In conception, content and consequences
We live in strange times. A race-based constitutional body will ensure racial equality. Those calling for a race-blind constitution and public policy are racists. Those spewing hatred and bile at sceptics raising legitimate questions to complex policy challenges accuse the latter of hate speech described as literal violence. Those who betray traces of deeply buried subconscious racism in the belief that Aboriginals can never exercise agency and be educated to take responsibility for their destiny, but must always be treated as victims, glow with virtuous satisfaction at their progressivism in spurning equal citizenship. Biden’s belief that African-Americans who voted for Trump over him ‘ain’t black’ is a typical representation of this inherent racism that could be perceived in the spat between Philip Adams and Kamahl. When Adams belittled Kamahl as an ‘Honorary White’, Nyunggai Warren Mundine called the racially charged, derogatory and offensive description ‘reprehensible’.
After apologies for ill-chosen remarks against Meghan Markle emboldened his critics instead of appeasing the duke of woke and the cry-bully duchess of whinge, Jeremy Clarkson wrote in the Sunday Times that we are at war with ‘a full-on left-wing campaign to unstitch and burn the fabric’ of Western society, for example by indoctrinating instead of educating children and capturing the commanding heights of the mainstream media. The most lethal weapon in their arsenal is identity politics on race, religion and gender. This subverts Martin Luther King’s dream of a world in which people are judged not on the colour of their skin but the content of their character. Its most insidious effect is to fracture national unity and social cohesion. Tory (!) candidates in the UK are being given lessons on ‘white resentment’ and ‘unconscious bias’ before standing for parliament.
Matt Canavan’s call for a second question in the Voice referendum on keeping 26 January as Australia Day is worth considering. Failing that, the Voice could well call for the day to be scrapped because, for an activist minority, it’s a day of mourning, not celebration. The zeitgeist encourages the romanticisation of Aboriginal culture and history and the demonisation of everything European. The Manichean framing is erroneous and dangerous. How many schoolchildren are being taught to be ashamed of Australia’s British heritage for the alleged inherited guilt of institutional racism, dispossession and oppression? Sports and entertainment stars must believe their celebrity status confers superior wisdom to set the nation’s moral compass. Ashleigh Gardner called out Cricket Australia: ‘As a proud Muruwari woman and reflecting on what Jan 26 means to me and my people it is a day of hurt and a day of mourning.’ Gardner is presumably mixed-race who wouldn’t exist but for the Europeans’ arrival in 1788. She is both coloniser and colonised or, as Stan Grant put it once, the settler on the ship and the Aborigine on shore. What would we think if a mixed-race person proclaimed herself a proud white woman? How does she reconcile the conflict between her oppressor and victim genes? Why is it racist to proclaim oneself a proud white woman but virtuous to proclaim oneself a proud [appropriate tribal] woman? I would be upset if my children were to feel ashamed of either their Irish-Australian or their Indian ancestry instead of being proud of each yet free to criticise unsavoury elements of both. ‘My culture is something I hold close to my heart and something I’m always so proud to speak about,’ Gardner added. But this is just confused and incoherent. What culture is that, if not that of a product of a mixed heritage? Language is the key gateway to any culture, and her tweet was in English. The tweet also denies the benefits that have accrued to people like Gardner alongside the history of atrocities against Aborigines. The easiest way to grasp this would be for her to think, honestly, about what her position would have been as a woman in the traditional Aboriginal society of 1788: a Hobbesian society where life is nasty, brutish and short. Gardner’s professional identity is a cricketer. Unless I’m badly misinformed, cricket is not part of Aboriginal inheritance.
Another example comes from an article in the Australian by Judith Brett. Like shallow virtue-signalling views on Australia Day, the case for a constitutionally enshrined Voice is vague, emotionally manipulative, rooted in guilt for historical wrongs and race-based. Brett used lofty language to insist that a No vote ‘will do lasting damage both to the body politic and to the nation’s soul’, yet lacks the self-awareness to realise the insult and offence caused by describing nth-generation, native-born and therefore indigenous albeit non-Aboriginal citizens as ‘settler Australians’ (hence the endless ‘welcome to country’ ceremonies?) who must vote Yes to ‘strengthen their bonds with indigenous Australians’. We must vote Yes so the author can assuage her guilt and feel good? The case against is clearer, reasoned and principled in rejecting race as a factor in Australia’s governance structure. As a lifelong campaigner against racial discrimination and for human rights, I oppose enshrining in the constitution special mention of any identity-based group. Senator Ralph Babet notes that 8 of 76 senators have Aboriginal heritage. By contrast, Asian-Australians are badly under-represented in parliament and top positions in the public and private sectors. Do we really want to go down the rabbit hole of ever-finer subdivisions between First (Aborigines), Second (British immigrants and convicts), Third (post-war European immigrants) and Fourth (post-White Australia immigrants) Nations? Should Asian-Australians have our own Voice or should we know our place and stay there?
Albanese betrays contempt for voters by insisting we vote for the Voice without knowing any of the details on its composition, functions and powers. Once approved, it will be hijacked by the more strident activists among the cultural elites, some part-Aboriginal, to acquire more assets, influence and political power as has happened everywhere else – nothing unique about it. In time, it will be judicially reinterpreted and expanded beyond recognition. Those who insist otherwise are either naive or gaslighting us. The Voice is racist in conception and will be racist in content and consequences, hardening identitarian divisions without solving real problems. While Alice Springs burns, Albanese and Burney fiddle with the Voice. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is an authentic voice: ‘When Linda Burney tells us this would not be happening if a constitutionally enshrined Voice had been established, you cannot help but feel gaslit and infuriated.’ Mundine is spot on: ‘The world over, social breakdown, family violence and abuse, drug and alcohol abuse go hand in hand with kids not going to school, adults not in work and chronic intergenerational welfare dependency.’ Mundine’s parents ‘were determined not to be treated as second-class citizens… We were taught that you’re never a victim’.