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Could a powerless assembly create divisions that its members are unable to overcome?
Pretty soon, the Albanese government may commit to the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. And then again, the way things are going, it very well may not. But should it do so, and the die be cast, even with so many things unresolved (truth-telling, treaty, how genuinely grassroots the thing was in the first place), we will enter a new stage. At that point, the debate on the wisdom of the proposal stops, and a lot of us will have to turn instead to just defending the thing against attacks from the right. Or, if you really can’t bring yourself to do that, to just shut up about it.
So while there is still time, it may be good to raise a few final points, as much for the record of history as anything. And one thing to say is that even if the Voice succeeds in the referendum and is established, it may well prove to be a step backwards in the struggle for First Nations self-determination. Not merely ineffectual, not merely meh; it may actually make things worse.
The reason lies in the Voice’s unique design feature: that it is intended to be powerless. This has been a hell of a proposition for many of us to get our heads around, since a referendum is such a bloody awful thing to have to try and win, that to go into it to get something that, of itself, can do nothing, hardly seems worth the candle.
Read more about the challenges facing a Voice to Parliament…
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