The Voice: Is it Ethical Non-Indigenous People Get to Decide on the Voice? Is it OK for One Group to have Rights Others Don’t? By James Reed
When I saw this piece at the liberal/Left The Conversation.com, I thought I could predict the response that would be made by Paul Formosa, Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Macquire University Ethics & Agency Research Centre, Macquarie University. So, let’s go with his response to the first question, should the Australian people decide what rights the Indigenous people get.
I thought he would say that Australians should not decide this, you know, the argument from discrimination and woke. But, not so, my guess was wrong, at least on the first question:
“there is actually nothing unusual about citizens and their elected representatives making decisions about what rights and entitlements others have. This is the very nature of democracies.
But this raises a more fundamental tension within our liberal-democratic political system. The tension lies between the “liberal” element, which seeks to secure the rights and liberties of all individuals, and the “democratic” element, which seeks to enact self-rule by the people.
This tension generates a problem known as the “tyranny of the majority”. This is where a democratic majority is able to violate the rights of a smaller minority.
In both the same-sex marriage and Voice votes, there is a large majority with the power to decide the rights of a minority.
Democracies typically guard against a majority mistreating a minority, in part, by enshrining foundational rights and liberties in a constitution that is difficult to change democratically.
This puts an imperfect, but practical, check on the exercise of that tyranny. The rights and entitlements set out in a constitution stipulate the fundamental terms of cooperation within a political community.
For example, the Australian constitution sets out that our political community is based around a Commonwealth with legislative, executive and judicial branches, as well as granting several explicit rights (such as the right to vote and the right to trial by jury) and implied rights (such as the freedom of political communication).
Enacting a constitutional change serves both a symbolic function, by expressing that something is part of the foundational framework of our political community, and a practical function of partially insulating it from changing democratic whims.
That is pretty good really, nothing someone like me, a dissent Right, would disagree with. So, my guess was wrong. Onto the second question.
Should one group get rights that others do not? He points out that there are rights that people have, such as voting in a state election, that people resident in other states do not have. But the Voice is more fundamental; why should there be an Indigenous voice and not an Anglo-Saxon one? Here he says: “First Nations people of Australia have suffered specific and significant injustices that other groups have not, such as the loss of sovereignty over their traditional lands, and they are therefore entitled to redress, which could (in part) take the form of a Voice.”
However, while the black armband view of history is open to challenge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hEsYW_1vxY
it does not follow that the Voice would address such issues. Senator Price, who is indigenous, for example, denies it and sees the Voice as little more than another set of elites, isolated from the people. So, the Voice could make things worse. Of course, the professor does not consider this objection. As well, there is no sustained argument showing that the Voice would address specific disadvantages, that could not, and should already be addressed by indigenous members of parliament.
Overall, I agree with the philosopher on point one, disagree on point two.
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