With the Voice to Parliament Referendum date announced to be October 14 2023, this thread will run in the lead up to the date for general discussions/queries regarding the Voice to Parliament.
The Proposed Constitutional Amendment
Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
Past Discussions
Here are some previous posts in this community regarding the referendum:
- The Voice referendum official Yes/No pamphlets
- Linda Burney says there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by supporting the Voice
- Families distressed after 'highly misleading' video used by anti-Voice campaigners goes viral
- The Indigenous Voice to Parliament – separating fact from fiction | 7.30
- 10 questions about the Voice to Parliament - answered by the experts
- The yes pamphlet: campaign’s voice to parliament referendum essay – annotated and factchecked
- Fact-checking for the "No" referendum pamphlet was not compulsory
Common Misinformation
- "The Uluru Statement from the Heart is 26 Pages not 1" - not true
Government Information
- Referendum question and constitutional amendment
- voice.gov.au - General information about the Voice
Amendments to this post
If you would like to see some other articles or posts linked here please let me know and I'll try to add it as soon as possible.
- Added the proposed constitutional amendment (31/08/2023)
- Added Common Misinformation section (01/07/2023)
Discussion / Rules
Please follow the rules in the sidebar and for aussie.zone in general. Anything deemed to be misinformation or with malicious intent will be removed at moderators' discretion. This is a safe space to discuss your opinion on the voice or ask general questions.
Please continue posting news articles as separate posts but consider adding a link to this post to encourage discussion.
Which makes the voice completely irrelevant. When the LNP are in power the voice will be 1 spot held by some white idiot like Barnaby Joyce or Scomo. If One Nation ever got in power the voice would be some white racist saying that the indigenous people want to all be shipped off to the middle of the country and left alone in a fenced area with no contact with the rest of the country.
It doesn't matter its still a step in the right direction.
Besides its just asking to be heard and that's it, the voice doesn't have the power to make any rules or changes. So it really doesn't matter.
What does matter if it it's voted down now it will never comr back meaning one nations people will have no chance at a well legislated voice in the future.
So if your argument is no because its not set up well enough thats shit, because we need to crawl before running.
This doesn’t make your voice heard any more than any of the existing indigenous advisory boards. It just gives you one more voice to be ignored, and to be used as a political tool by the government of the time. LNP get in and make some cronie the single person in the voice who makes recommendations that harm indigenous people - how does that help you?
Your argument is basically “it’s better than nothing and will lead to more”. My argument is that it is nothing, and if it goes through it will be pointed at for decades as a way to go “look we gave them a voice, we don’t need to do any more”.
Sorry mate this is kind of absurd.
When new legislation is passed by government, yes there is (rightly) much debate between elected representatives around exactly how that legislation should work.
Once legislation is passed there is rarely much meaningful change beyond incremental improvements / adaptions.
You're suggesting that every newly elected government will just discard legislation from the previous government. If this were likely, every new government would have been doing it with every contentious issue throughout our history.
This isn't much of a thing in this country but it's not impossible. Fear radicalisation and trivial legislation. Not an argument against the voice though.
Untrue. The high court would have something to say about an aboriginal voice being composed of non Aboriginals.
Would they? There's nothing in the proposed constituational amendment that says that the body has to be made up of indigenous people and indigenous people only.
Constitutional interpretation relies on all sources used to draft the document. Intentions must be gathered as this is a founding document, therefore all Acts spring forth from it. Explanatory documents, the Uluru statement itself, and documents by the referendum working group all support the idea of the A&TSIVoice being for ATSI people only.
Yet the constitution amendment doesn't say it, no matter what the "idea" is.
What's your point? This is the reason we have the courts. We could write into infinity the processes and procedure of a voice but the other bodies are free to determine those for themselves, we are leaving this to Parliament so that the voice can change according to need and times.
Should there ever be a need or a time when the Indigenous voice isn't entirely made up of indigenous people? If not, why not protect that in the constitution?
Because there are functional problems to this issue. The representative portion may be, but their might be other public servants who aren't aboriginal and may be excluded if mentioned in the constitution. If you insert functional requirements into the constitution to enable such things you remove the ability to change the Voice's functions as mentioned before. Legal interpretations suggest that a voice would have to be comprised of ATSI people regardless.