yet it is not just possible and permissible but vital to renew Hasluck’s overall vision, that so many Australians share, of political equality in a truly colourblind Australia – a goal that was blown off course by the abandonment, which the 1967 referendum facilitated, of the ideal of integration.

By placing that ideal back on the table, the referendum invites a mature discussion of where this country is heading. Unfortunately, rather than addressing that question, the Yes camp is resorting to cheap moralising whose purpose is not to convince but to silence.

Hiding behind a steam bath of emotions, it seems to believe moral blackmail can induce Australians into repeating the error of pursuing political equality by entrenching political inequality.

But it is worth remembering that Abraham Lincoln, in declaring that “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, warned that the nation’s utmost need was to understand “where we are and whither we are tending”. As we enter a period of high tension, Australians deserve better than another leap in the dark.

HENRY ERGAS COLUMNIST

 

[rederob]

It makes about as much sense and will be about as much use as the 'no child will live in poverty' quote.

Please explain.

It's about time the Government stopped dancing around the underlying issue and manned up.

In fact it's acting on a process that began a decade ago, so you can hardly call that "dancing around".

The Aboriginals have made it very clear, they are aggrieved by the fact they feel their land was forcibly taken from them and they want that resolved.

That is not what the Voice is about.

Having it put up in lights and pretending that another committee is going to change things is just another brain fart and we will be back where we are now in 10 years time.

It's not a committee and will act on grass roots proposals. Are you sleeping with @SirRumpole .

... IMO it's about time they got on with resolving the issue properly and stopped the nonsense.

That's exactly what the Voice is intending.

 

[SirRumpole]

I fear that the main recommendations of the Voice will be for more money from the long suffering taxpayers.

 

[sptrawler]

I fear that the main recommendations of the Voice will be for more money from the long suffering taxpayers.

That wont change, no matter what happens.

 

[sptrawler]

Please explain.

In fact it's acting on a process that began a decade ago, so you can hardly call that "dancing around".

That is not what the Voice is about.

It's not a committee and will act on grass roots proposals. Are you sleeping with @SirRumpole .

That's exactly what the Voice is intending.

You certainly bring clarity, to why very little gets done in Canberra. Lol

 

[IFocus]

Come on SP major change isn’t going to happen so incremental is the only hope hope that you will happy kill off.

After the referendum fails you will be able to celibate stopping any improvements that Aboriginals can own and their voices will be silenced.

 

[JohnDe]

I think that Henri has pretty much nailed the concerns of the voting public.

None of that is to recommend returning to the policies Hasluck adopted. Yet it is not just possible and permissible but vital to renew Hasluck’s overall vision, that so many Australians share, of political equality in a truly colourblind Australia – a goal that was blown off course by the abandonment, which the 1967 referendum facilitated, of the ideal of integration.​

​

By placing that ideal back on the table, the referendum invites a mature discussion of where this country is heading. Unfortunately, rather than addressing that question, the Yes camp is resorting to cheap moralising whose purpose is not to convince but to silence.​

​

Hiding behind a steam bath of emotions, it seems to believe moral blackmail can induce Australians into repeating the error of pursuing political equality by entrenching political inequality.​

​

But it is worth remembering that Abraham Lincoln, in declaring that “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, warned that the nation’s utmost need was to understand “where we are and whither we are tending”. As we enter a period of high tension, Australians deserve better than another leap in the dark.​

Why voice referendum can’t afford to repeat error of 1967

That the referendum on the voice will be among the most contentious in Australian history is beyond doubt. But for all of the harm it will cause, the proposed amendment at least forces into the open tensions that have simmered beneath the surface for far too long.
Those tensions are, in many respects, the unfinished business of the 1967 referendum. At their origin lies the almost complete disconnection between the theme that dominated the campaign leading to the vote on May 27, 1967 and the reality of the constitutional amendment to which the referendum gave effect.

Aboriginal Voting rights float during the 1967 May day procession.

The campaign’s theme was unambiguous: equal rights. Nowhere was that aspiration more eloquently captured than in the song that echoed across the country during the referendum – a song urging Australians to “Vote Yes to give (Aborigines) rights just like me and you”. And as Faith Bandler, who embodied the campaign’s spirit, declared, the time had finally come for “the original Australians” to be “treated equally with other Australians”.

Nor were equal rights at odds with official policy.

On the contrary, as Paul Hasluck, Robert Menzies’ long-serving minister for territories, told the state premiers in 1961, the government’s overriding objective was for Aboriginal people to be “members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights, privileges and obligations as other Australians”.

It was that positive vision Australians endorsed when they overwhelmingly backed the proposed change; voters were convinced the referendum would “remove words from our Constitution that many people think are discriminatory”, as the leaflet articulating the Yes case stated. Read literally, that description was correct; but the practical import of the amendment was altogether different.

The relevant change was to the constitutional provision that confers on parliament the power to legislate with respect to “the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”.

Initially, the provision excluded “the Aboriginal race in any state”. That limitation, the University of Adelaide’s Professor Greg Taylor has shown, reflected the narrow objective of the provision’s leading advocate, Sir Samuel Griffiths, which was to allow parliament to pass legislation ending the abuses associated with the forcible importation of foreign labourers, notably from the Pacific Islands.

By 1967, Griffiths’ objective had long since been achieved (albeit notoriously harshly), leaving the provision moribund. But the referendum gave it a new lease of life.

Excising the exclusion of “the Aboriginal race” from the provision’s scope, the referendum granted parliament the same powers with respect to Aborigines that it had over other races – including the power to pass legislation that was substantively discriminatory, be it to the benefit or the detriment of those affected.

Everything suggests Australians expected parliament’s new power to be used to further the process of integration: any “special laws”, Hasluck had explained, were to be “temporary measures” designed to “assist (Aborigines) to make the transition” into Australian society.

There was, however, nothing that restricted the amended provision to temporary measures or specified the goal it was to serve. As a result, when prime minister William McMahon suddenly announced on Australia Day 1972 that he was jettisoning the policy of integration, his government could draw on vastly increased powers to pursue its new objective.

Quite what that objective was remained entirely unclear; matters were not helped when the Whitlam government dubbed it “self-determination”, as if the outcome being sought for Indigenous Australians resembled the process then under way in Papua New Guinea. What was clear, however, was that the new approach involved a torrent of special measures.

To say that those measures proved unsuccessful would be an understatement. Moreover, as successive crises tore remote Indigenous communities apart, additional special measures were heaped on those already in place, both squaring the error and perpetuating it. Nor were the three attempts at creating a workable and constructive Indigenous consultative assembly any more successful, with each attempt being even more divisive than its predecessor.

To make things worse, the rhetoric justifying the overall policy underwent a subtle but important shift as the cycles of meagre hopes and dashed expectations played themselves out.

The integration policies had always been justified prospectively: each measure was presented (rightly or wrongly) as a step towards full equality. But with the new approach yielding nothing but bitter harvests, its vast cost was increasingly justified in terms of the politics of atonement – a politics that, as well as placing itself above all criticism, lacked any natural limits and could only lead to ever-escalating demands.

The fact that the new approach was championed by a prosperous, largely urban, elite that benefited from the power, prestige and patronage emanating from the flood of interventions then gave that dynamic added momentum, compounding the damage.

All that was sure to make many Australians deeply uncomfortable. After all, if modern Australia has an ideal, it is that of a country that is “one and free”, in which all citizens have – to repeat Hasluck’s words – “the same rights, privileges and obligations”. Moreover, although there are undeniable flaws in our national history, Australians are typically proud of their country, admire its record in widening the circle of citizenship and of inclusion, and resent the relentless rubbishing of its achievements.

It should therefore have been obvious that the voice would raise serious concerns. Instead of learning from past mistakes, the proposal seeks to constitutionally entrench the separate representation that has failed whenever it has been tried and that experience and analysis suggest will continue to fail in the years ahead. And if the voice opens a door, it is not to equal political rights but to institutionalised racial division.

None of that is to recommend returning to the policies Hasluck adopted. Yet it is not just possible and permissible but vital to renew Hasluck’s overall vision, that so many Australians share, of political equality in a truly colourblind Australia – a goal that was blown off course by the abandonment, which the 1967 referendum facilitated, of the ideal of integration.

By placing that ideal back on the table, the referendum invites a mature discussion of where this country is heading. Unfortunately, rather than addressing that question, the Yes camp is resorting to cheap moralising whose purpose is not to convince but to silence.

Hiding behind a steam bath of emotions, it seems to believe moral blackmail can induce Australians into repeating the error of pursuing political equality by entrenching political inequality.

But it is worth remembering that Abraham Lincoln, in declaring that “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, warned that the nation’s utmost need was to understand “where we are and whither we are tending”. As we enter a period of high tension, Australians deserve better than another leap in the dark.

HENRY ERGAS COLUMNIST

 

[sptrawler]

Come on SP major change isn’t going to happen so incremental is the only hope hope that you will happy kill off.

After the referendum fails you will be able to celibate stopping any improvements that Aboriginals can own and their voices will be silenced.

Why not have the referendum ask the public whether they want a voice, a treaty or leave it as is and explain the differences? Then at least something is done, that would be novel.
I really wish you wouldn't patronise me, I think I've put forward sensible debate, all others seem to do is criticise without explaining the real tangible benefits of their own opinions.
Also don't you think your statement, "major change isn't going to happen so the only hope is incremental change", actually underlines what I said about the public having a fear of a hidden agenda.
Your statement actually supports that belief, the public is a lot better informed these days than people and the Govt give them credit for, it isn't like the 1980's where they could sell the public a 'bunny'..

 

[rederob]

I think that Henri has pretty much nailed the concerns of the voting public.

None of that is to recommend returning to the policies Hasluck adopted. Yet it is not just possible and permissible but vital to renew Hasluck’s overall vision, that so many Australians share, of political equality in a truly colourblind Australia – a goal that was blown off course by the abandonment, which the 1967 referendum facilitated, of the ideal of integration.​

​

By placing that ideal back on the table, the referendum invites a mature discussion of where this country is heading. Unfortunately, rather than addressing that question, the Yes camp is resorting to cheap moralising whose purpose is not to convince but to silence.​

​

Hiding behind a steam bath of emotions, it seems to believe moral blackmail can induce Australians into repeating the error of pursuing political equality by entrenching political inequality.​

​

But it is worth remembering that Abraham Lincoln, in declaring that “A house divided against itself cannot stand”, warned that the nation’s utmost need was to understand “where we are and whither we are tending”. As we enter a period of high tension, Australians deserve better than another leap in the dark.​

Ergas's first few sentences sum up how mainstream media will sink the referendum.
What was a widely supported bipartisan process has been hijacked by bigots and ignoramuses intent on spreading lies and disinformation about what the referendum is about and what the Voice will do.

Ergas is so ignorant of reality that he has not worked out that our house has been "divided" since colonisation. And his so called "leap in the dark" has actually been detailed across hundreds of pages.

 

[sptrawler]

Ergas's first few sentences sum up how mainstream media will sink the referendum.

Jeez there isn't much confidence in the camp, it appears I'm the only one who thinks it will get up.
You have to remember 60% of the population live in the S/E section of Australia, most of them know very little about the aboriginal issue, so they will tend to vote on an emotional basis, which IMO will be a yes.
The media I read, seems to be in favour of it.
Time will tell.

 

[JohnDe]

Ergas's first few sentences sum up how mainstream media will sink the referendum.
What was a widely supported bipartisan process has been hijacked by bigots and ignoramuses intent on spreading lies and disinformation about what the referendum is about and what the Voice will do.

Ergas is so ignorant of reality that he has not worked out that our house has been "divided" since colonisation. And his so called "leap in the dark" has actually been detailed across hundreds of pages.

"...the Yes camp is resorting to cheap moralising whose purpose is not to convince but to silence. Hiding behind a steam bath of emotions, it seems to believe moral blackmail can induce Australians into repeating the error of pursuing political equality by entrenching political inequality."

Henry Ergas AO is an economist who spent many years at the OECD in Paris before returning to Australia. He has taught at a number of universities, including Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the University of Auckland and the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique in Paris, served as Inaugural Professor of Infrastructure Economics at the University of Wollongong and worked as an adviser to companies and governments.

 

[orr]

You have to remember 60% of the population live in the S/E section of Australia, most of them know very little about the aboriginal issue, so they will tend to vote on an emotional basis, which IMO will be a yes.

Time will tell.

Over in the East we slaughtered the 'native 'a whole lot earlier.
Look to the 'progressive' Lachlan Mcquarie's proclimation of 1816 and the Appin Massicare that followed. Then roll on to the Elliston Massicare, where the the Great white gobbled a surfer down a week or so ago, of 1849,.... and then to the Governorship of SA by Alexander Downers gran Daddy, J.W. and all those Snider-Enfield 50cal's with unlimited ammo that went north to any who wanted it through the mid 1880's t0 mid 1890's.

Yeah ...you in da' west know what's up... if it happened yesterday.
remind me again of the historical reading on Australia you've done trawler ... is that crickets ??

not that it should matter, my interation with Brewarrina goses back 40 years, those I know there? well over a century. 'Get out'a Dodge' might just take on a bit of new mean'n....

the Bethnal Green Pub, was the Salmon & Ball....

It's all about Labor; That's why the the Liberals are left with the knuckle-draggers and the Teals have eat'n their lunch and they are all in favour of the Voice.

'Time will tell' I remember that from one of you Brexit defences... you really are laughable..