Loaded and on the way to losing

Since federation, only eight of 44 proposed constitutional amendments have been approved by the Australian public.

The latest potential referendum proposal has no support in the ‘burbs, going by last week's online voting, no matter which newspaper poll.

The Australian, taking a not infrequent lurch to the loony-left (contrary to the loony-left and loony-green hysterical accusations), declared in one head line: Proposal would see the Constitution amended to encourage respect for Indigenous Australians.

That’s a mouthful for a head line and quite a nonsense.  For a start, the constitution isn’t law, nor cognitive behavioral therapy, it’s a document that guides and delineates what laws the Federal Government can and can’t make and how they can make them. Secondly, no constitution and no law can encourage or engender respect for anyone or anything. Ever.

Australian governments all, and all the time, make laws for particular groups - with no mentions needed, to date, in the Constitution.  That includes laws for overcoming disadvantage faced by Aboriginals:  jobs in the public sector, housing subsidies, university scholarships and quotas and special funds and programs of all kind.  Our governments make particular laws (though not as compelling or helpful) for women too, and for children, for example, yet nary a word is mentioned, nor needed, in the Constitution. 

The proposed brainwashing exercise, to be paid by us, is deeply concerning, and offensive.  The assumption, yet again, being that members of the public are malleable and largely stupid.  Our current batch of overlords only need hypnotize us into acquiescence.

The members of the expert panel examining indigenous recognition in the Constitution no doubt did their job diligently and thoughtfully; however, they have come up with a triple referendum, which means it will fail, or it will need to be compromised into a single - hopelessly wrought - question, in the hope that Australians will feel more comfortable ticking "yes" to a lone question. (We'd be a Republic by now, if only the overly manipulative had asked the right question.)

The expert panel is asking them to accept several measures that tug in different directions: both to deracialise the Constitution and to insert in it a clause recognising the special need for indigenous advancement; both to prohibit racial discrimination and to recognise the special place of Aboriginal languages, cultures and ties to the land. Equal rights - and a special role as well. These different aims are not at war with each other, but they do not stem from a unitary project.

At core, the dilemmas lurking in the referendum lurk there because of the bedevilling concept of race and a keenly maintained conviction of indigenous difference. The expert panel's aim is virtually to ban racial thinking, while exalting a particular racial category. It will be a hard sell, with only the support of progressive-minded voters, for whom indigenous issues are a high symbolic priority, guaranteed.

The panel's members are acutely aware of the problem they face and are at pains to warn of dire consequences if their question fails to gain acceptance. Most bizarrely, they recommend a vast public education and consciousness-raising program, and new laws, if necessary, to allow for the funding of this exercise. They say the federal government should consider, before staging the referendum, whether it has the support of political and state bodies, whether it has done all it can to lay the groundwork for success. This is dangerous terrain, and it is disquieting to see such plans for the systemic manipulation of public opinion committed to print.

Experts' double message hard to sell 

Only a few days into the public airing of the recommendations, and the aspirations for the changes are mindbogglingly unachievable.

While a national debate rages over an expert panel's proposed changes to the Constitution, including a clause prohibiting racial discrimination, Northern Territory indigenous leader and Country Liberal Party candidate Bess Price said there was little understanding of what constitutional change meant and bush Aborigines needed to get involved in the discussion if it was to have any meaning.

"I want this done properly so that people out bush get recognised and have input," Ms Price told The Weekend Australian yesterday.

"Nobody out here would understand or even know the report is out and what it says.

"We need more consultation amongst ourselves to make sure people are aware about these proposed changes.

"We need to see if this will improve the livelihoods of people out bush."

Err, umm, no, no it won't improve anyone's livelihood, most particularly not for those living in the "bush" - or the slums of the outback, more correctly, where no real job has or will ever be created, and where about 50,000 Aboriginal people live (the other 450,000 or so Aboriginal folk live in more hopeful circumstances, if not thriving, then at least having a fighting chance of a meal, a home, an education and a job). 

As for consultation with and ensuring people in the bush "get recognised", well, that leaves out the other 99.99 per cent of the population, many of whom are going to have their own opinions, even if they will not be recognised in the Constitution, not ever. 

That the proposed changes to the Constitution will do NOTHING for Aboriginal communities in the outback will need to be pointed out to those people in the bush.  I cringe at the thought they will be told that changing a few words in the Constitution will change their lives, provide them with jobs, make them sober and peaceable, bring houses and industry to the spot where they sit. 

The statements from Bess Price will ring in my consciousness right up until voting in a referendum.  She has made it very difficult for me to support anything.  

Just in case anyone has forgotten, this referendum is yet another one of the deals that the great negotiator* - Julia Gillard - made with the Greens so that Gillard could become PM after the last election. 

As if we needed any more distractions, sidebars, from the massive mismanagement of the entire country:  thank you Bob Brown, you've achieved so much.  Yet another ugly, divisive matter to preoccupy the minds and emotions and allow for the airing of all the unwashed undies.  Yes, Australia does do matters of morality in an especially unattractive manner.  


*Capitulates to every single thing that the other party demands.

Deadline shifts on referendum