As I write, there is just under a week until the Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia on Saturday the 14th of October. This is the first referendum in over twenty years and the first since I became eligible to vote. If passed, it would be the first to pass in more than forty years. They are infrequent and most fail when put to the public. The question being voted on is:
A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
According to polls, it seems unlikely it will pass and it may well be less successful than expected as many Australians are terrified of being called racist and so in some cases might avoid sharing their actual voting intentions until the day. I am assuming it will fail but I am still cynical about what will follow either way. Most of the worst people in Australia support the affirmative which alone is enough to be against it. I do not believe they are confident enough to attempt blatant electoral fraud as happened during the 2020 United States Presidential Election but this is still a real possibility. I think electoral fraud is much more likely than a genuine win for the ‘Yes’ vote.
I also know that success for the ‘No’ vote will not be the end of the matter. Though not in the same form, this idea has been around for a while. I first remember the idea of an amendment put to the public by former Prime Minister John Howard as a last desperate attempt to get a fifth term in office in 2007. The old timer has come out against this one as it would have more teeth than simple recognition in the constitution would. If it fails, something similar will still be done somehow through legislation and the same pale aboriginals who would form a successful ‘Voice’ in parliament already have their shrill voices heard by the government on so many issues that the referendum is really only trying to make official what already exists. Still the enthusiasm to get it through suggests there is more at work.
The problem as always with the ‘No’ side is they waste time arguing with the opposite side as if both sides are reasonable. They’ve learned literally nothing from the years of cultural vandalism and the ‘vote until you get it right’ mentality of the opposition. Voting ‘No’ to the Republic did not end the republican movement and this movement has a lot of crossover with this latest call for ‘change’.
Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Patrick J. Buchanan, Random House, July 28th, 2009
