to THE AGE
     The two recommendations of the Referendum Council for constitutional change should be rejected (‘One idea touted, but it leaves PM unsure’, 18/7).  An advisory body for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders can be established without any need to tamper with our founding document; and the ‘declaration of recognition’ would be redundant.
     The recommendations are being presented as minimalist, but the fact that the Leader of the Opposition acknowledges ‘a process for treaty and agreement making’ shows that they are really seen by their promoters as the thin end of the wedge. It will not be a ‘heroic failure’ if Australians reject them at a referendum, but just national good sense.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Mark Leibler too easily dismisses the case against constitutional recognition (‘Indigenous voice to Parliament: a unifying idea’, 18/7). The deep concerns that have been expressed by many articulate and responsible commentators that any such recognition would be fundamentally unjust and a danger to our national unity and security cannot fairly be summed up as ‘cynicism and mean-spiritedness’. Nor is the stereotyping of men like Keith Windschuttle, John Roskam, Greg Sheridan and Gary Johns as ‘naysayers and scaremongers’ the least bit credible.
     As for the Referendum Council’s two recommendations, an advisory body of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders can be set up without any tampering with the Constitution; and the ‘declaration of recognition’ is simply redundant.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     There is a simple answer to a question asked in your editorial (‘Indigenous recognition steps outside Constitution’, 19/7) as to whether the Referendum Council’s first proposal (for a constitutionally entrenched Aboriginal advisory body) ‘would presage continued agitation for a treaty?’  Of course it would.  Overseas experience in several countries shows that once the descendants of former native peoples are constitutionally privileged, their claims just multiply.
     You state that Parliament should ‘take advice from indigenous citizens’.  That would include all of us who were born here and have no other citizenship. Moreover, as most of those identifying as Aboriginal have mixed blood, it is hard to see why they deserve any more rights than the rest of us. Concern for Aboriginal welfare is admirable; but privileging them in any way constitutionally would be a big mistake.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

     Malcolm Turnbull is backing the idea, recommended by the Referendum Council, which dismissed “minimalist” models of constitutional reform, of a special advisory board to the parliament, because, as one defender puts it "First Peoples have the right to be consulted on policies that affect them”: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-a-unifying-idea/news-story/2bc0391c2389a39efcc1d62b3b06a9d7.  To this it should be replied, that they already have this, and there is no need for constitutional change.  All people have the right to be consulted on policies that affect them, but one does not need constitutional change to do this. So, what’s the agenda?

     Constitutional change in this direction will set up a new super-parliament and throw the Australian system out of kilter.  But, it is good that at long last the elites have come out with their proposal.
     It will be an easy target to destroy. The difficulty will be that the new class will support anything that brings down traditional Australia, and they have the resources.  But, we have the righteous anger, and now is the time to really start grassroots protests. I will be delighted to see them lose this one, just like they lost the Republic referendum, just like they lost the US 2016 election and Brexit.  Make their defeat a most bitter one for them.

to THE AGE
     Michael Cooney may have said that ‘the Queen herself is undoubtedly more popular than the institution of the monarchy’ (‘Insight’, 15/7), but it must be remembered that the person and the institution are not entirely separate. Her Majesty’s prestige partly exists just because she is the reigning monarch; and monarchy can produce leaders of this calibre much more easily than any form of republic.
     This is why the largely ignored case for a separate Australian monarchy should be seriously considered. Wanting ‘our own head of state’ does not necessarily mean wanting a republic and a president.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Brendan O’Neill’s warning about the possible sabotage of Brexit (‘The soft lie that seeks to silence millions of voices’, 17-18/6) reminds us that not everything publicly labelled ‘democracy’ in fact happens with the genuine consent of the majority of the people.  If he is correct to construe the ‘Leave’ referendum victory as the rejection of ‘the entire establishment’, then it is no surprise to hear that that establishment is fighting dirty to preserve itself.  Human history is littered with such self-interested coups from elites.
     Britain needs another Archbishop Stephen Langton to fend off tyranny - or a homegrown Alexander Solzhenitysn to describe unequivocally what is happening and thus warn the masses. We in Australia could do with someone like them too!
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Noel Pearson is fantasising when he claims (‘Token change is not an option for Pearson’, 16/6) that the establishment of the Constitution in 1901 has led to a ‘lack of structural power’ for our Aboriginals that ‘cascades down into the daily lives on the streets of communities.’  There are plenty of reasonable life opportunities for today’s Australians who happen to have Aboriginal blood, so there is no need at all to create national political division where there is none. It would be statesmanlike for Pearson to admit that any kind of constitutional recognition is against the interests of the great majority of today’s Australians and to rededicate himself to uncontentious efforts to improve Aboriginal welfare.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AGE
     Fred Chaney is idealistic but not realistic (‘Don’t fear the T-word’, 8/6). All advocacy of a treaty between our Aboriginals and other Australians implicitly means support for an eventual partition of the continent into two nations.  Australia has already moved too far in that direction with the Mabo judgment, plucked out of the air by judicial adventurism, and subsequent land agreements with, as Chaney notes, ‘peoples, collectives, not individual Aboriginal people’.

     Constitutionally we need to treat all Australians as equal, for reasons of equity, national unity, social stability and political security in dealing with the rather threatening world situation that is developing.  Our governments are right to seek to improve Aboriginal welfare - the benefiting of Aboriginal individuals seen as disadvantaged Australian citizens.
NJ, Belgrave

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     God does not write books, nor does he dictate them word for word through human intermediaries. This applies to the Bible as well as the Koran.  So merely advocating metaphorical rather than literal interpretation (Letters, 8/6) is not sufficient to deal with the current religion-based political crisis.

     On the other hand both these holy books have many passages that are profound and beautiful, which may well be the result of exceptional inspiration. Thus, asserting, as does Jim Campbell (8/6), that ‘there are no arguable circumstances’ under which the Koran should ‘play a role in shaping the character of any Australian citizen’ is an unhelpful and extremist approach.
     Islam itself contains the solution in its doctrine of shirk - that nothing in creation can be equated to God. Muslims generally need to accept that this applies to their prophet, their book and their tradition. Ditto for Christians.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     So the Maritime Union and others are agitating for acceptance of the divisive Uluru Statement (‘Unions lead push for Uluru proposal’, 12/6). Nothing new here! As former communist Geoff McDonald wrote in his 1982 book ‘Red Over Black’, nearly 70 years ago communist leaders were saying how the first step towards making Australia a communist nation would be to establish black republic areas on our continent. These included J. B. Miles, Lance Sharkey, Barnard Taft and the Aarons brothers.
     And what would it mean if we went communist? Eventual subjection to an international tyranny operating through the UNO. In whose interests would that be? Certainly not those of our Aboriginals!
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     June Oscar’s defence of constitutional recognition (‘Treaty “nothing to be afraid of”’, 7/6) is unconvincing. The ‘1200 indigenous land-use agreements nationwide’ she refers to are not treaties between groups claiming independent sovereignty and do not threaten the political unity of Australia. The demands of the Uluru Statement from the Heart do and must be rejected.

     More Australians need to engage in political action on this issue. Overseas history shows that politicians of all parties often betray the real interests of their constituents; and revolutionaries are adept at using gradualism to fool majorities. We need a new national movement to safeguard the constitutional integrity of our nation.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

     The article referred to here: https://survivalblog.com/new-frontier-compact-x-liberal/#more-42852, is from the US and is a controversial creative reworking of part of its constitution from a Christian traditionalist perspective.

     Its goal is to provide an alternative framework to the existing undermining which the legal new class have done to the US constitution. What interests me is the criticisms following the article by readers which detail all the difficulties in trying to put together a Christian constitution, or even one that escapes the attacks of the new class lawyers:
see further: https://survivalblog.com/the-rawles-rationale/#more-42542.

     The Uluru Statement of the Heart has now been published, which means that the revolutionaries have played their hand and thrown down the glove of challenge. We can now respond as we must.

     Greg Sheridan, a distinguished veteran journalist, has led the way with his opinion pieces in The Australian. In ‘Misguided, squeamish Liberals are failing Aborigines’, (25 May) he wrote: ‘Constitutional recognition [is] extremely bad in principle because [it creates] two classes of citizens…..The Constitution belongs to all Australians. If the state changes the citizenship status of one group of Australians, it, by definition, changes the citizenship status of all Australians. In principle and in practice, this is a recipe for conflict and disaster.’

     For your future reference, here is the text of the Uluru statement which will be worked into the coming Aboriginal constitutional referendum:

ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART
We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart:
Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link Is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.
How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?
With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.
Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.
These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.
We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.
We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.
We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.
In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”
From: http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/uluru-statement-heart.

    Here is the conclusion of the indigenous summit: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/indigenous-summit-rejects-recognition-pushes-for-treaty-and-voice-in-constitution-20170526-gwe389.html.

     An all-indigenous convention wants to enshrine a “First Nations Voice” in the constitution in a referendum to be held next year. The politically correct compromise, favoured by the liberals and conservatives, of giving a mere token recognition, was rejected. The Aboriginal lobby now means business, with a “commission,” perhaps much like that in South Africa,  a “Makarrata Commission” to “supervise agreements between Indigenous groups and government and a period of truth-telling about the treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

from THE AUSTRALIAN
     The New Zealand parliament, in its wisdom, decided to enshrine the “principles” of the treaty of the 1840 Waitangi into legislation. This has led to endless litigation between Maoris and the government, and endless payments by the New Zealand taxpayer to Maoris to compensate them for apparent “breaches” of the treaty. Such payments have not improved the lot of ordinary suburban Maoris one iota.

     Defining the “principles” of the treaty has led to endless interpretations and permutations, most never envisaged by the original signatories. Judicial activism has been kept alive and well with attempts to satisfy claimants and quests to define and apply the “principles” of the treaty to an ever-increasing list of injustices suffered by Maori at the hands of white settlers and their descendants. The only winners have been lawyers and a select few Maori elite to have received treaty settlements.

     Far better for all Australians to simply get on with their lives and take advantage of what the country has to offer. A treaty will not be the magic bullet for those living in impoverished, remote areas offering no employment opportunities, and it will not help children being brought up in dysfunctional households, nor will it keep people out of prison who make free choices as to the crimes they commit. Most important, a treaty will divide Australia on race. Do we really want to go there?
MH, Northwood, Vic

to THE AGE
     John Roskam is right to argue ('An Indigenous treaty would divide, not unite, us', 31/5) that all Australians, no matter what their ethnicity or ancestral background, must be seen as equal under the Constitution and thus under the Crown and at law. This approach to recent demands for constitutional recognition of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders is our best guarantee of maintaining national security and civic peace on this continent.

     The great majority of Australians respect our heritage of Aboriginal culture and currently show this in many ways. We appreciate and value the unique position within our Commonwealth of those having Aboriginal ancestry. What would Australia be without the beauty and profundity of Aboriginal culture? And we recognise the pain of past dispossession. But two wrongs do not make a right.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

to THE AUSTRALIAN
     Australians as a whole have a duty of care to all those citizens who suffer serious social and health disadvantage, so Ron Spielman is right to champion the cause of Aboriginals in such need (1/6), but his call for vaguely worded 'meaningful' and 'appropriate' recognition is an erroneous response.

     He refers to 'those whose large piece of earth was occupied by strangers against their will.' All those people are dead. The task now is to work towards justice and well-being for all Australians living now and those who will follow. If it be asked was not dispossession unfair to 'the Aboriginal people', answers may differ, but the law must deal with living individuals and not political abstractions in this case.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic

     The papers have reported that South Africa is heading to a bloody race war, with growing numbers of farm invasions, and the threat of further illegal confiscations of white farms: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4457280/Is-South-Africa-heading-civil-war.html. Liberal globalists objected to this article, as the recognition of the clear failure of the multiracial dream is unpalatable to them.

     Meanwhile the victims of this supposed war begin to pile up, not just in farm invasions and deaths and tortures: https://mg.co.za/tag/farm-invasions; http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/bury-them-alive-white-south-africans-fear-for-their-future-as-horrific-farm-attacks-escalate/news-story/3a63389a1b0066b6b0b77522c06d6476,  but in the day-to-day ghoulish rapes/murders.
    The latest horror: Hannah Cornelius, a 21-year-old student, who was raped, stabbed and strangled to death in Stellenbosch South Africa, by four blacks who had carjacked her. Two suspects have, at the time of writing, been caught. No doubt, this will not be seen as a hate crime:
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Cannibals-Pot-Lessons-Post-Apartheid/dp/0984907017.

     The ASIO director-general has said that there is “absolutely no evidence” of a link between Australia’s refugee intake and terrorism: The Weekend Australian, May 27-28, 2017, p.1. This was a bit hard to swallow, and even The Australian said that the remarks were made “despite multiple Islamic terrorist acts in the past three years involving individuals on humanitarian visas, or their children.”

     The debate exploded with the Attorney General defending the ASIO boss’s comments: The Australian, May 31, 2017, p. 1, saying that Middle East refugees are not the source of the terrorism problem. There is, he observed, many aspects to the Islamic terrorism problem, including the radicalisation of young people by terrorist organisations. True, but trivially true. This is really a superficial response to the issue, as other experts admitted that even if the actual refugees were not a terrorist risk, the sons and daughters of refugees were at danger of radicalisation: The Australian, June 1, 2017, p.1. Thus, it is true that merely being a refugee from the Middle East did not automatically make one a terrorist, but who has said that? No Australian  authority has said that the children of refugees have radicalised solely because their parents were refugees, for clearly other cultural factors must be at work.