On Indigenous Voice, the Nationals cloak doing nothing in paternalism
Nationals #Nationals
From the outset, the Nationals have been hostile to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
In 2017, then party leader Barnaby Joyce falsely claimed, in the wake of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, that it would constitute a third chamber. “It just won’t fly.” In 2019, he then admitted he was wrong on the third chamber claim, while on the backbench.
In October Joyce was back at it, disgustingly comparing a Voice to Parliament to Nazi Germany.
The official line from the Nationals is no longer an outright lie, or sordid invocations of Nazism, but that a Voice will do nothing for Indigenous people.
In August, Nationals Leader David Littleproud insisted that a Voice would be “another speech with no actual outcome” and wouldn’t “shift the dial” on Indigenous welfare.
In formally opposing a Voice yesterday, Littleproud went further. It would be “another layer of bureaucracy here in Canberra”, said it wouldn’t be “a Voice for regional, rural and remote Australians. This is one for those who live in Redfern”. It wouldn’t “shift the dial”, he repeated.
This argument that a Voice would have no practical benefit for Indigenous peoples will likely become the polite, politically correct excuse to oppose it. It echoes Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s justification for walking out on the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples in 2008 — that it wouldn’t have any real impact. Its deeper antecedent is John Howard’s opposition to doing pretty much anything at all in cooperation with Indigenous peoples, on the basis he was only interested in “practical”, not “symbolic”, reconciliation.
As Howard showed, emphasising “practical” reconciliation led to no reconciliation of any kind — which was the point. It’s exactly the point for the Nationals and, very likely, the Dutton-led Liberals. Dutton himself was peddling the “third chamber” lie even as Joyce was admitting it was false.
The “practical”/”symbolic” juxtaposition is one of those clever right-wing framings used to short-circuit pursuing rational, evidence-based policy. It’s similar to the framing of climate action — or any environmental action — as being all about “environment” versus “jobs”. It always sounds reasonable — who could oppose practical action for Indigenous peoples, any more than oppose more jobs? But it’s always a cloak for inaction that serves the interests of the powerful.
The evidence base for years of Indigenous policy across health, education and economic engagement is that what works — i.e., the precious practical benefits — is what is co-designed and co-implemented with and by Indigenous communities. One of the few positives of the Morrison government on any policy front was a commitment to building more and more capacity within Indigenous communities to participate in policy co-design and implementation, which takes institutional structures and expertise to help shape policy from its very inception through to delivery.
An Indigenous Voice to Parliament is the clearest expression of that commitment to the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the very foundations of policy design when it is legislated.
Littleproud portrays this as “another layer of bureaucracy” (never mind his more sinister contrasting of regional and “Redfern” Indigenous peoples) when it is the embodiment of a fundamentally altered approach, one that even the densest minds of the Morrison government recognised must be the way to “shift” a dial that remained stubbornly unshifted throughout nearly a decade of Coalition government. But the Nationals hope that voters will be too lazy and disengaged to bother seeing through that lie.
As Geoffrey Scott, Wiradjuri man and spokesperson for the Uluru Dialogues, said today, the Voice “will make practical improvements to the lives of First Nations Australians across the country, including in Nationals electorates. We know that because it is what First Nations have asked for.”
“Given their record of failure in government to close the gap, we will not be lectured by the Nationals on the best ways to improve outcomes for First Nations people.”
Indeed.
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