Australia threatens to become the next Canada

Australia is today consumed by a debate about Aboriginal affairs that threatens to change my country considerably for the worse. On October 14, the government is to hold a referendum on whether to create within the country’s written constitution a new body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. It would be made up of indigenous people, and both government and parliament would be obliged to consult it on issues that may affect these communities. 

There have been scant details on how it would work. Astonishingly, for example, the government has not made clear how representatives might join the new body. Apparently members would be selected – but on what basis and qualification exactly? That’s still a secret. 

There is also confusion about the definition of issues that may be judged to affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. After all, they are Australian and are therefore affected by issues that affect all Australians, such as interest rate decisions, the evolution of the Aukus agreement, variations in the taxation system, and so on. Will they have to be consulted on all of it? 

Activists say the Voice will make policies more responsive to the needs of Aborigines. In particular, they focus on those indigenous people who live in remote communities. In reality, however, most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in Australia’s major cities or in regional communities near the capital cities. 

As for those in remote communities, they are typically small – only several hundred people strong – and can be literally hundreds of miles from the next community. It wouldn’t matter whether they were indigenous or not. For anyone living in such an environment, access to normal health services, education and broader community services is going to be challenging to say the least. Their predicament is not one of identity. 

Thankfully, with just six weeks to go until referendum day, the polls indicate that the public will reject the Voice. The practical questions partly explain why people on the whole seem cold on the idea; the lack of clarity and scepticism about the efficacy of the scheme are electorally damaging. 

But for Australians, there is a more profound concern about this proposal. Modern Australia has, almost since its foundation, been an aggressively egalitarian society. It is ingrained in the zeitgeist of the country that, regardless of your social background, your race, your religion or your ethnicity, you’re no better, or no worse, than the next man or woman. The Voice, on the other hand, is an extrapolation of North America’s identity politics, importing into Australia the divisive rhetoric that has wrought havoc in nations such as Canada and the United States. Far from uniting communities, such wokery redefines a nation, separating it into racial groups. 

For the first time in the modern era, Australians will be divided into those whose ancestors came before 1788 when the first British settlement was established, and those whose ancestors came after 1788. Those with pre-1788 ancestry will be entitled to a formalised constitutional process unavailable to anyone else. 

This may shape our politics in ways that proponents of identity politics would approve, but for the many Australians, including myself, who railed against apartheid in South Africa because it created a system of discrimination based on race, the idea of injecting a racial hierarchy into our nation is abhorrent. 

Advocates of the Voice believe it is only right that, as Australians, we should accept the crimes of our forebears towards the indigenous people. Sadly, this is an idea which, in both the UK and Australia, many have adopted. Suddenly, we are responsible not just for the good things that our ancestors did to create the prosperity, security and good health that we have today, but also for the bad things, and should pay a penalty for those. We must, they think, repent for “intergenerational” sins. 

The huge campaign in support of the Voice being pushed by the government, trade union leaders, major corporations and universities must be defeated. I believe that the average punter won’t be pushed around by the big end of town. Common sense is likely to prevail on October 14, and Australians will hopefully slip back into their deeply ingrained egalitarian traditions. 

Alexander Downer is a former Australian foreign minister and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom