In this piece, I continue my deep dive into the Voice to Parliament that is being put before Australians in a referendum on 14th October 2023. I explore the evidence on how well the consultation process allowed First Nations people to have a say in developing this proposal, and how widely it is supported among First Nations communities across Australia. Finally I review the four main ‘stories’ about the referendum, three that are urging a No vote and one that is urging a Yes vote, considering how well their stories match reality. I then bring a spiritual perspective to the referendum question, exploring the notion that aboriginal and non-aboriginal people have been brought together in this country for a karmic and evolutionary reason, and that we are called to embrace with courage the work that is being asked of us through this coming together. Finally I reflect on how well each of the four ‘stories’ would support us to do this important work.
Did the consultative process allow all First Nations people to have a say? Was it biased towards certain groups? And how much support for the Voice to Parliament is there among First Nations people?
I have heard a number of critics of the referendum proposal, including First Nations people, claiming that their voices have not been heard in the process of developing the proposal, and that many First Nations people who oppose the Voice have not had a say. NSW delegate Jenny Munro, one of the delegates who walked out of the Uluru constitutional convention, claimed that the process was a ‘one-way conversation’ and that alternative views and proposals were silenced by the facilitators. Amnesty International, in a submission to the Referendum Council around the time of the Uluru conference, raised concerns that the process was excluding some aboriginal groups who wanted to be heard. Vicki Clark, a Mutthi Mutthi and Wemba Wamba woman and respected community leader in the aboriginal community in Victoria said, in an interview several months ago, that she and her community felt that they’d not had anything to do with the evolution of the Voice, which they associated with aboriginal leaders and communities from northern Australia. She said that their focus has been the treaty process in Victoria over the past few years, which has involved extensive consultation from the state government. As a result, she said her people feel that the treaty process is theirs, whereas there is no sense of ownership with the Voice. She commended the Uluru Statement as a text, but said that for the majority of Victorian aboriginal people, it feels foreign to them.
I have heard a further claim among proponents of a No vote that only ‘corporate Aboriginals’ support the Voice, whereas ‘grassroots’ Aboriginals do not. Some claim that those living in remote communities, who are part of more intact and spiritually based cultures than those in more urban areas, are opposed to the Voice. Supporters of the Voice, on the other hand, frequently claim that 80% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are in support. What are we to make of these claims?
As I explained in the last piece, the consultation process conducted by the Referendum Council was extensive. The regional meetings and the meeting at Uluru were intended to be follow a deliberative process, and for this reason were capped at 100 and 250 participants respectively. Larger numbers than this would have made it difficult or impossible to engage in a deliberative process. The online submission process offered an alternative pathway for aboriginal people to make their views about constitutional reform known to the Referendum Council – I don’t know how well publicised this was, nor how many aboriginal communities were aware of it. An online consultation process will by its nature be a barrier to participation for those who have limited access to technology, in particular people living in remote communities, living traditional livestyles and older people.
The stated intent of the regional meetings was that a representative sample of traditional owner groups and community organisations would be invited to participate – this is a good goal and would make for a strongly representative process, but without first-hand accounts or independent oversight it is hard to know the extent to which this happened, and whether any prejudices among the local organisations who were consulted on selection led to particular groups or individuals being excluded. The way the process was designed makes such manipulation a possibility, though equally it could have been carried out with the utmost integrity. From my time following and participating in politics, I’m aware that some people who make the loudest complaints about a process excluding them were the very people who chose not to participate when invited. Nevertheless, for now, I am unable to answer this question with confidence.
Overall, my impression is that a sincere and substantial effort was made by the Referendum Council to consult with aboriginal communities across Australia as part of the constitutional reform process. However I also think that Vicki Clark’s observations are significant. I wonder whether the process was overly driven by a ‘top down’ agenda, rather than getting out in communities to find out what they want, and building a policy from there. Ironically, the Voice framework could be exactly the kind of model that would enable such consultation to occur effectively. It is important to separate the process of developing the Voice model from the outcome, i.e. how good and useful a model the Voice would be for supporting self-determination among aboriginal people. However it may be that a better process would have led to more united support for the referendum proposal than we see now.
How much support is there for the Voice among aboriginal people?
Poll results:
Aside from the consultation process described previously, there have been two surveys conducted to gauge levels of support for the Voice to Parliament among aboriginal people: one conducted by Ipsos in January and the other conducted by YouGov in March. The Ipsos poll was conducted online and surveyed the views of 300 aboriginal people, while the YouGov poll was also conducted online and surveyed the views of 15,060 Australians, of which 738 identified as aboriginal. Of the Ipsos poll respondents, 80% indicated that they intended to vote yes in the referendum, 10% no, and 10% undecided. In the YouGov poll, 83% indicated they intended to vote yes, 14% no and 4% undecided. This article gives a good review of these surveys, and their credibility.
Essentially, the larger YouGov survey has good credibility due to its sample size, whereas the smaller one would be harder to draw definitive conclusions from. However the fact that both surveys, along with the regional and Uluru dialogues and the online submissions and telephone survey all showed support levels of over 80% gives this figure some credibility. The most likely unknown that reduces the reliability of the results, which is acknowledged in the article, is the views of people in remote communities, who are likely to be underrepresented in all of the surveys. Another, even more significant unknown relates to the timing of these surveys, which occurred in early 2023; we don’t know if aboriginal support for the Voice has strengthened or softened in that time. It may have strengthened as information reached more communities, or it may have softened in line with the softening of overall support among Australians.
Unless there has been a radical change that has gone completely undetected in public discourse, a reasonable estimate of the real figure is that it probably sits in a range from 70% to 90%. It is worth remembering though that even 70% support is a substantial amount, when one considers that, in most Australian elections, the winning party gets a two party preferred vote of around 52-60%, and the marriage equality referendum, which was considered to be passed resoundingly, still only had a majority of 69%.
First hand accounts
I as a big believer in combining quantitative and qualitative evidence to get the best picture of an issue, as each of the two methodologies can work to counteract the potential biases and limitations of the other, and the resulting picture is richer and deeper than is gained by using one method alone. The accounts below don’t represent formal qualitative research, and are small in number, but represent a start in exploring this subject. If any readers have stories from their own experience or that of people they know that they would be willing to share, I would welcome these to be sent to me.
1. The Dja Dja Wurrung community and elders in my home town of Castlemaine have largely been strongly supportive of the Voice, and senior community elders participated in a fundraising concert for the Yes campaign in September.
2. A close friend has a friend who is working with an aboriginal community in northern Queensland. He has told her that the community and its elders are strongly against the Voice.
3. Two friends living in the Daylesford and Castlemaine area told me that they intended to vote No primarily because aboriginal friends of theirs had advised them to do so. The one sent me a link to an interview with a member of her extended family who is a young Aboriginal activist from Victoria speaking against the Voice
4. A friend who has recently been working in remote communities in Arnhem Land told me that the few people in those communities that she had felt comfortable to ask about the Voice seemed not to know anything about it, unless they already worked for a community or government organisation, in which case they were very likely to support the Voice.
5. A friend who is living and working on an island of the coast of Arnhem Land told me that the community there was overwhelmingly positive about the Voice, and when she asked which way they thought she should vote they seemed surprised that she would ask. She said that until recently, many people were ignorant of the Voice, but a public awareness campaign from community groups supporting a Yes vote had been effective in raising awareness. She said that she felt that support for Yes was much more consistent in northern Australia, where the culture of aboriginal communities was more intact, whereas support for No tended to come from the south and coastal areas, where there has been more displacement and trauma, and hostility toward white people and mistrust of the government is stronger. I found this perspective interesting as it contradicts a narrative I have heard from some No supporters that it is ‘urban’ and ‘corporate aborigines’ who are supporting Yes, and that those living in more traditional, ‘grassroots’ cultures don’t support it.
6. A friend who lives in Perth, has an aboriginal partner and used to live in the Kimberleys for many years, told me that the level of support among the aboriginal people she knows and in the broader Kimberleys region is ‘definitely at least 80%’, including all of her husband’s family. She said that in her experience, the aboriginal people who intend to vote no either a) don’t think the Voice goes far enough, b) Don’t trust the government or c) Are conservative Christians who are influenced by their church leaders’ positions.
7. The ABC has, perhaps surprisingly, been commendably sensitive and even handed in canvassing the voices of aboriginal community members on the Voice to Parliament, and there are several articles that offer a range of these views. These are well worth reading for understanding aboriginal people’s perspectives. One thing that I have learned from these interviews is the stress that the referendum process has placed on aboriginal people, partly due to activating racism in the non-aboriginal community, and also in leading to divisions and conflicts in the aboriginal community.
In summary, I think the evidence suggests that it is likely that a substantial majority of aboriginal people support the Voice to Parliament. But my impression is that there is considerable variation on the level of support from region to region, and in some regions and in some communities there is quite vocal opposition. I think it is important that both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people reflect on the reasons for this, and also try to maintain an atmosphere of respect for differing views that are held by aboriginal people in good faith who want the best for their communities.
The first-hand accounts I mentioned and the public statements of support from many traditional owner groups and community leaders (including from my local traditional owner group the Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal Corporation), demonstrate that the claim that only supposedly ‘corporate aboriginals’ support the Voice is without merit (as well as being highly pejorative and inflammatory). In contrast, I find the proposition that there is a correlation among aboriginal communities and individuals between experience of trauma and loss of culture and suspicion or opposition towards the Voice to have a lot of merit and be worth exploring further. I find it notable that several of the supporters of a so-called 'progressive no' vote are activists whose trauma is very visible, and who have a history, in my observation, of taking a strident, angry approach to seeking aboriginal rights and equality; reading through the posts and comments on some of their social media pages revealed to me a dominant theme of anger and hostility. While their anger is both understandable and eminently justified in one sense, I believe it is not by itself and effective approach for creating lasting change.
As a proponent of the community development model of bottom up decision-making and participatory governance, I do wonder whether more groundwork could have gone into consultation and building consensus on the Voice, both in the aboriginal community and the wider Australian population, and it may be that this ultimately proves fatal to the referendum's chances of success. Nevertheless, the referendum proposal is before us now, and each of us need to decide how to cast our vote. In the final chapter of this series, I will share my thoughts on this question, bringing both practical and esoteric perspectives to the question.
A Tale of Four Stories: the cases for and against the Voice to Parliament
In this final piece on the Voice to Parliament, written only a few days out from the referendum date, I will explore some of the main viewpoints that have been put forward about the Voice in the form of stories: three stories that support a No vote, and one that supports a Yes vote. In doing this, my intention is to speak to people who care about and respect aboriginal people and want the best for them. I am not writing for those who are hostile to, or dismissive of aboriginal people and their culture, of which, sadly, there are still many in Australia. For each story, I will be following the sensemaking approach put forward by philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger, and approaching each story with sincerity, looking for what is signal (truth) and what is noise (error, falsehood) within it. This may not please those who prefer to see everything in black and white terms, with simple ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ but, as H. L. Mencken famously observed: ‘For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong’. I will also be looking beyond the ‘hard facts’, such as we can observe them, and seeking for the spiritual gesture behind each story – a delicate process and one that is susceptible to being distorted by personal agendas, but I believe a necessary and valuable one, especially at a time when hard facts can sometimes be elusive, or prove less hard on closer inspection than they did when first glimpsed.
The Conservative No Case
The first story that we need to consider is what I term the ‘Conservative No’ case, put forward by aboriginal politician Jacinta Price and community leader Warren Mundine, and countless non-aboriginal conservative politicians, thinkers and commentators who make up the ‘official’ No campaign. According to this story, the Voice to Parliament proposal is an artifact of political elites in Canberra and in the aboriginal community, a virtue signalling exercise that reinforces a victim culture and will do nothing to provide real benefit to aboriginal people, instead feathering the nests of the aboriginal elites who will use it to garner privilege and wealth. Like the third story, the ‘Populist No’ case, this story often emphasises the dangers of tinkering with the constitution, the lack of detail of the Voice and the risks of what might happen if it is implemented. Of the four stories, this one veers the closest to a denigration of aboriginal culture in my view, and in some cases is used to serve such an agenda, but I think it is important to understand it and draw out the insights as well as the limitations within it.
I think the main useful insight that this position has is to recognise that big, symbolic gestures can be hollow, and that institutions can be captured by vested interests, whilst real change needs to have tangible benefits at a community level. Also, it is important to recognise the need for care in changing our constitution: I think that many Yes supporters are relatively economically comfortable, and can afford to take a sanguine view of any potential legal ramifications from a poorly worded constitutional change, whereas for those with a more tenuous existence, including many farmers and blue collar workers, perceived threats to their land, living or the economy on which they depend can generate existential fears that the average, privileged middle class Yes supporter is insulated from. (Of course aboriginal people are often equally or more vulnerable than this group, but the part of the mind that is concerned with survival does not tend to think in rational or relative terms). Finally, the notion of fairness that has deep roots in the Australian psyche, that no-one should be given special privileges that are denied to others, is a valid one. Yet as we will see, it is possible to understand and justify the Voice in a way that fully respects and honours this principle.
I think acknowledging these legitimate truths and concerns is an important step in enabling genuine dialogue about whether they are justified and relevant in the case of the Voice. In my view, they are generally not justified, with a couple of exceptions, for the following reasons. Firstly, the most rudimentary understanding of human psychology will acknowledge the importance of symbolism in influencing people’s wellbeing, and the symbolism of the aboriginal Voice is a powerful one that has resonated with many aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. Secondly, the voice is a practical measure, not just a symbolic one: in essence it is a form of advisory group to help government come to decisions about issues that effect aboriginal people. The use of advisory groups is a well-established practice in public policy that is favoured by all levels of government for two major reasons: firstly they help governments to be better informed about areas of policy where the group has specialised, first-hand knowledge, and secondly, they ensure that groups that have historically been marginalised are given an avenue to be heard by government.
Thus it is misconceived to claim that the Voice would provide an unfair ‘special privilege’ to aboriginal people, or reinforce a culture of victimhood. Rather, it is both a fair and sensible measure. It is fair, because aboriginal people have historically been a marginalised group in our society, and still face significant disadvantages relative to the majority of the population. It is also fair because our society rests on the injustice of invasion, colonisation and dispossession, an injustice directly and with devastating effect impacted the lives of aboriginal people, and an injustice that fairness therefore demands be remedied. It is also a sensible measure, because it is widely acknowledged that government policies directed towards improving the social and economic status of aboriginal communities have been substantially ineffective, often because of a failure to consult with aboriginal people and understand their needs. The Voice would provide an avenue for such consultation to occur. But more than this, it would benefit the whole nation, because it would help us to benefit from the input of a culture that lived in harmony with this country for thousands of years: a culture that learned how to live sustainably with the land and avoid the horrors of large-scale warfare and colonisation; a culture with an incredible depth of spiritual richness and wisdom of the kind that our materialistic civilization desperately needs.
Regarding the legal soundness of the Voice, it is important that the constitutional change should do what it was intended to do, and not have unforeseen, undesirable impacts of the sort put forward by No supporters. In this regard, I found the legal opinion of the solicitor general Stephen O’Donaghue to be a pretty convincing one, and recommend readers to refer to it, as it goes through some of the concerns that have been raised and rebuts them one by one. I do note that former High Court Justice Frank Brennan raised some concerns about the wording of the proposal, and I respect him and his knowledge of the law, although I still lean towards the view that the change is so simple and its intent and wording so clear that it shouldn’t leave room for unexpected consequences when interpreted by the courts. Importantly, Brennan still believes the proposal should be supported due to its overwhelming moral case and likely benefits to aboriginal people and the nation as a whole. Otherwise, the majority of legal opinion I have heard (though not all) has been concurrent with O’Donaghue’s view.
The area in which I think the Conservative No camp’s concerns bear some attention is around the potential for the Voice to become a top-down bureaucratic structure that is dominated by entrenched groups. Here, the structure of the Voice is of great importance, in particular the way in which members are selected and the need to have Voices operating at a local and state level. But awareness of the possibility of the new structure being abused is not a reason to reject it: the existing power structures have just as much potential for abuse, and lack a clear, strong avenue of aboriginal representation. Rather, this awareness must lead all of us to closely scrutinise the proposed structures of the Voice once it is legislated, and to advocate for structures that encourage grassroots democratic power and participation, and the input of all aboriginal communities.
The Radical No Case
I now turn to the second story, which some but not all Australians will be aware of: what I term the ‘Radical No’ case. The core of tenet of the Radical No story is that the Voice should be rejected, not because it will give too much power to aboriginal people, but because it won’t give any. According to the Radical No story, the government is pushing the Voice because it will assuage the demands of aboriginal people for greater power and say in their lives and in how the country is run, without really giving them any tangible benefit. They point out that the Voice will only have the ability to offer suggestions to the government of the day, but no political power to influence its decisions. Thus they argue that it is a tokenistic piece of empty symbolism, a sop intended to mollify aboriginal demands for genuine power and influence. The main aboriginal proponents of the Radical No story are Victorian lawyer and politician Lidia Thorpe, Tasmanian community leader Michael Mansell and Victorian academic and activist Gary Foley.
On a practical level, it is easy to agree with the Radical No position that the Voice does not give an increase in hard political power, however its proponents argue that it does provide ‘soft power’ of a kind that represents a tangible and achievable step forward for aboriginal people. I think it is both an overly cynical and a psychologically naïve view to claim that only hard power enables any influence over government policy, yet it is also naïve to believe that hard power does not enable additional influence that soft power does not. Similarly, I strongly support the Radical No position in advocating for a Treaty between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people, and I think that this must be the goal of all people who want to see justice, recognition and a fair deal for aboriginal peoples. Nevertheless, the question that the Radical No story fails to adequately address, in my view, is why a more radical proposal such as theirs (treaty and guaranteed seats in parliament) is likely to gain sufficient acceptance among the mainstream non-aboriginal community that is barely able to accept the Voice for the government to be willing to enact it (and for it to stay enacted when a more conservative government comes to power later). Supporters of Yes argue that the Voice can pave the way for greater visibility, understanding of, and respect for aboriginal people and their culture, and that this will then create the conditions that will make a treaty possible. I find this argument pretty convincing, as I think political change frequently comes about through cultural change driven by shifts in understanding. I see the beauty of the Voice being its ability to positively influence culture in a way that doesn’t require brute political warfare to accomplish – warfare that the aboriginal people, who make up 3% of the Australian population, are unlikely to win.
The Conspiratorial No Case
The third type of No story that I have encountered over the past few months I have termed the ‘conspiratorial No’ case, and is likely the least well known among mainstream Australians. I use the term conspiratorial not as a value judgment (some conspiracies are true, some are not) but because it accurately describes the main theme of this position: Conspiratorial No supporters contend that the government’s aim in putting forward the Voice to Parliament is driven by a covert agenda that aims to disadvantage both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people to the benefit of the government and the elites that it serves, both nationally and internationally. The main two claims of the conspiratorial no camp seem to be as follows: firstly that including aboriginal people in the constitution will subjugate them to that constitution and take away their lawful sovereignty as custodians of country, and secondly, that the Voice is part of a larger plot to implement the agenda of the World Economic Forum, of which various dire enumerations have been forecast if the referendum is successful. Some people I have spoken with do not have such detailed fears about the Voice, but simply believe that anything proposed by the government is not to be trusted. Usually they feel this way because they experienced significant trauma over the past three years of the Covid19 pandemic, being shunned, ostracised and forced from jobs and careers due to their refusal to follow government demands for vaccination, as well as in some cases resisting mask mandates and lockdowns.
I strongly empathise with this group, as it includes good friends of mine, and also because I feel that they were the victims of rushed, one-sided and unethical policies, and generally treated shamefully by governments and the media in this country. Similarly, I believe that there are significant covert agendas at play on a geopolitical scale that need to be named and resisted (and am surprised that so many people discount this possibility, given what is already known about governments’ historical use of covert operations and tactics to achieve their political ends). Nevertheless, other friends of mine suffered from the same exclusionary policies, but did not embrace the one-sided and extreme beliefs that many in the Covid sceptical community did. So how do I see their views, and the wisdom or folly of these? First, I think they are right to be cautious about trusting our government, and assuming it has our best interests at heart. Australia’s governments are significantly influenced by the powerful corporations that dominate our political landscape, including big tech, big media, big pharma and several other ‘bigs’. They are also influenced by the scientific materialist view of life that dominates the scientific and medical establishment, and which is implicated in the ecological, physical and mental health crises of the current time. Most concerningly, these two forces have come together in the technocratic elites that seem to believe they have been appointed to solve the problems of our age, and are pushing dangerous policies in pursuit of this, including transhumanism, genetically modified foods and medicines, mass surveillance and increasingly centralised power structures at an international level. All of these policies need to be critiqued and resisted wherever they appear.
However unfortunately, I believe that the understanding that many of the Conspiratorial No camp of political dynamics is both simplistic and somewhat paranoid, and this is reflected in their position on the Voice to Parliament. In regard to the notion that the Voice, and the step of including aboriginal people in the constitution, would somehow take away their sovereignty, I have asked them: what kind of sovereignty are you talking about? For example there is spiritual sovereignty, which is founded in the truth of who we are and our rights, political sovereignty, which is the rights afforded to us by the law of the land, and personal sovereignty, which we might term our sense of personal power and agency. Spiritual sovereignty cannot be ‘given up’ or taken away from us – it is given to us by the higher powers by dint of who we are, and is founded in Law with a capital L. Personal sovereignty is primarily dependent on our living by our values and beliefs, so again it cannot be given up unless we betray our values out of fear or another lower motivation, though it is hard to express our personal power when our culture is being oppressed. But this is already happening, and I have seen no evidence that the Voice would increase that oppression – in fact the reverse.
Political sovereignty, however, is dependent on our position with regard to the manmade laws under which we live. Here, I would argue that, sadly, aboriginal people lost most of their sovereignty in colonial times, and have slowly been regaining it over the last 50 years, beginning with the 1967 referendum. However there is still a long way to go, and the Voice to Parliament was intended to help continue this process of regaining political sovereignty. I have seen no credible evidence that the Voice would reduce aboriginal political sovereignty – how could it? It is worth noting that, among the aboriginal leaders who have been involved in the constitutional reform process, and their non-aboriginal allies there are several lawyers. Is it really likely that they would willingly support a process that they knew would take away their people’s sovereignty?
This leads me on to the second claim of the Conspiratorial No camp: that the Voice is part of a secret agenda to implement the policies of the World Economic Forum and the elites that are bent on enslaving humanity. Again, I agree that there are corporate and political elites that have acquired significant and dangerous levels of power over international organisations and governments. However these groups are relatively open about the kinds of policies they want to see implemented, and the Voice has nothing to do with these in either its character or its origins. As I outlined in a previous article, it was developed 6 years ago by aboriginal people in a consultation process with a significant number of aboriginal leaders from across Australia with the aim of reclaiming their power and rights in this country; and as we will see, in both its material substance and spiritual gesture it has nothing to do with these types of agendas. Instead, I think the conspiratorial No camp fall victim to the human tendency to amplify our fears through projecting them onto others and concocting stories about them in our heads, and failing to reality check them in any kind of level-headed way.
It is certainly true that the Voice could be co-opted opportunistically by government and partisan interest groups to fulfil their agendas, and we must be on guard against this. But the same could be done with any legislated body, including the ones we already have. If we reflexively reject every initiative that is put forward by governments out of blind mistrust, we throw away the opportunity that have been worked for over decades by activists and community leaders to bring a new policy to the point where governments are willing to give it a go. Conspiratorial No and Radical No supporters both have a similar view of governments as being inherently malicious, and unswervingly dedicated towards oppression and exploitation of the weak and vulnerable, a view that I feel is one-sided, disempowering and leads to unskilful approaches to engaging with public life. A more nuanced view is to recognise that although the system under which we live is deeply compromised by corruption, powerful interests and distorted belief systems, there is also an evolutionary path at work, and ideals to make a better world that live in the hearts of all people, including politicians. These ideals are always struggling to break through and be born into life. It is up to us to use the discernment of our hearts and minds to recognise when there is good struggling to break through, to help it along and mould it with wisdom, rather than pushing it away out of fear.
The Yes Case
The final story which I would like to describe is one that all Australians will likely be familiar with: the Yes case. The Yes case has been somewhat simplified for the purposes of a political campaign, but in essence can be expressed as follows. Aboriginal people have been the victims of colonisation, dispossession and oppression since the arrival of European settlers over 200 years ago, and there is a moral imperative for Australians as a whole to try to redress the outcomes of this oppression: the unacceptably poor educational, health and economic position of many aboriginal people compared with non-aboriginal. There have been efforts to redress this over the past few decades, particularly through the Closing the Gap initiative, but these efforts have largely failed, because they tended to impose solutions on aboriginal people, rather than listening to what they wanted and needed. The Voice would enable aboriginal people to be heard in the policy making area in a way that they are frequently not heard now, and would also help more Australians to understand aboriginal culture and knowledge as these would become more visible.
Aside from its practical benefits, Yes supporters argue that the act of creating a formal avenue where governments listen to aboriginal people would mark a significant symbolic shift, that would positively change the dynamics of aboriginal and non-aboriginal relations in this country. Placing this body in the constitution would ensure that future governments who found it inconvenient to their political agendas could not simply abolish it, as happened with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, which was established by the Hawke Labor government in 1990, only to be abolished by John Howard’s Liberal government in 2005. It is important to note that the Uluru Statement from the Heart, endorsed by nearly 250 aboriginal leaders, and the regional dialogues all regarded the Voice as one of three steps necessary for improving the future of aboriginal people, along with Treaty and a Truth Telling process. However these two items are not part of the referendum question before Australians, and the federal government has not committed to implementing them.
I think that the first three points, about the impacts of colonisation on aboriginal people, the mostly failed attempts to improve socioeconomic conditions, and the need for a policy making process that is ‘bottom up’ rather than ‘top down’ are all incontestable. There is a clear moral case for this nation to respond to these. Does this automatically mean that Australians should support the Voice proposal? No: it is important to consider whether it will help to change these circumstances for the better first, and not have other negative impacts. I have already explained why I think the Voice is unlikely to have significant negative impacts on Australians, so the next question is whether it is likely to positively impact the lives of aboriginal people. My short answer to this is that I think it will probably have some benefit, and may have a great benefit for aboriginal people, provided it is allied with the other steps in the Uluru Statement, and especially with ongoing relationship building between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people at a community level, and capacity building among aboriginal people at a community level.
I am confident that the symbolic benefit of both a Yes vote from Australians for a Voice to Parliament, and the creation of the Voice itself, would have a big symbolic impact on aboriginal people’s sense of themselves in relation to the Australian nation. It would show aboriginal people that Australians wanted their voices to be heard in a symbolic sense, and that we trusted them enough to give them what they said they needed to heal and strengthen their culture. It would also place aboriginal people in the Australian constitution for the first time – again a significant acknowledgment. Finally, it would create a space of listening that would give aboriginal people a sense that their voices, culture and knowledge mattered to the wider Australian community. All of these symbolic elements are not trivial or tokenistic, for laws and shared public statement carry spiritual power.
But what of the practical benefits of the Voice? Will it deliver better outcomes for aboriginal people in this country? Here my answer is: maybe. It will greatly depend on how the Voice is structured, and whether it empowers a decentralised distribution of power, or whether it centralises power in the hands of a small group. Even the latter option may lead to better policy outcomes, but could also increase division and enmity in the aboriginal community itself. Part of the success or failure of the Voice will also be shaped by the extent to which aboriginal people can seize the opportunity to work collaboratively together with respect for place and community specific needs and wishes, or whether they will sabotage its potential through infighting, nepotism and corruption. Nevertheless, at least with a Voice, there is an opportunity and a chance of progress and positive change.
The Voice - coming together or moving away from each other?
In the final part of this essay, I would like to reflect on the spiritual dimension of what Australians are voting on this coming Saturday 14th October 2023, and consider the spiritual gesture of each of the stories about the referendum and the Voice that I have discussed so far. I believe that humanity is slowly reawakening to the spiritual nature of life, and dissolving the barrier between traditional science (how we use observation and deduction to understand the nature of physical matter) and spirituality. Whereas in the past, science and spirituality were typically seen as two competing, mutually incompatible worldviews, a new understanding is emerging that spirituality can contain and be compatible with the knowledge found in materialistic science, yet expand that knowledge beyond the realms of solid matter – already science has moved far beyond a purely physical understanding of the cosmos anyway through the discoveries of quantum physics.
One of the most important prophets of this emerging consciousness, Rudolf Steiner, taught that as we studied and observed living forms, we could come to see beyond their physical form to their spiritual reality, which included a sense of a particular gesture. He also taught that in this time, humanity can be led astray by two unhealthy tendencies: the first, which he termed Ahrimanic, is to deny the spirit and assign all value to material things, whereas the second, which he termed Luciferic is to reject the material world and try to move away from it into the spirit. Instead, he taught that our task in this time, which he termed the way of the Christ, is to participate in the healing and spiritual transformation of the Earth, so that our world becomes more and more a reflection of the most beautiful, loving and empowered potential within us. Then, one day, we will indeed create the Better World Our Hearts Know is Possible, as Charles Eisenstein describes it, and step into the Aquarian Age.
With this picture in our minds and hearts, let us try, without any agenda, to feel into the stories about the Voice to Parliament to find their inner ‘gestures’. As I do this, I notice that the Conservative No story tells me that only practical measures will help to bring about change in aboriginal people’s circumstances, and that symbolic actions are meaningless, while it also tends to diminish the value of the traditional aboriginal culture and worldview, which founded on a highly spiritual consciousness. Thus the gesture of this story is to push us down further into solid material reality, and away from the spirit: in short, it is Ahrimanic. The Radical and Conspiratorial No stories, on the other hand, hold a strong respect for aboriginal culture and spirituality, which is beautiful to see. However they want to keep it apart from mainstream Australian society, which they see as crude, corrupt and even downright evil, and which they tend to imply is incapable of being transformed. Where there is a belief that the forces of wisdom will triumph over the corrupt materialistic system this is often expressed in very vague terms. Thus their gesture represents a pushing away from the material world and its realities, and tends to be Luciferic.
When we sit with the Yes story, we sense that it acknowledges both the value of aboriginal culture and also the necessity of engaging with the realities of the modern Australian society in which aboriginal people live, and contains within it a sense of possibility that this society can be transformed, without pretending that this will be a quick or easy process. Most importantly, there is a sense that, in this story, aboriginal and non-aboriginal cultures can come closer together, learn from each other and mutually become stronger from this meeting. In Steiner’s terms, the coming together of the two cultures is not an accident, but because we need to learn from each other; thus the Yes story opens aboriginal and non-aboriginal people to participate in this learning. Will this be easy? No. Is there risk involved, especially for aboriginal people? Yes; but in reality the risk of staying apart is far greater. None of this means that the Yes model is perfect, or the only way to do this work that we are here to do. But through the referendum in which we are about to participate, it stands before us as an opportunity to walk towards this new future, and I think that it would be a wise and empowered decision for us to take it.