Lead Voice advocate doesn't understand it

Source: 3AW

Our nation’s leader, who seeks to persuade, cajole and manipulate Australians into supporting a proposal for a near-permanent change to our nation’s institutions, doesn’t actually understand it. BY Amanda Stoker.

First published in the Australian Financial Review.

The lead advocate for the Yes side of the referendum to change Australia’s Constitution to insert a so-called Indigenous Voice hasn’t even read the document in full.

That lead advocate is the prime minister. He’s read the one-pager on top but hasn’t bothered to read the remaining 25 pages of the Uluru Statement, which Labor seeks to implement through this referendum.

And when challenged about his decision not to read it in full, the PM’s answer was: “Why would I?”

Let’s be clear about what this means. Our nation’s leader, who seeks to persuade, cajole and manipulate Australians into supporting a proposal for a near-permanent change to our nation’s institutions, doesn’t actually understand it. He couldn’t tell radio host Neil Mitchell what was in it.

But according to Labor, it will be implemented in full. Whatever it is.

He has the temerity to say that the proposal is “modest”, when it represents a radical departure from our system of representative government, which had been built on the principle that all people are equal before the law and in our democracy.

On the basis of that one-pager, he insists that voting Yes is just “good manners”, as if to suggest those with concerns about the wisdom of establishing two categories of citizens’ rights, permanently and on the basis of race, were rude, impolite or, worse, racist.

And he repeatedly accuses those who raise genuine concerns about the unintended consequences of the change – to throw sand in the gears of government, to slow the approvals process for projects, to open wider the scope for challenge to ministerial decisions, all without evidence that it would make a jot of difference to the approximately 20 per cent of Aboriginal Australians who largely live in remote communities and who experience sub-par life outcomes.

Indeed, the “success stories” he so often refers to as proof of the need for this change, like the Bourke and Moree Justice Reinvestment projects, are all successes achieved without a Voice. They were the product of traditionally elected governments doing their job properly, and individuals making choices to change their lives for the better.

Neither made the error of indulgence in group grievance, because to do so shifts responsibility for daily actions from the individual to the collective. Yet, that is precisely what the Voice proposal would do.

But the fact is the PM wouldn’t know about any of this – or about the demands for reparations in a treaty that seeks to penalise present generations for the wrongs perceived to have been perpetrated by others in the past. Because he hasn’t bothered to read the detail.

Yet he has the gall to suggest that those who disagree with him are engaging in “misinformation”.

No wonder this campaign has been marked by confusion, changing goal posts, conflicting statements of likely effect and a lack of detail.

I’ve said in this column before that this lack of transparency means one of two things: either that the PM is treating Australians with the disrespect of not being frank about the nature of the proposal, or that Labor doesn’t know what the impact of the proposal will be.

I had thought it was the former. Turns out it was the latter.

As if to prove that this government has lost its way by being consumed with constitutional change when it should be tackling inflation, energy prices and rebuilding industry, it has made a bizarre decision to refuse permission for Qatar Airways to increase the number of flights it lands in Australia by 21 a week, which amounts to one additional plane a day to each of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Australia’s tourism sector – which presents among the biggest opportunities for currently disadvantaged Aboriginal Australians to generate wealth from the real economy – remains depressed to pre-pandemic levels. Anything that brings more tourists to Australia is the kind of manna struggling businesses operating in this sector seek. The decision to refuse another 21 planeloads a week is bad news for a tourism sector that depends on bigger-spending international tourists.

Australian Airports Association chief executive James Goodwin explained that “the Australian government [should] be doing everything it can to attract and retain more airlines and build their confidence that Australia is a reliable place to do business”.

It would be good news for Australians too, who are currently paying high prices for airfares. A little more competition would go a long way.

But instead of acting in the plain interests of Australian consumers and Australian tourism businesses, their employees and the regions that depend on them, federal Labor has decided to make a protectionist decision, declining the approval in the commercial interests of, and after considerable lobbying from, Qantas.

The same airline that was carried generously by all taxpaying Australians throughout the pandemic.

The same airline that just two days ago announced it would allow people involved in the Yes campaign to travel for free.

The same airline that will redecorate three planes to promote the Yes campaign.

The same airline that will continue to charge Australians more, because this government is more interested in changing the Constitution to implement an Uluru Statement that the PM hasn’t read than it is in reducing costs for Australians or rebuilding the tourism industry.

Amanda Stoker is a former LNP senator for Queensland and a distinguished fellow of the Menzies Research Centre.