Why the Voice failed and what to do next
It is time for "a new litigious era" from Indigenous Australia.
Two years ago, Australia rejected the Voice proposal. Much has been written since about the 'why' of that decision, particularly in the lead up to the federal election in May. Almost without exception that commentary has been facile, and the journalists and other commentators have either lacked the courage, insight or intellect to unpack the real reasons why the country voted 'no'.
Back in 2023, I wrote in The Age about why I felt strongly that the country should support the Voice. My argument was not complex: the intervening 235 years had been terrible for the First Australians. Our preeminent Indigenous leaders know the answers. It should be legally possible for Noel Pearson to buy a house on a real title in his hometown of Hope Vale (home ownership is a great motivator the world over) and in a matter of years, and at modest cost, all the remaining Indigenous languages could be saved and online courses developed, to name but a couple of strategies. At its essence, the Voice proposal was therefore a modest ask: can we, the First Australians, have an enshrined right, that cannot be deleted by the government of the day, to write the Australian government a memo on any legislative matter that relates to us, which the government must read, but which they have an unfettered right to put in the shredder and disregard.
In the intervening period articles from both sides of the political fence have offered up a range of superficial diagnoses about the 'why'. The Prime Minister has been blamed for overreach; conservative leaders and the think tanks who originally crafted the core concepts of the Voice with Indigenous leaders like Pearson have been accused of disloyalty; those leaders have also been accused of squandering an opportunity to settle for a simpler form of recognition in the preamble to the Constitution and, as a result, risking the issue disappearing from the public agenda for decades; Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine have been accused of a range of Faustian acts; and mainstream Australia has pleaded confusion in the face of perceived Indigenous disunity (even though polling booths where the population is more than 50 per cent Indigenous had 'yes' votes ranging from the mid-60s to mid-90s).
