Australian Politics
Indigenous Australians split over voice vote despite memory of colonial horror
This "aboriginal" woman is clearly white. They all are in Tasmania
Patsy Cameron stands in her dining room in Tomahawk – a small fishing village on the north-east coast of Tasmania, Australia. She tells a story – a few decades old – of how she boarded a plane back from Darwin, her hands full of cultural objects she had bought. The man next to her turned and said: “They should have shot them all like they did to the Tasmanians.” She started crying. He responded by offering her a piece of cake, and an apology.
Behind her is a cabinet full of shell necklaces and drawings of her ancestors. The home she shares with her husband, Graham, is filled with cultural artefacts that the historian learned to make by reading diaries and anthologies of colonisers. Piece by piece she has put history back together. Piece by piece she is reviving her culture.
The reason she is having to do this is because of the persistent myth that haunts Tasmanian Aboriginal people – that they no longer exist.
It has its roots in the murderous colonial project that tried to wipe out the original inhabitants of the island in the 19th century, and the framing of the Nuenonne woman Truganini as “the last of the Tasmanian Aboriginal race” before her death in 1876. The myth spread across history books and in classrooms, carving a place in the minds of many Australians.
This is the usual Leftist lie. There was something of a war between blacks and whites in the early days. The Aborigines had attacked and killed isolated white settlers so were reviled. So the white Tasmanian authorities did mount a sweep aimed at catching and killing all Tasmanian Aborigines. But the sweep did nothing. Tha Aborigines easily evaded it.
What eventually wiped out the full-blood Aborigines was the "help" that do-gooder missionaries gave them. They were being rapidly wiped out by white disases so the do-gooders herded them all together onto Flinders Is. to "protect" them. None survived. During that time some Aboriginal women had however given birth to the children of white men. It is remote descendants of those part-Aboriginal childen who sometimes claim to be Aboriginal
All of this helps to explain why 14 October is so important, not just to Cameron but to many other Indigenous people across Australia. This is the day the country will go to the polls to vote on whether to establish in the constitution the principle of an Indigenous voice – an elected body to advise the national parliament on policies that affect the lives of Indigenous people.
The proposal is backed by the government, many businesses, the national sporting leagues and other institutions, and supported by a large majority of Indigenous people, according to the polls. But it has come under sustained attack from, among others, the leadership of the Liberal and National opposition parties.
It has been a bitter and unedifying campaign, with accusations of racism, misinformation, bad faith arguments and divisiveness. Referendums to change the constitution need a simple majority of all voters, but also a majority of the six states to vote in favour. Polls showed initial enthusiasm for the voice, with more than 60% in favour, but as the weeks have passed the no side has taken large chunks out of that vote and the proposal seems destined to fail.
But in Tasmania things are different
There, the polls show the yes campaign still in the lead – it is the only state where that has been the case for the past month and more.
Politics among some of the Aboriginal groups on the island is fraught. There are long-held tensions over who can identify. The largest group, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (Tac), questions the authenticity of the regional organisation, the Circular Head Aboriginal Corporation (Chac).
Highfield House sits within the local government area of Circular Head, where 17% of the region’s 8,000 people now identify as Aboriginal – a figure that has become a source of contention between the two groups – compared with 5.4% across the whole state.
Adding to the tension is Preminghana – a heritage site on the north-west coast that is managed by Tac rangers. Chac sees the site as culturally significant but has no access to it.
But on the voice the two groups are united – they are advocating for a no vote, though for very different reasons.
Tac sees it as a toothless tiger. Its spokesperson, Nala Mansell, says they haven’t fought to be advisers.
The chair of Chac, Selina Maguire-Colgrave, was a yes supporter at first, but now says Chac will vote no. She says the organisation already has access to parliament through the local MP, Gavin Pearce (he did not reply to a request for an interview), and is worried it might lose that access if the referendum were successful – that the voice would leave them with no voice.
“I don’t think we would have such an issue with the voice if we knew [it] would be fair and equitable,” Maguire-Colgrave says. “They [Tac] are not recognising our communities as Aboriginal yet. So it’s kind of the cart before the horse for us. We don’t have a seat at the table.”
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University of Sydney law professor wins court fight against NSW Police thugs
A University of Sydney law professor has won a lawsuit against the state after NSW Police arrested him on the sidelines of a student protest, swept his legs out from under him and pushed him to the ground.
Professor Simon Rice, the university’s chair of law and social justice, launched a District Court suit against the state of NSW this year after he was violently arrested and fined under COVID-related health orders in October 2020.
Judgment was entered in Rice’s favour in the civil suit on September 21, with the consent of the parties. The terms are otherwise confidential.
“I successfully sued the NSW Police for assault and battery, and for false imprisonment,” Rice said.
“That is conduct that police must avoid, and many do. Police have a challenging job, but that is not licence to assault and falsely imprison, as some do.”
Rice had already contested the $1000 fine issued to him for an alleged breach of public health orders by pleading not guilty in court to an offence under the state’s Public Health Act. Police subsequently dropped the charge.
Video footage captured by student newspaper Honi Soit, posted online, shows part of the incident when Rice was forced to the ground by a group of police officers after he tried to get back on his feet.
Rice had been peacefully observing the protest against tertiary education policy with some of his students, who were working on a project relating to protest law reform. During most of the action, he stood about five to 10 metres away from the protesters.
Rice was walking through part of the crowd when he observed police officers standing around a young woman. One of the officers took a megaphone out of her hand and Rice asked them why they were doing that. Shortly afterwards, police arrested him and swept his legs out from under him.
Rice said there was a “large gap in police accountability in NSW” because the NSW Ombudsman no longer has oversight of police conduct and the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) can investigate only serious or systemic misconduct.
“For complaints of ‘ordinary’ misconduct, you can complain to the NSW Police, who investigate themselves,” Rice said.
“The only way to make the NSW Police stop and think about how they overstepped the mark is to sue them. That is a slow, costly and risky path ... and not one that most people who encounter the NSW Police can undertake.
“I felt obliged to run the risk of suing the NSW Police because I am better able to take that risk than are most victims, and everything that can be done should be done to limit the excessive use of force by the police.”
Rice said there was “no excuse for police using force to suppress peaceful protest and participation in political debate”.
“Their role is to keep the peace. If force is necessary – and it was not at all necessary in the protest I was observing – it must be proportionate. Peaceful protest demands respectful policing.”
Redfern Legal Centre, acting for Rice, made a complaint to the LECC last year in an attempt to have the incident investigated as part of a wider examination of NSW Police response to protest action. It argued police used excessive force and there was no lawful reason to arrest Rice because he had a work-related exemption from restrictions on gatherings. The commission decided not to investigate.
Rice said that “there is a lot in a name; the role of police in society would be better described – as it once was in NSW – as a ‘service’, not a ‘force’, perhaps with a corresponding change in behaviour”.
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Albanese just spent $364 million to make Jacinta Price PM
By Parnell Palme McGuinness
When Malcolm Fraser’s granddaughter got out her ouija board this week to tell us that her grandfather, had he still been alive, would have voted yes in the Voice to parliament referendum, the conceit became an instant meme in the chat channels. Henceforth, “they’re really rolling out Malcolm Fraser’s granddaughter on this one” will be shorthand for the desperate and bizarre arguments made by the losing side of a public discussion.
But there is a silver lining: the referendum may be lost, but the process could deliver Australia its first female, Indigenous prime minister.
Despite repeated assurances that the real Yes campaign was about to launch, it seemingly never has. The much-vaunted TV ad is a fizzer, which leaves people with the same questions they started asking after Garma last year. Anthony Albanese is showing signs that he’s finally accepted the polling which indicates Yes is in a losing position. This week, the prime minister began rolling out the line that his referendum will have been worthwhile, even if rejected by voters, because the process “has brought Indigenous disadvantage front and centre in the national conversation”.
Bringing the disadvantage in Indigenous communities to the attention of the nation is vital. There was a time when, in combination with a constitutional convention on the structure of a Voice and the words to be inserted in our Constitution, it could have made a powerful case for Yes. In September last year, I pointed out that our annual ritual of debating Australia Day had allowed the comfortable classes to ignore the complexity of the Indigenous condition, in which, as Marcia Langton has argued, intra-community violence is too often excused or confused for Indigenous culture.
Since the prime minister has done nothing to lead or foreground the discussion on Indigenous disadvantage himself, his words have a hollow tone of defeat. But he’s not wrong: the referendum process has created a national forum for newly elected Northern Territory senator Jacinta Yangapi Nampijinpa Price to tell the heartbreaking story of her community.
Price has been travelling the country for the No campaign, telling her story to anyone who will listen. It includes, as she said in her first speech to parliament, that “direct family members have been violently murdered, or died of alcohol abuse, suicide, or alcohol-related accidents” and laments a justice system which is broken because it “serves perpetrators exceptionally better than victims”.
An increasing number of people are listening to the eloquent senator, who couples her focus on the terrible disadvantage in Indigenous communities with a message of empowerment, that Indigenous people can choose their destiny in modern Australia. She made headlines at the National Press Club for her claim that colonisation has been good for Indigenous Australians – a shocking and presumptuous claim to those trapped in the cycle of intergenerational trauma, but a truism in the context in which she put it: running water, readily available food.
Sanitation and nutrition are two fundamental measures of wellbeing that, together with Western-style housing, still dominate conversations over quality of life in remote Indigenous townships. Hearing it said plainly and publicly by an Indigenous woman who is still very much part of her own community as well as part of Canberra is revolutionary. Price is cutting through because her vision of what Australia can and could be for Indigenous people is unashamedly upbeat.
The effect she is having has been widely noted. This masthead recently called her a “conservative rockstar”, but there is evidence she is moving hearts and minds beyond conservative politics.
“The striking increase in the No vote suggests that Price, as campaign figurehead, has played a big part in winning people over,” says Resolve pollster Jim Reed. “Even progressives, who may not welcome her message in the same way conservatives would, cannot deny the authentic views of a black woman with hard-won experience.”
James Baillieu, part of the No campaign’s network of supporters and strategists, calls Price the X-factor of the campaign. He recently wrote that she argues to “give people more agency, opportunities, and legs up”. And “most important of all, she brings a positive message of hope”.
The Yes campaign accuses the No campaign of creating division. But perhaps the most uncomfortable thought for Yes campaigners is that far from dividing the country, Price is unifying it around an aspiration for Australia that Yes doesn’t share.
Her stocks within the Coalition have rocketed, generating serious discussion of Price as prime minister material. Nicolle Flint, the retired member for Boothby who is now being touted as a potential state Liberal leader in South Australia, has outlined the considerations involved.
Flint notes that Price is, from a practical perspective, in the wrong house and the wrong party. But the senator could run for a seat in the House of Representatives, which traditionally furnishes the prime minister and, potentially, shift to the Liberal Party. Price would, realistically, also need to work on the way she delivers her messages. She is already capable of inspiring, but to be prime minister she would need to become more persuasive. These are small things, given the enormous impact she has had in her first year of federal politics. For the time being, she is perfectly positioned to cut her teeth as deputy prime minister. Eventually, though, her fans want more for her.
The government budgeted $364.6 million over three years to deliver the referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples in the Constitution through a Voice to parliament. As the referendum campaign draws into its final days, it is hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that Anthony Albanese has run a $360 million campaign to elect our first female Indigenous prime minister. And she’s not from his side of politics
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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