Missing the chance

Dear Editor,

Dominic Kelly’s surgery on Frank Brennan’s and Damien Freeman’s analysis of the failed Aboriginal and Torres Voice referendum (ABR, September 2024) reveals how blinkered all three of these worthy commentators remain about bipartisanship. By putting the issue into the populist arena, the Albanese government lost the chance of the century. All state Labor governments and 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 on 14 October 2023, John Menadue’s wonderful Pearls & Irritations published this analysis. Not a single voice challenged that prospect.

Bernard Collaery

Dominic Kelley replies:

I thank Bernard Collaery for his comment. Not being a constitutional lawyer, I will 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 is a rather fanciful proposal.