If Anthony Albanese, current prime minister, is in support of and vowed to install the Indigenous Voice advisory board, why can’t he just do it? He also made a comment beforehand that he would respect people’s decision if they vote no, implying that he might be able to override it if he wanted to.
"the PM on Sunday said Labor would “respect the response of Australians next Saturday”.
“If Australians vote no, I don’t believe that it would be appropriate to then go and say, ‘Oh, well, you’ve had your say, but we’re going to legislate anyway’.”
I personally believe that what white Australians want is irrelevant to the fundamental rights that the original owners of this land deserve, and he should have just done it if he was able to.
If you look at the history of Indigenous policy you’ll see that many versions of advisory bodies have been legislated only to eventually be removed. Plus the symbolic value of constitutional recognition can’t be understated. A tokenistic gesture, sure, but Australia is still the last settler colonial nation in the global north to recognise their First Peoples. For the sake of just the basic values of a modern nation we should at the very least recognise the people who were here first in our constitution.
Global North/South is a socio-economic and political grouping.
Developed countries = global north
Developing = global south
It does originate in geography, as the vast majority of wealth and high-tech industry is in the geographic North, but countries like Aus and NZ also fit, despite being South of the equator.
Yep but global north is a more appropriate way of saying ‘developed’ nations.
is a more appropriate way
No it isn’t. It’s a silly less clear way. And it doesn’t add anything, because any judgment that might be implied by the use of the term “developed” or “developing” is still carried by the terms “global north” and “global south”, because the terms are nothing other than a euphemism for the same thing.
it’s a silly way of saying undeveloped versus developed. in itself it is a misnomer as Australia still has a backwards, absurdly outdated, colonialist constitution. we’re not a developed, or ‘first world’ state, democratically anyway…
- We are a developed nation.
- “First world” doesn’t mean developed, it means “NATO or NATO-ally during the Cold War”. So we are a first world nation. (2nd world being USSR and its allies, and 3rd world being unaligned nations.)
- We are a very democratic country. We’re not the best in this regard, but top 20 isn’t too bad.
- Our “backwards, absurdly outdated, colonialist constitution” has no bearing on whether or not we are a developed country. It’s a completely orthogonal issue, and is also specifically the subject of this discussion.
The constitution has special legal status in Australia. Parliament cannot alter it the way they can normal laws. The constitution can only be changed by a referendum - which is vote by the whole nation. What parliament is allowed to do (not Albo individually, but by majority vote in parliament), is make laws under the constitution. So yes, parliament could pass a law that creates a voice. But the next government could then pass a law that cancels the voice. And so on. The idea of putting in the constitution was so that it would have more staying power. If it was in the constitution it could still be removed, but only by another referendum, because as per point A, constitution can only be changed by a referendum.
Well, that’s democracy.
Regardless of your thoughts on this individual matter, I’m glad the results are upheld despite what I think should happen.
The real issue is why the Australian people voted the way they did. Disappointing for many.
But the Australian people already voted in Anthony Albanese, so whatever he does as the democratically elected leader is basically democratic isn’t it? Why would we need a separate vote for each decision when he could just make those decisions as the elected head of parliament?
(Also I would add that when people chose Anthony Albanese as PM, they would have known he intended to strengthen indigenous representation and rights, so a Yes vote for Anthony was already a yes vote for Indigenous Voice, in my view).
amending the constitution of Australia requires a referendum in which the proposed amendment must be approved by a “double majority”: a majority of voters nationwide and a majority of voters in a majority of states.
Fair enough, but then why did Albanese suggest he had the ability to override the vote but was opting not to?
Australians do not vote for a Prime Minister, we vote for a political party which nominates its Prime Minister in the event of an election victory.
By convention parties nominate the PM before and promote them during the campaign. PMs can however be chucked out by their own party without a vote by the public, as happened with Kevin Rudd.
PMs do not simply have a carte blanche “mandate” to implement their election promises and must follow all parliamentary process.
we vote for a political party
We vote for a local representative, who may or may not be a member of a political party.
If he truly believed it was a good thing he should have just legislated it to start off with. That way you have the benefits of such a body sooner, and if people can see something in action and actually working to close the gap they would be more inclined to allow it into the Constitution in a later referendum (and even if the later referendum fails you still have both the body and the work they have done).
Edit: To be clearer, it is possible to both legislate a voice and have a referendum on it while a party is in government, particularly since it is rare for a government to only get a single term.
A couple of things. First of all, the advisory body itself was only part of what was requested (remember that the request itself came from Indigenous Australians, not politicians). Constitutional recognition and an enshrined Voice was the request (along with treaty and truth telling), and a pretty simple one at that. It would have been condescending if the government had rejected that request and instead proposed to legislate only the Voice. This entire process was about listening to Indigenous Australians, not about government ignoring them and acting in its own best interests. This is a big part of the reason why the referendum went ahead despite poor polling.
Secondly, the Voice advisory body was a very safe, conservative-friendly proposal designed to get some movement on the issues of reconciliation and Indigenous sovereignty. It is not necessarily representative of what Indigenous Australians would actually want in a perfect world. So the argument that it should have just been legislated because Indigenous Australians should get whatever they want/deserve is flawed, because if we were to take that approach then alternative models like devolved self-governance should have been on the table too. They weren’t, because realistically Indigenous Australians make up just 3% of the population and are forced to rely on the goodwill and support of the other 97% in these matters.
