If we hold up the flag of Peter Dutton and his ilk it would mean, we will forever be tarred with the tag of racism that will denigrate the good we still have to offer a troubled world. That world needs the truly good things we can contribute to make it a nicer and safer place to live in.
But the implication from this is that we as a nation are continuing to support a form of legal racism, even though the contemporary international position of our government has enacted ordinary legislation to make racial discrimination unlawful. Shouldn’t there be a consistency where the international law and the Australian domestic law mean they are in accord?
One would think for consistency’s sake that a permanent domestic legal ban on all forms of racial discrimination, where there can be no negotiation, would and should be the required outcome. It would be here that it would be judicially enforced by the Australian court system in accordance with the rule of law.
Why this referendum debate has turned so nasty and acrimonious is because we are free to espouse and adopt a contradictory approach of an international legal position which is not in accord with our domestic legal system. It is also because we seem to lack to resolve it in any way other than a constitutional change by going to a referendum.
The referendum does not so much become about legal changes but about what white Australians think about First Nation people. If our courts continue the path of a dualistic approach between international law and domestic law, then it is time that a prohibition of all forms of racial discrimination in our laws can go beyond the reach of any supposed authority figure.
Peter Dutton has so much to answer for if he and his unruly rabble of deniers win out. For he will have been the initial catalyst for the damage and the subsequent harm where a splintered and broken community will become even more dysfunctional.
In 1967 I cast a vote in the referendum so that our First Nation brothers and sisters would be recognised in our constitution. It was passed overwhelmingly, and part of the reason was because it had bipartisan agreement.
In this referendum the ex-policeman turned politician and now leader of the coalition opposed it on the grounds that it would harm the constitution. This was done in the same contrary way he refused to apologise for the formal apology to the Stolen generation.
This referendum is endorsing the 1967 one. There was the recognition of the First Nation people as being as Australian as the rest of us and with the same rights. It is now we are deciding whether that recognition allows them to have a Voice to parliament. And all that means is they make representation to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to the First Nation people.
So, If the No vote gets over the line the gap will not be closed but opened wider and wider. Deaths in custody, excessive incarceration rates, poor hygiene, lack of educative opportunities and continued dispossession of ancestral land and even the right to exist will no longer be noticed.
And all these will be ultimately accepted under a newly invented form of terra nullius if the opposition to the Voice gets its way. It will mean that the inherited beliefs and ideals of our First Nation brothers and sisters will not be allowed to be perpetuated. This will not merely be sad but tragic. It will be revisionism at its best. It will indeed be our loss, not merely for each one of us, but also for the country we love and want to continue to take pride in.
John Hill
September 2023
