Ross Stitt: Australia takes a walkabout path to co-governance

Aboriginal colours are displayed on the Sydney Opera House during Australia Day celebrations. Photo / James D. Morgan, Getty Images

OPINION

“It’s not a co-governance model at all,” asserted the Prime Minister last month. Chris Hipkins? No, the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Debate on the contentious issue of co-governance is not restricted to New Zealand. It’s arisen in Australia in the context of an upcoming national referendum on a proposed indigenous “Voice to Parliament”.

The Voice would be a body representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that would provide non-binding advice to the government on policy matters affecting them. It would be enshrined in the Australian Constitution.

The idea for the Voice first emerged in 2017 with the indigenous community’s issue of the “Uluru Statement from the Heart”. Quickly rejected by the then Coalition government, it has since been embraced by Albanese’s Labor government. A referendum is promised for late 2023.

Locals outside the only supermarket in Wadeye, a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has begun the process of holding a referendum to enshrine in the Constitution a body to advise on Indigenous issues, to be known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Photo / Matthew Abbott, The New York Times

The draft question to be put to Australian voters is simple – “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?”

The precise form of that alteration remains uncertain. According to the Government’s “key design principles”, the Voice would be representative of, and chosen by, indigenous Australians; it would give “independent advice” to Parliament and government; and it would not have a veto power over legislation or government action.

Proponents of the Voice contend it would provide important constitutional “recognition” of Australia’s original inhabitants and give them a say in their own affairs.

Opponents are divided into two camps – those who think the proposal goes too far and those who think it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Many of the former accept the need for constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians but want something much narrower. Something that doesn’t create what they describe as divisive “race-based” rights. This is where the claims of co-governance arise.

PM Albanese rejects such claims on the grounds that the Voice would be “subservient to the Parliament”.

Australia PM Anthony Albanese with Fiji PM Frank Bainimarama and Pacific Islands Forum secretary-general Henry Puna ahead of a leaders' retreat in Suva. Photo / Samuel Rillstone, Pool, RNZ, File

Other opponents of the Voice fear that its enshrinement in the Constitution could open the floodgates to judicial activism by unelected judges creating constitutional rights well beyond what was ever intended by Parliament.

Coming from an altogether different angle are those, mostly within the indigenous community, who oppose the Voice as inadequate and insulting. They view an “advisory” body as tokenism and are looking for much more substantial reform. Think sovereignty and self-determination.

The proposed Voice would certainly fall well short of the concepts of co-governance discussed in New Zealand. By comparison, it’s a modest proposal.

The relative positions of Australia and New Zealand’s indigenous groups warrant comment. In terms of disadvantage, both suffer badly, including large life expectancy gaps vis-a-vis their fellow citizens – about 7.4 years for Māori and 8.2 years for Aboriginal people. In terms of demographics, Māori account for more than 17 per cent of their country’s population, Aboriginal Australians only about 3 per cent.

Māori have the benefit of a historical treaty, albeit one being debated over interpretation. No treaty exists in Australia.

Indigenous Australians’ ancient and continuous occupation of the great southern continent founds a powerful moral claim for recognition and the right to be consulted. They arrived at least 65,000 years before European settlers.

Aboriginal art, dance, and storytelling feature at the Garma Festival in Gulkula, Northern Territory. Photo / Tourism Australia, File

By comparison, Māori are very recent inhabitants of Aotearoa, having only arrived some centuries before Europeans, but in time to claim first-people status.

To date, the Australian Government’s campaign to win the Voice referendum has been surprisingly low-key. Prime Minister Albanese is relying on emotion rather than logic to carry the day – feel-good assertions that voting “Yes” is “the right thing to do” and cynical warnings that it would be a bad look internationally if the “No” vote won.

Most non-indigenous Australians feel goodwill toward their indigenous cousins and are keen to see the latter’s lives improve.

But to win support for the referendum, the Government needs to focus less on emotion and more on rational argument, to explain exactly how the Voice would close the current yawning gap in life outcomes between non-indigenous and indigenous Australians.

Polling suggests public support for the Voice is around 50 per cent, but pollsters describe much of that support as “soft”. That’s problematic given the notorious difficulty of winning a referendum.

Success requires a “double majority” – a national majority of voters in all states and territories plus a majority of voters in a majority of states. Since federation in 1901, that’s only been achieved for eight out of 44 proposed changes. And the last one was back in 1977.

The only certainty is that the Voice debate will become nastier as the year progresses. Social media is already producing the usual unhelpful polarisation.

Opponents of the Voice are often dismissed as racists and bigots, supporters as anti-democratic virtue-signallers. Such unthinking posturing leaves little room for reasoned debate.

A serious proposal to recognise and consult Australia’s indigenous population deserves better.

- Ross Stitt is a Kiwi living in Sydney. A freelance writer, he has a PhD in political science.