Big day in Australia as we vote Yes or No to The Voice Referendum. I’m all for Constitutional reform, a conversation about recognition and consideration of a Bill of Rights.
Unfortunately, the displays, debates and melting pot of cultural, sporting and political identities clashing & colluding has been, in my mind, a farcical Fabian attempt by Government and the Elite to hoodwink Australians in to believing they finally have the interests of indigenous People at heart and The Voice is the only solution in mind.
Put simply: I don’t trust the Government.
Where are the guarantees that The Voice won’t simply turn in to another tentacle of Government, that will be used to reach into the lives of all Australians and could very well merge into a beast of its own, with its own further-reaching tentacles?
Imagine if, instead of solving the problems of intergenerational family violence, imprisonment, unemployment, and impoverishment, The Voice creates a political class divide among the next generation, where one group has more say over how the country is governed, “because The Voice said so”?
Imagine a country where one baby will start out in the world in a family that knows that the State will provide for their child from the start, whether that be through reparations, resource royalties or welfare, while a baby born in the room next to them will not, “because The Voice said so”?
Imagine if, instead of incentivising the next generation of indigenous Australians to learn, to work, to become the best version of themselves they can be, The Voice gives extra protections, extra leg-ups, extra quotas, extra provisions and extra crumbs, at the expense of other Australians, “because The Voice said so”?
A country where one baby is baptised by the State at birth, and the other is not.
As I cast my vote with all this in mind today, October 17th 2023, The Voice Referendum has no doubt provided a chance to check the temperature on modern-day Australia. It begs the question:
Have we become so pathetically apathetic as a People, so naïve to think that voting Yes will absolve the sins of the past, that we will willingly relinquish responsibility to the Government and the Elite to solve the cycle of problems in indigenous communities?
The cycle must end.
But it won’t be “because The Voice said so.”