FROM MOIR, THE SMH 09/09/2023;

 

 

VOTE YES.

 

 

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By Bruce Wearne

 

“The Uluru Statement from the Heart is an invitation to the Australian people from First Nations Australians. It asks Australians to walk together to build a better future by establishing a First Nations Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution, and the establishment of a Makarrata Commission for the purpose of treaty making and truth-telling.” (from https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/)

The “YES” I plan to cast in the upcoming referendum gains its cogency from the political wisdom implicit in the Uluru Statement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizens to fellow citizens. It comes to our polity with a story of persistent political effort, over generations. The story having culminated in recent times now expresses a desire to justly and fairly raise a “First Nations Voice”. Of course indigenous voices can be heard in ongoing ways in our political life and they will still be with us in the days ahead. The Uluru Statement is an invitation delivered with deep conviction to all Australian citizens; we are asked to affirm a suggested amendment to the Constitution and thus cast a vote to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

Of course, this is about justice for Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; but not only for them. We, bound with each other as this polity’s citizens, stand in need of a constitution that is alive with due respect for all even while, in doing so, it should be especially explicit to those fellow Australian citizens who are descendents of those who resided in these lands long before British settlement.

The state-crafting responsibility of all citizens is always on the line; we are never just voters at election time or, as in this case, with Referendums. This invitation reminds us of our political responsibility for this place on our earth, located in the Indo-South West Pacific. That must also mean due respect for those who were here before the colonies were established, long before our Commonwealth’s Constitution was enacted. Our task as citizens involves ensuring that justice, due respect for all, characterizes all public governance. The Uluru Statement should be heard as a call to fulfill that inalienable responsibility.

Those extending this Uluru invitation are demonstrating sensitive political awareness of their duty for the health of this polity; they remind the rest of us of our solemn duties and responsibilities. Such shared responsibility makes us corporately accountable for how we are governed, how justice has been, is and will be administered, and for how the Constitution frames our life together.

The invitation of the Uluru Statement presupposes, as the Constitution presupposes, that our duty as citizens is to remain politically alert to how our public-legal life is being conducted under the Constitution. Our citizenship does not derive from any party allegiance. When the Constitution needs amendment – as the Constitution itself presumes it will need from time to time – we have a task to step up and do what we can to ensure that the proposed change is just and will enable the further promotion of justice in renewing and healthy ways. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is the latest example of citizens with indigenous heritage and identity “stepping up” to make their contribution to a just amendment to our Constitution.

The invitation of the Uluru Statement presupposes, as the Constitution presupposes, that our duty as citizens is to remain politically alert to how our public-legal life is being conducted under the Constitution. Our citizenship does not derive from any party allegiance. When the Constitution needs amendment – as the Constitution itself presumes it will need from time to time – we have a task to step up and do what we can to ensure that the proposed change is just and will enable the further promotion of justice in renewing and healthy ways. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is the latest example of citizens with indigenous heritage and identity “stepping up” to make their contribution to a just amendment to our Constitution.

The Uluru challenge is of course about a vote for a constitutional amendment, and it comes at this time as a call that can also deepen our appreciation as citizens for the part all of us are called to play in fomenting the political health of this our Commonwealth. And that must also include ongoing resistance to unhealthy political trends that these days live side-by-side with a sad lack of trust in our political party dominated Parliaments. The reform of our form of parliamentary democracy may well be needed. But will we allow our concerns with its current state in this polity to prevent us from voting “YES”? No.

There are many political issues with which we must wrestle, as we answer the call to humbly serve our neighbours at home and abroad with justice, with due respect to their place in our lives, and also for our own place in their lives. Our Commonwealth’s Constitution needs to explicitly affirm due respect for fellow citizens descended from those who resided here long before British settlement. This Uluru Statement from the Heart reminds us of our shared political solidarity under the Constitution with a challenge that extends due respect while inviting us to keep on walking together for justice.

The key point for me is this: there may have been no First Nations voice into the Constitution back at the turn of the 19th century when British Colonial Governments ceded power “up” to a Federal Government for an Australian Commonwealth, but it will certainly be a sign of our own Commonwealth’s maturity for our Constitution to now include the considered mature suggestion of how First Nations people are to be recognised in our corporate life. We should vote with thanks for the voiced leadership of the diverse First Nations people of our polity.

https://johnmenadue.com/nurturing-justice-with-a-yes-to-the-uluru-invitation/

 

 

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George Brandis is a former Liberal Party senator and high commissioner to the UK — and according to GL, the worst and most biased attorney-general this country has ever seen...  By placing ideas in the brain of a dead man, George makes the gross mistake of disrespect to the Aboriginal people... Here is what bonehead Brandis writes in the SMH on 11/09/2023...:  Bonner would have hated the Voice 

GEORGE BRANDIS

Our pioneering first Indigenous MP was a constitutional conservative who tried to change the system from within.

The original Indigenous Voice to parliament was not one of grievance or hectoring complaint. It was that of a dignified, quietly spoken Liberal senator who became the first Aboriginal member of any Australian parliament back in 1971.

Neville Bonner, whose biography by Sean Jacobs was launched in Brisbane last week, does not receive as much recognition as he deserves as the pioneering figure of Indigenous inclusion in the political process. His memory is preserved in the name of a federal electorate and a new pedestrian bridge across the Brisbane River. Yet it has been entirely absent from the current debate about the Voice. Perhaps that is because he would have hated the idea: it would have offended both his constitutional conservatism and his profound belief in equal citizenship for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike.

I knew Neville Bonner well; in my youth, he was to me, as he was to others taking their early steps in politics, something of a mentor.

He was born on Ukerebagh Island in the mouth of the Tweed River in 1922 and received little formal education. At various times he worked as a stockman, fencer, dairy hand and cane cutter. He spent many years at the Aboriginal settlement on Palm Island, where he became a native policeman. It was there, according to Jacobs, that Bonner formed his views about working within the system in order to change it. That approach would, during his political career, provoke the racist slur that he was an ‘‘Uncle Tom’’ – just as Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price suffers today.

The early 1960s saw Bonner settle in Ipswich. He began to involve himself in causes for Aboriginal advancement and was a founder and first president of the One People of Australia League (OPAL), dedicated to racial equality. He also joined the Liberal Party.

In 1971, when senator Annabelle Rankin resigned, the party had to fill the casual vacancy. Bonner, at the time working as a bridge carpenter and by then a member of the party’s state executive, put his hand up. His preselection was perfectly routine. He received no special treatment; he won because he was respected and liked. That said, it cannot have been lost on the preselectors they were making history by putting the first Aboriginal person into parliament.

Why is it that, when it comes to including Indigenous Australians in the political system, the Liberal and National parties have all the firsts? The first senator; the first state MP (Eric Deeral, elected a National Party member of the Queensland parliament in 1974); the first member of the House of Representatives (Ken Wyatt); the first minister and member of cabinet (Wyatt); the first head of government (Adam Giles, chief minister of the Northern Territory).

As a senator, Bonner was recognised for wisdom and courage. Respected by his own people, he was a voice for moderation, not confrontation. Yet confrontational he could be, such as when he went head-to-head with then-premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen to protect the Indigenous people of Aurukun. Nor was he afraid to stand up to colleagues; he became a Senate rebel, crossing the floor more than 30 times, much to the vexation of party leaders. His parliamentary career ended in 1983 when, in the skulduggery of Senate preselections, he was relegated down the ticket by the machinations of a junior colleague. Bob Hawke had the good grace to appoint him to the ABC board.

Bonner’s final contribution to public life was as one of the leading opponents of the republic referendum. His last public appearance was his electrifying ‘‘How dare you?’’ speech to the constitutional convention in 1998. It was a passionate, moving avowal of Indigenous identity and traditional values, but you will look for it in vain in any anthology of famous Australian speeches.

You will, however, find Paul Keating’s Redfern speech and Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations. Undoubtedly, the most eloquent orations about Indigenous disadvantage have come from Labor prime ministers. Words matter, and each of those speeches marks an important waypoint in our national consciousness.

Labor may have had the rhetorical triumphs, but it has so often been Liberal governments that achieved the results. Harold Holt gave us the 1967 referendum; John Gorton appointed the first federal minister for Indigenous affairs; John Howard put constitutional recognition on the national agenda; Malcolm Turnbull appointed the first Indigenous minister.

Gough Whitlam was certainly the first prime minister to champion Aboriginal land rights, but it was the government of Malcolm Fraser that passed the first land rights legislation after Whitlam lost office.

No prime minister has shown as much hands-on commitment to Indigenous wellbeing as Tony Abbott. When opposition spokesman for Indigenous affairs, he spent weeks living and working in remote communities. As PM, he insisted that cabinet spend time in East Arnhem Land and Thursday Island, so we could better understand the issues.

Today, Abbott is one of the leading advocates for the No campaign. Lately, we have witnessed a fascinating convergence of many of the conservative Abbott’s views with those of the radical Senator Lidia Thorpe and the ‘‘progressive’’ No case. For both of them, the problem with the Voice is that it offers no solutions: it just gives middle-class liberals an easy way to dump their white guilt in the moral wheelie bin and pretend that the challenges of Indigenous disadvantage are sorted.

Neville Bonner would, no doubt, have agreed.

George Brandis is a former Liberal Party senator, attorney-general and high commissioner to the UK.

 

SMH 11/09/2023....

 

TONY ABBOTT, REMEMBER? ANOTHER BONEHEAD THAT GOT TURFED OUT BY SMOOTH (DUPLICITOUS?) MALCOLM BECAUSE TONY WAS SO BAD AT RUNNING THE COUNTRY, THE LIBERALS WERE GOING TO TAKE A BLOODBATH....?

I WOULD SAY THAT NEVILLE BONNER WOULD VOTE YES TO THE VOICE JUST TO ANNOY THE RACISTS IN THIS RACIST COUNTRY....

 

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Another day in the colony By Richard Hil

 

The deputy prime minister Richard Marles was asked by Insider’s host David Speers if the voters of Australia were right to roundly reject the constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples and the Voice to parliament. Of course they were right, said Marles, they’re always right. In a press conference and later during question time in parliament, Anthony Albanese said he respected the outcome of the referendum, pointing out that it’s wonderful that democracies like Australia can have such referendums without the disorder we see in other countries.

Meanwhile, Indigenous leaders have entered a week of silence to reflect on their feelings, what to do next, and perhaps what they want to say to the majority of non-Indigenous voters who rejected their kind and generous invitation to join them on a journey of reconciliation. Like Indigenous communities across Australia who voted overwhelmingly Yes, how must they feel in a settler colonial society that continues to deny them their rightful place in Australia, even though they are the decedents of the original inhabitants of this nation?

Speaking about his new book, Killing for Country, that deals with the mass murder of Indigenous people by the white-led Native Police during the Frontier Wars, and the morally abject discussions that surrounded them, journalist David Marr notes that much of the rhetoric heard during the referendum campaign is a continuation of the rationalisations and justifications of earlier generations of colonists.

Only this time the head of the belittling crowd is an Indigenous person, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Price was elected by mostly white people in the suburbs of Darwin and Katherine, and later supported mostly by non-Indigenous people. She has shot to political prominence on the back of such support. When Price denied the impact of colonisation on Indigenous people, she was speaking to a non-Indigenous crowd of whooping supporters, this time the inner circle of the overwhelmingly white National Party. Let’s be clear, Price does not speak for Indigenous people, but she does for conservative voters who want to see the retention of the status quo. The absence of any sensitivity toward her Indigenous counterparts, the general lack of shame or the merest hint of self-reflection is matched only be her and her party’s campaign mis- and dis-information.

Marcia Langton is right when she says that the message contained in the Uluru Statement of the Heart was poisoned. It was further made toxic by Price’s post-referendum claim (not for the first time) that Australia is not a racist country. She clearly has little idea of what racism means in practice. It doesn’t take long to realise that racism is rampant in Australia. Just think for a second to what countless Indigenous people themselves say of how they experience life in Australia. Think too of what happened to Adam Goodes and Stan Grant. Think at a structural level of the ongoing mass imprisonment, child removals, mortality rates and ill health. The idea that the Voice would divide Australia when it is patently already so, is beyond absurd.

There are many entrenched divides in Australia, as the demographics around the referendum results show. Age, education, income levels, rural/city among other factors revealed their hand, as did the power of the Murdoch media. Is it any wonder that Queensland was the leading No state given that state’s Soviet-like domination of Murdoch newspapers? The fact is that it was always easier to sow the seeds of doubt, however silly, rather than act on courage and vision of a better future. The gullibility of many sections of Australian society – particularly in the face of increasingly Trumpian tactics – is breathtaking. That coupled with endemic racism (even though this is denied by the conservatives) is a lethal brew indeed.

The referendum result was viewed around the world with shock and disbelief. Despite all the self-serving protestations, we are indeed seen as the settler colonial society that we are, albeit a jolly, beachy one. So, when I hear that supposedly unifying song which starts with “We are one, but we are many….”, it makes me want to gag.

My heart goes out to the majority of Indigenous Australians who supported the Yes campaign and all their supporters. The only silver lining is that a significant chunk of Australians voted in favour and there appears to be some determination to push for a treaty and truth telling, as well as significant measures to close the gap. For Indigenous people during this week of silence, it’s yet another day in the colony.

Finally, the Australian voters are not always right, just as those who supported the Brexit campaign were ill- informed and now live with regret. I’m also sorry to say that even though I acknowledge the referendum outcome, I certainly don’t respect it. How can I, given the hurt it has caused?

*Title of a book by Indigenous writer, Chelsea Watego, published by Queensland University Press, 2021.

 

https://johnmenadue.com/another-day-in-the-colony/

 

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Our mainstream media failed this country during the Voice referendum    By Ranald Macdonald

 

As the former managing director and editor in chief of The Age newspaper (and founder of the Australian Press Council), this is a hard piece to write. In my view the mainstream media – journalists and commentators – have failed this country during the debate on the Voice.

I have needed time to consider this question after what was, to me, a tragic result Australia-wide to Saturday’s voting on The Voice.

Reading the all-knowing Monday morning ‘obituaries’ for the PM, the ‘what went wrong’ for the ‘foolish’ Yes campaigners and the sanctimonious comments from everyone from Peter Dutton to the Murdoch Mafia – this is a hard piece to write.

Because I so strongly believe in public interest journalism, in the right to freedom of expression that it hurts me to say that in my view the mainstream media – journalists and commentators – have failed this country.

Journalism has been found wanting with few exceptions.

The reason I am writing this as the former managing director and editor in chief of The Age newspaper (and founder of the Australian Press Council) is that I believe lessons need to be learnt.

Those who can hold their heads up over the way The Voice was reported and discussed are a few, a very few journalists and some online outlets (The Guardian, Pearls & Irritations, Crikey and the New Daily) plus Schwartz publishing – where its Monthly magazine and Saturday Paper had some outstanding pieces.

One posting on social media put into stark relief the problem.

The PM: “Today we can say Yes to a gracious request from Indigenous Australians. To simply recognise them in the Constitution and listen to them with a Voice.”

Murdoch journalist: “A gracious request? It’s a militant document penned by far Left, inner city activists. It would enshrine racial division & privilege into the Constitution. NO.”

Well Murdoch’s Rita Panahi calls herself a journalist being a columnist for the Herald-Sun and a presenter on Sky News.

For someone who did a lot of reading and viewing and listening during the “election” campaign (as it was described by Peter Dutton) the Murdoch Empire as a whole was little more than a mouthpiece for the worst of the misrepresentations and deliberate lies told by those promoting the No campaign.

But sadly for Australian journalism and for rational debate it did not end there.

The ABC found itself unable to guide its listeners and viewers as to what was fact and what was fiction.

Further, despite the number of outlets owned by or taking the Murdoch divisive and skewed output, the ABC (seemingly cowed by the News Limited’s bullying) continued to give credibility to its journalists and commentators by giving them airtime.

Seemingly the Coalition’s PR machine was being backed to the hilt.

Yet ABC’s News Director, Justin Stevens blithely has congratulated his staff, opining that “The ABC’s referendum coverage has been outstanding”.

I like listener Simon Rosenberg’s response: “Impartiality does not oblige a publisher to ventilate lies, fantasies or misrepresentations as if they were true.”

And, sadly, in this writer’s view that comment is true for much of the mainstream journalism – the Murdoch papers Australia-wide of course, but also The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and the West Australian which, while owned by Kerry Stokes, carries News Ltd. material.

As an academic, committed to the importance in a democracy of public interest and informed journalism, I would mark the vast majority of Australian journalists, columnists and particularly those who promulgated their skewed views as failing the test of accurately and fairly covering a crucial issue for this country.

Some were simply provocateurs who should not have been given exposure on television, radio or in print – but sadly few of the ‘good guys’ made any attempt to call out their blatant lies for what they were.

The New York Times carried an article some time ago saying this was Australia’s Brexit moment.

I believe it has been just that and we will be seen in the eyes of the world as having failed the test.

Peter Hartcher in the Sunday Age says, “Some will tell Australia to feel ashamed for rejecting the idea of an Indigenous Voice. But it needn’t. After all, a majority of respondents supported it in opinion polls consistently for five years. Australians instinctively welcomed the idea. But we probably should feel a little embarrassed. Because we allowed politics to erode Australia’s inherent goodwill.”

Later in the article he says, “Many Indigenous Australians will take it personally. They shouldn’t. IT IS JUST POLITICS (my caps)”.

Deep breath.

Surely Hartcher cannot be saying, don’t worry First Nations people all round Australia. It is not personal your rejection in the Referendum.

True, you are still not constitutionally recognised and Closing the Gap may seem less attainable now that you don’t have a guaranteed voice. But don’t worry – it was “just politics”.

For me personally, I am ashamed and embarrassed about the way the so-called debate went, Perhaps on reflection, just like with Brexit in the UK, many will wish for the chance to have the vote all over again.

Informed discussion, we did not have – and the media, urged on by politicians and paid consultants, needs to shoulder much of the blame.

https://johnmenadue.com/our-mainstream-media-failed-this-country-during-the-voice-referendum/

 

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