The Neo-Marxist and Separatist Agenda Behind the Voice Referendum By Peter West

Of the main themes of the political agenda of the Voice referendum, that runs through many articles at the Quadrant Special Digital Edition, August 2023, is that the Voice is like an iceberg, where only the tip of it is revealed. The rest is hidden, and like giant icebergs, are dangerous. This the theme discussed in detail by Keith Windschuttle in his contribution, “Hiding the Voice’s Content from the Voters.” The politicians, he says deliberately seek to hide the content of the Voice, because if the full agenda was known, as the Quadrant special details, the public would certainly vote against it; even now it is likely that the Voice will be defeated, but we should not relax our vigilance, as the elites want this in at all costs.

Windschuttle details, using material from the Yes side, what the Voice agenda is. It is far beyond token or cosmetic reconciliation, and the ultimate aim is a treaty between the Commonwealth and the so-called “First nations” indigenous people. Thus, the Referendum Council’s response to the Uluru Statement makes clear such a treaty is an essential part of the Voice process: “Any Voice to Parliament should be designed so that it could support and promote a treatymaking process. Any body must have authority from, be representative of, and have legitimacy in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia. It must represent communities in remote, rural and urban areas, and not be comprised of handpicked leaders. The body must be structured in a way that respects culture. Any body must also be supported by a sufficient and guaranteed budget, with access to its own independent secretariat, experts and lawyers. It was also suggested that the body could represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples internationally. A number of Dialogues said the body’s representation could be drawn from an Assembly of First Nations, which could be established through a series of treaties among nations.”

Each indigenous clan or tribal group would be regarded as a “nation” and the Commonwealth would make a treaty with each of them, probably hundreds of them. The 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart was explicit that the foundation of Australia was illegal, an invasion: “We have coexisted as First Nations on this land for at least 60,000 years. Our sovereignty preexisted the Australian state and has survived it. We have never, ever ceded our sovereignty. The unfinished business of Australia’s nationhood includes recognising the ancient jurisdictions of First Nations law. The Law was violated by the coming of the British to Australia. This truth needs to be told.” But, this “law” is a modern social, or socialist construction.

Never mind that according to what was international law at the time, the “law of nations,” an invasion and conquering did extinguish previous titles, as was seen right throughout human history: ask the Anglo Saxons after 1066 Norman invasion. But, today is the age of white guilt liberalism, so the idea is pushed, even though, using the invaders’ courts and political process is absurd, since if the foundation of Australia is illegal, whatever that means for a set of tribal people, then the courts are illegal as well, and so is the Voice referendum. And as Windschuttle points out, prior to the establishment of Australia by the British, the Aborigines, a set of scattered and often warring tribes did not have any “sovereignty” that could be “surrendered.”

Windschuttle has an excellent quote from the chief justice of the High Court, Sir Harry Gibbs, who said in 1979: “it is not possible to say … that the aboriginal people of Australia are organised as a “distinct political society separated from others”, or that they have been uniformly treated as a state … They have no legislative, executive or judicial organs by which sovereignty might be exercised. If such organs existed, they would have no powers, except such as the law of the Commonwealth, or of a State or Territory, might confer upon them. The contention that there is in Australia an aboriginal nation exercising sovereignty, even of a limited kind, is quite impossible in law to maintain.”

Thus, the jurisprudence, let alone anthropology behind the treaty notion is intrinsically flawed. The idea of sovereignty and that of a nation, was never part of traditional Aboriginal culture as these are European concepts that the present elite are working retrospectively, and absurdly back upon the Aboriginal past. Even if the Aborigines had a concept of land ownership, that does not imply sovereignty any more than an Australian owning a quarter acre block becomes a sovereign. If one is white, I don’t advise trying that.

Windschuttle concludes: “The Voice will simply be another expensive broken promise that will make national identities of a handful of activists who will rise to power briefly within its ranks but end up like their disappointing predecessors in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The only difference will be that, if they get the constitutional recognition they demand, no government of the day will be able to do what the Howard government, with Labor Party support, did to ATSIC in 2005 and shut down their office. Instead, if the Yes vote wins, the Voice will be there forever, an expensive, permanent embarrassment for the nation and a permanent contagion on the Aboriginal body politic.”