One voice is merely an echo chamber for one opinion
IN the same breath as calling for an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament, the media have spent all week crucifying one. As politicians cancel an outback Aboriginal woman who disagrees with them, tech giants such as Facebook censor her videos and those who agree with her shy from an inevitable witch-hunt. So what happens if the Voice to Parliament says things people don’t want to hear? Will it be censored? Stood down? Smashed as a “redneck celebrity vortex” like Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Price?
Wealthy proponents and governments hold a chequered record of listening to only those who agree with them, “mob-shopping” for views that enable the destruction of indigenous cultural knowledge so they can tick the social conscience box and ensure their chosen plan progresses.
Take Winterbourne Wind, a 22,285-ha windfarm along the Oxley Falls National Park, where the Danish-owned global conglomerate Vestas has failed to consult local Dunghutti tribes.
When Dunghutti custodians went to the Vestas Walcha office, they were told they would need to jump through the bureaucratic hoops to be “registered” as Aboriginals.
It’s not enough to have grown up on an Aboriginal mission a few kilometres from the proposed wind farm, to know of hidden massacres, ridgetop burials and sacred women’s sites - if you want to fight a wind farm as an Aboriginal, even as a former land council representative, you need to prove ancestry before they listen to you.
About 576ha of grounds with “high cultural value” is expected to be disturbed during the wind farm construction.
That’s just the turbines - we still need to determine how much will be dug out of the thousands of kilometres of transmission lines.
Its heritage assessment only identifies 16 sites, a fraction of what the Dunghutti believe is there.
While hundreds of archeological finds, including grinding stones and axe blades, have been found - the Dunghutti has yet to be asked about their cultural significance - or told where remains and archeological finds would be sent.
How can you claim Aboriginal views are important while refusing to consult the correct Aboriginal nation and build on a project which could erase evidence they ever existed?
That’s just one project in one town.
The breadth of issues the Voice would need to be across would be too diverse for a single national body to deal with effectively. The exclusive chosen few will be handpicked to go with the government platform just as political appointees are made to other “independent advisory boards”.
If you are serious about Closing the Gaps, where are the policies, programs and projects that will address intergenerational poverty, increase home ownership, improve health, end domestic violence and better education?
Mr Albanese says the Voice would force the government to consult on new laws - so what happens when the Voice is different from what they want to hear?
Take the Renewables Bill. Would rural Indigenous who don’t want their sacred sites ripped up and concreted with wind megaliths be invited to the Voice?
Or the EV discount. Do remote Aboriginals without phones or internet, who have never seen an electric vehicle, want to subsidise the wealthy inner-city laptop class into Teslas?
The new Office of the Voice won’t be in Leeton or Cape York.
It will be in Canberra, like the National Water Grid, specialising in Northern Australia, or Sydney, like the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner’s office on Pitt St.
Power will be centralised away from rural and remote communities.
The Voice proposal Mr Albanese took to Question Time this week is a “gender-balanced” 24 people representing 35 regions, where “each region decides how best to draw its voice members” and how many there will be.
Only five must be remote. Members must “select two full-time co-chairs of a different gender”.
If they don’t like what they say, a vote of two-thirds - 15.8 people - can kick them out of the Voice for good.
It fails to lay out an action plan or ask Voice members to show ancestry.
Money will come from the taxpayer to table advice to
Parliament on legislation and pay for participation in international events like the UN.
It notes that “advice would need to reflect the diversity of views
held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, including dissenting views”.
So who will the government say no to?
What if the Voice contradicts or argues with the Parliamentary Indigenous Evaluation Committee, the secretaries sub-committee on Indigenous Affairs, the National Indigenous Australians Agency advisory board, the Prime Ministers Indigenous Advisory Committee, the 151 Land Trusts, 31 Local Aboriginal
Land Councils, the more than 50 Aboriginal peak organisations providing advice to government, the more than $1 billion Department of Indigenous Affairs, or the taxpayerfunded Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner?
A voice can belittle, besmirch and bully those of a different opinion.
Senator Price has experienced those voices of vitriol, scorn, and disdain for daring to have one.
Such voices divide - they are an impediment and obstacle in the way of genuine advocacy for policies, programs and projects that will deliver real and lasting on-theground change to truly close the gap.