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Politics

Blinkered laments

Two accounts of the Voice referendum
by •
September 2024, no. 468

Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum by Frank Brennan

Connor Court Publishing, $24.95 pb, 145 pp

The End of Settlement: Why the 2023 referendum failed by Damien Freeman

Connor Court Publishing, $24.95 pb, 123 pp

Politics

Blinkered laments

Two accounts of the Voice referendum
by •
September 2024, no. 468

It was no surprise, in the end, when the October 2023 referendum on the constitutional enshrinement of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice was comprehensively defeated, given the concerted opposition of the Liberal-National Coalition. The history of Australian referendums is clear: bipartisan support is a necessary precondition for constitutional change.

While a great many of those on the political right were  adamantly opposed to the Voice, a small number of constitutional conservatives attempted to persuade their political brethren of the benefits of change. These included Greg Craven, former vice-chancellor of Australian Catholic University, and Julian Leeser, former shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, until he resigned from the shadow Cabinet to campaign for the Voice.

Closely aligned with Craven and Leeser were Jesuit priest Frank Brennan and academic Damien Freeman. Both have now published sorrowful assessments of the referendum. However, each account is diminished by its author’s unwillingness to entertain the notion that conservative politicians continue to engage in Indigenous affairs in bad faith.

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Dominic Kelly

Dominic Kelly is an Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University. His writing appears in Australian Book Review, The Age, The Monthly, Meanjin, The Saturday Paper, Guardian Australia, and Inside Story. He is the author of Political Troglodytes and Economic Lunatics: The Hard Right in Australia (La Trobe University Press, 2019).

Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum

Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum

by Frank Brennan

Connor Court Publishing, $24.95 pb, 145 pp

The End of Settlement: Why the 2023 referendum failed

The End of Settlement: Why the 2023 referendum failed

by Damien Freeman

Connor Court Publishing, $24.95 pb, 123 pp

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Comments (3)

  • I thank Bernard Collaery for his comment. I'm not a constitutional lawyer, so I'll leave to others the analysis of whether his alternate proposal for establishing the Voice is technically achievable, but convention and political reality suggests that it's a rather fanciful proposal. Given the controversy that was generated in the referendum debate, not to mention the racism and trauma that First Peoples were forced to endure, do we really think that bypassing the Australian people altogether would have been an acceptable method of altering the constitution? The backlash from those hostile to Indigenous rights would have been even more savage than that witnessed during the referendum campaign.
    Posted by Dominic Kelly
    06 September 2024
  • In my experience, even the well-meaning have vexed and complicated ideas of the meaning of reconciliation. The Voice was in some considerable part an exercise in politics concerning the duties of the Labor Party to Aboriginal Australia. The form of the Voice was not negotiable in this contract: "We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.". Citing article 37 as a way of sneaking the thing into existence completely miscontrues the intent of the exercise.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    05 September 2024
  • Dominic Kelly’s surgery on Frank Brennan’s and Damien Freeman’s analysis of the failed Aboriginal and Torres Voice referendum reveals how blinkered all three of these worthy commentators remain about bipartisanship. By putting the issue into the populist arena, Federal Labor lost the chance of the century. All State Labor Parliaments including the Liberal held Tasmanian legislature supported the Voice as did the Territory Assemblies. Section 51, Article 37 of the Australian Constitution allows the Federal Parliament working in tandem with State legislatures to enlarge federal legislative power without approval by a national referendum. Long before the vote, when John Menadue’s wonderful Pearls & Irritations published this analysis not a single voice challenged that prospect. https://johnmenadue.com/the-states-can-establish-the-voice-now-why-wait/
    Posted by Bernard Collaery
    05 September 2024

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