The Australian Prime Minister promised his fellow citizens some relief from historical guilt if they voted yes in last Saturday’s referendum. By supporting a constitutional amendment establishing an exclusive Aboriginal body to make representations to government, “the burden of colonialism that sits on our shoulders will be just lifted off a little bit,” Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a gathering in the campaign’s final fortnight.
On Saturday, 60% of Australian voters turned up their noses at the PM’s offer by voting against an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. The PM’s argument that a Yes vote would “send a signal to ourselves and to the world that we’re a mature nation that is coming to terms with the fullness of our history” fell on deaf ears.
The result was described as “devastating” by the left-leaning Sydney Morning Herald. Its headline ran: “Australia tells First Nations people ‘you are not special.’” It was a concise, if somewhat crude, summation of the verdict in what has been a long and at times confusing referendum debate. No one disagrees that indigenous Australians should have the same rights and duties as everyone else. A 1967 referendum that removed the last vestiges of official discrimination against indigenous Australians was approved by more than 90% of the population.
However, the proposal to give indigenous Australians additional political representation, would have gone beyond that. If it had passed, the Voice would have created a constitutionally-sanctioned lobby group of 27 unelected representatives of indigenous descent. This group would have had extraordinary powers to influence political decisions. While its views would not have been binding, Albanese admitted that it would take a ‘very brave’ government to reject its advice.
As a form of positive discrimination, it sat uncomfortably with the Australian notion of a fair go. The assertion that it would divide Australians by race was perhaps the most potent argument advanced by the No camp.
With 11 indigenous MPs and senators in the federal Parliament, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who make up 3.5% of the population, are technically over-represented. The claim that the views of Aboriginal Australians were being ignored in Canberra never made much sense.
Yet the Voice was first and foremost an intellectual project. Albanese’s pitch for the Voice never rose beyond the abstract. His claim that passing the referendum would “make us feel better about who we are as a nation” might have been applauded in university common rooms but it sat awkwardly among those with a more practical vision of the nation and its destiny.
That much is clear from the wide variation in the result between comfortable inner metropolitan electorates and outer metropolitan and regional seats. As a rule of thumb, the higher the support for the referendum proposal in a particular electorate, the harder it is to find a plumber or an electrician.
In the seat of Flynn, which centres around Gladstone in central Queensland, one in five people have a trade qualification. In the latest counting, the No vote is running at 84% there. In the inner-city seat of Melbourne, represented by Greens leader Adam Bandt, one in 20 have a trade certificate. The Yes vote there is 78%.
The reverse applies to university graduates. In the 33 electorates where the vote was running in favour of the Voice at the close of Saturday night’s count, one in three residents have a graduate or higher degree. In the No seats it is one in six.
Saturday’s result was a repudiation of the black-armband approach to history. Australians outside the Tesla-zone have had enough of the 50-year anti-colonial guilt trip. It was a plea for an end to the self-flagellating speeches, national apologies, welcomes to country, and all the other politically correct performances.
It was an assertion that common ties of citizenship override differences in genetic inheritance. It delivered a mandate to end the pursuit of historical grievances that spring from the same unforgiving logic that justifies the Palestinian cause.
Above all, it is a rejection of the insufferable arrogance of the anointed and their presumption that they have a better grasp of knowledge, a superior wisdom, and a more elevated morality than their fellow citizens. The rejection of the Voice amounts to an act of insurrection against the progressive establishment.
The many attempts to shame the Voice’s opponents into silence, often by labelling them racist or ignorant, backfired. When one veteran TV personality described No voters as “dinosaurs or dickheads” in the final fortnight of the campaign, you could almost hear the No camp willing him on. As Hillary Clinton discovered in her failed 2016 campaign against Donald Trump, labelling one’s opponents as deplorable is guaranteed to ensure the loss of their votes.
The intelligentsia will find it all but impossible to concede defeat on anything more than a technical amendment to the Constitution. The indigenous leaders’ unsigned statement on Saturday hinted darkly at “the role of racism and prejudice against Indigenous people.” They invited Australians who voted no to “reflect hard on this question.”
Generalised claims about the moral bankruptcy of No voters offer an easy way out for the Voice crusaders. They will not have to dwell on the uncomfortable truth that the result is a rejection of their entire vision of the world, a vision in which indigenous Australians sit on a higher moral plain, as victims who have been wronged by others and who are waiting for redress.
Once again, the political class will avoid having to confront the systemic failure of the indigenous social justice policies it has pursued at great expense for the last half a century. The gap between remote, indigenous Australians and the rest of the population on measures such as health, education, employment, and imprisonment has not closed. There will be no realisation that treating indigenous people as a category of people held back by a history of racial oppression is fundamentally disempowering, reinforcing the narrative of victimhood, and depriving indigenous people of the hope of changing their own lives for the better.
Australia Votes To End National Guilt Trip
The Australian Prime Minister promised his fellow citizens some relief from historical guilt if they voted yes in last Saturday’s referendum. By supporting a constitutional amendment establishing an exclusive Aboriginal body to make representations to government, “the burden of colonialism that sits on our shoulders will be just lifted off a little bit,” Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a gathering in the campaign’s final fortnight.
On Saturday, 60% of Australian voters turned up their noses at the PM’s offer by voting against an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. The PM’s argument that a Yes vote would “send a signal to ourselves and to the world that we’re a mature nation that is coming to terms with the fullness of our history” fell on deaf ears.
The result was described as “devastating” by the left-leaning Sydney Morning Herald. Its headline ran: “Australia tells First Nations people ‘you are not special.’” It was a concise, if somewhat crude, summation of the verdict in what has been a long and at times confusing referendum debate. No one disagrees that indigenous Australians should have the same rights and duties as everyone else. A 1967 referendum that removed the last vestiges of official discrimination against indigenous Australians was approved by more than 90% of the population.
However, the proposal to give indigenous Australians additional political representation, would have gone beyond that. If it had passed, the Voice would have created a constitutionally-sanctioned lobby group of 27 unelected representatives of indigenous descent. This group would have had extraordinary powers to influence political decisions. While its views would not have been binding, Albanese admitted that it would take a ‘very brave’ government to reject its advice.
As a form of positive discrimination, it sat uncomfortably with the Australian notion of a fair go. The assertion that it would divide Australians by race was perhaps the most potent argument advanced by the No camp.
With 11 indigenous MPs and senators in the federal Parliament, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, who make up 3.5% of the population, are technically over-represented. The claim that the views of Aboriginal Australians were being ignored in Canberra never made much sense.
Yet the Voice was first and foremost an intellectual project. Albanese’s pitch for the Voice never rose beyond the abstract. His claim that passing the referendum would “make us feel better about who we are as a nation” might have been applauded in university common rooms but it sat awkwardly among those with a more practical vision of the nation and its destiny.
That much is clear from the wide variation in the result between comfortable inner metropolitan electorates and outer metropolitan and regional seats. As a rule of thumb, the higher the support for the referendum proposal in a particular electorate, the harder it is to find a plumber or an electrician.
In the seat of Flynn, which centres around Gladstone in central Queensland, one in five people have a trade qualification. In the latest counting, the No vote is running at 84% there. In the inner-city seat of Melbourne, represented by Greens leader Adam Bandt, one in 20 have a trade certificate. The Yes vote there is 78%.
The reverse applies to university graduates. In the 33 electorates where the vote was running in favour of the Voice at the close of Saturday night’s count, one in three residents have a graduate or higher degree. In the No seats it is one in six.
Saturday’s result was a repudiation of the black-armband approach to history. Australians outside the Tesla-zone have had enough of the 50-year anti-colonial guilt trip. It was a plea for an end to the self-flagellating speeches, national apologies, welcomes to country, and all the other politically correct performances.
It was an assertion that common ties of citizenship override differences in genetic inheritance. It delivered a mandate to end the pursuit of historical grievances that spring from the same unforgiving logic that justifies the Palestinian cause.
Above all, it is a rejection of the insufferable arrogance of the anointed and their presumption that they have a better grasp of knowledge, a superior wisdom, and a more elevated morality than their fellow citizens. The rejection of the Voice amounts to an act of insurrection against the progressive establishment.
The many attempts to shame the Voice’s opponents into silence, often by labelling them racist or ignorant, backfired. When one veteran TV personality described No voters as “dinosaurs or dickheads” in the final fortnight of the campaign, you could almost hear the No camp willing him on. As Hillary Clinton discovered in her failed 2016 campaign against Donald Trump, labelling one’s opponents as deplorable is guaranteed to ensure the loss of their votes.
The intelligentsia will find it all but impossible to concede defeat on anything more than a technical amendment to the Constitution. The indigenous leaders’ unsigned statement on Saturday hinted darkly at “the role of racism and prejudice against Indigenous people.” They invited Australians who voted no to “reflect hard on this question.”
Generalised claims about the moral bankruptcy of No voters offer an easy way out for the Voice crusaders. They will not have to dwell on the uncomfortable truth that the result is a rejection of their entire vision of the world, a vision in which indigenous Australians sit on a higher moral plain, as victims who have been wronged by others and who are waiting for redress.
Once again, the political class will avoid having to confront the systemic failure of the indigenous social justice policies it has pursued at great expense for the last half a century. The gap between remote, indigenous Australians and the rest of the population on measures such as health, education, employment, and imprisonment has not closed. There will be no realisation that treating indigenous people as a category of people held back by a history of racial oppression is fundamentally disempowering, reinforcing the narrative of victimhood, and depriving indigenous people of the hope of changing their own lives for the better.
READ NEXT
The Virtue That Enables All Others: A Conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Merry Christmas from The European Conservative
A Defense of the Small Christmas Ritual