Not One Voice, but Many, with No Cost Spared! By James Reed
Leading Yes campaigners for the Voice have said that there will need to be not just one federal Voice, but numerous local Voices to give remote communities a say. That means in principle a Voice committee, paid by the tax payer for every indigenous community. How many of these are there? Thousands, tens of thousands, who knows how many? The Voicers have said that there will only be about 35 local and regional groups, but by their own arguments, that will be totally inadequate; there needs to be one Voice for each community, however defined. What will be the cost of this, for each of these Voicers is going to have to be paid? It will be a staggering number of billions, far more than the $ 40 billion already spent on indigenous people.
The Voice, if successful, will economically cripple Australia, and destroy our standard of living. And, at the end of the day, the real disadvantaged indigenous communities, who should be helped now, will remain in poverty, while the elites get richer. That is to not even address the issue of homeless people sleeping in the streets now, mostly white.
“Noel Pearson has urged the Albanese government to commit to establishing local voices in remote Indigenous communities, describing the proposal as a “game-changer” to turn around the fortunes of the Yes campaign.
On the eve of early voting in the Cape York coastal community of Aurukun, where Mr Pearson’s land rights advocacy began as a 25-year-old lawyer for Wik elders in the late 1980s, the voice co-architect said the Calma-Langton model of local Indigenous voices needed to be embraced. When asked what Labor could do to turn around the referendum campaign – with Newspoll showing support for Yes at a new low of 36 per cent – he said local voices were the key to igniting support for a voice in the final three weeks.
“The work on the Calma-Langton committee does need to be picked up; local and regional voices, that’s essential for the joint parliamentary committee (that’s been announced),” he said.
“The voice is irrelevant in a place like Aurukun if it is not local. That’s the game-changer, a true local voice in remote communities, to advocate for floodlights on the football oval, new housing for 30 to 40 families without a home, a new strategy for hygiene. It’s going to be the voice in the CWA (Country Women’s Association) halls, and by the river banks, and in the shire hall – and, in Aurukun’s case, under these mango trees,” the Cape York leader said.
“A four-sided table with local government, state government, the federal government, and the community.”
As a young lawyer, Mr Pearson co-founded the Cape York Land Council, using funds chipped in by Wik elders who had been saving their pensions to advance the fight for land rights.
Mr Pearson told Aurukun locals, at a town meeting under the shade of giant mango trees, that a Yes vote would continue the decades of campaigning by those elders, most of whom had since died.
“My Wik friends … I first came here when our mayor’s mother (mayor Keri Tamwoy’s mother Alison Woolla) was the mayor,” he said. “I was 25 years old. Now, I’m an old man … I can tell you what they wanted for you and your children. They wanted the Wik people to live forever, to grow up their children with their language, their culture, to be healthy and educated. They had a dream for your people and your culture.”
Mr Pearson said 30 years after the Wik case – a landmark High Court decision that ruled native title rights could coexist with pastoral leases – the struggle for recognition continued. “The local voice is the most important, the Wik voice. We want the Wik voice to operate here, under these mango trees, when it’s not raining, and you’ll sit down and do business with the government,” he said.
Indigenous academics Marcia Langton and Tom Calma recommended 35 regional and local groups to be established first to link to a national voice. The local voice groups would be spread across the country and advise all three levels of government.
As the latest Newspoll revealed support for a Yes vote continuing to fall, Mr Pearson said he was terrified that Indigenous people’s reconciliation attempt would be rejected. “I’m terrified that our people have reached out, and that’s so vulnerable, and the last thing we want is for that to be repudiated,” he said.
“But there’s no path (for the Yes campaign) other than optimism and positivity and the message (that the voice) will bring the country together.”
The Aurukun trip was the Cape York leader’s 95th campaigning stop across Australia since the start of July.”
Comments