The Voice

I think there is one thing we can agree on when it comes to the Voice; whether you are a Yes or a No voter it all just seems a miserable mess.

Here are my thoughts on The Voice.

Albanese has failed, and failed us, as a leader; that is the clearest learning. He failed in a number of ways. Albanese saw his role as creating the opportunity, rather than delivering it and his actions suggest he feels himself to be a passenger on the bus, unable to change speed or direction, not recognising that as Prime Minister he is the bus driver, with control over the timing and approach for this referendum.

He failed by adopting for the referendum, without change, the intent and wording from the Uluru statement, meaning that the Australian people effectively had no say in the proposed change to the constitution. Albanese saw this as a virtue, as an act of reconciliation, but it is neither. I continually maintain that reconciliation can only occur through engagement, and ultimately it is the engagement that matters, so engagement is both a means and an end. By excluding the possibility of modifying the proposal, Albanese effectively excluded non-Indigenous from the process, our role reduced to accept or reject. This was not our change, it was presented as their change; what could have been transformational became transactional.

He failed by ignoring history; referendums only succeed when all major parties support the proposal. Did Albanese work hard enough to secure the support of the Liberal party? I do not question Albanese’s’ commitment to Aboriginal people, but I can’t stop myself from thinking that he saw this as an opportunity to skewer an unpopular opposition leader, to demonstrate that the Libs and Dutton were yesterday’s people, unable to move with the times, so he went for it, chasing a win, a political victory. If he really cared, if he really wanted to continue the progress of reconciliation he would’ve waited, recognising that the time wasn’t right – for the vote, but not for the fight. He could’ve made Dutton’s opposition the issue, and inexorably ground out the support necessary for success. Grubby politics? No! Grubby politics is digging through someone’s personal life to expose an irrelevant but embarrassing detail; arguing consistently in favour of a proposal is simply politics.

He failed by not leading the call for change, instead leaving it for Aboriginal people to argue their case. He fell back on the position – this is a proposal from the Aboriginal people, inferring it is their job to sell it. He failed to grasp the important shift in thinking that was led by his Labor predecessors, that reconciliation is not something ‘we’ should do for ‘them’, instead it is something ‘we’ need to do for ‘ourselves’, not in a selfish sense, but that we need to address our definition of ourselves.

He failed by not articulating a vision, let alone providing any detail, of how the Voice would operate; the space instead filled with misinformation and preposterous claims that the Voice would end all Aboriginal dis-advantage thereby closing the gaps that exist. Albanese did not provide the intellectual framework that melded the aspirations of the Uluru statement to the myths we believe about ourselves.

Of Dutton I make this observation – he has shown himself, again, to be unfit to lead through his unwillingness to manage the tone and behaviour of the people he leads. We need to remind ourselves – that the behaviour you walk past is the behaviour you accept. Arguments supporting a No vote would not have been weakened if he had explicitly spoken against the racist comments made throughout the debate. Dutton perpetuates the vicious cycle Australia is in of the community having low expectations of honourable behaviour from politicians, leading to poor behaviour, leading to lower expectations allowing lower standards of behaviour.

Looking back at the debate from after the vote, there can be seen to exist two streams, each stream running parallel with the other but with little interaction between the two, the little interaction generating bemusement or disgust, but never informative. The two streams being the intelligentsia, and the ordinaries; don’t think those descriptors imply differing levels of intelligence, rather a difference in the weight given to various matters.

The intelligentsia saw this as another battle of ideas, at stake – the very essence of who we are as people; the ordinaries just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about – why do we need to change the constitution to listen to aborigines.

Within the intelligentsia are the arguments about whether the Voice is something that defines us as a nation, about whether this should be the next step on the pathway of reconciliation, on the need for a formal recognition of past injustices including the massacres that occurred during the invasion and settlement; however, all of these discussions are so far removed from the everyday of the ordinaries.

What became apparent during the Voice debate was that the two streams aren’t sitting beside each other in the one channel as sometimes happen when two tributaries join to form a river, but instead each stream was contained within its own canal. Within their canal the intelligentsia carry on their arguments between the progressives and the conservatives, all of it disconnected from society.

The progressive intelligentsia would shout over to the ordinaries – if you don’t agree with us then you’re racist; the conservative intelligentsia screaming out – don’t listen to them. The ordinaries look at each other – did someone say something. And those that heard it, wonder to themselves, but, isn’t it racist to have something for just one group of people?

If a thoughtful ordinary asks – how is this all going to work, how will you know who can be on the committee and who can’t; the progressive intelligentsia shame them for being racist, and ignorant, not even knowing enough to know what is important. The conservative intelligentsia nod approvingly at the wisdom of the simple folk, the folk they’ve been stomping on with their regressive economic policies for years and ignoring in all other matters.

The ordinaries sense that the progressive intelligentsia have no time for them, and see them as fashionistas, unthinkingly jumping to support each new change that is proposed, the Voice another fad to be supported, another change to a society that with their – anywhere but here – approach they are always ready to dismiss.

With the referendum lost, the Aboriginals within the intelligentsia say that the battle continues. The ordinaries, if they hear this at all, wonder to themselves, the battle for what? Why don’t they just get on with their lives?

The progressive intelligentsia are left disgusted at the fecklessness of the ordinaries – this was just a simple proposition from the Aboriginal people to us – why can’t they just say Yes, a statement full of hidden pity and attaching a specialness to aboriginal identity the ordinaries wouldn’t accept. The falseness of the suggestion that it was simple not hidden from the ordinaries, as it challenged both a view of themselves and their view of the way the world should be, that the intelligentsia left unaddressed.

The fury of the progressive intelligentsia blinds them to the fact that the ordinaries don’t inhabit the universities, the media, they aren’t in politics, they don’t lead the corporates – they don’t have the power not to listen, they’re just living their lives.

Ultimately it was not whether we voted Yes or No that defined us as a nation, but the manner in which the debate was conducted.