Divisiveness has been with us from the start. The Voice will be another important step – like the apology and Mabo – towards harmony and reconciliation.
The Voice debate has ignored the actual words of the proposed addition to the Constitution. Those words will not lead to a torrent of legal cases, nor will they introduce social divisiveness in our foundation document.
Similarly, the Voice proposal states that the parliament can make laws about the “composition, functions, powers and procedures” of the Voice. Gough Whitlam found the failure to obey the Constitution’s words “there shall be” offensive. He also wanted to expand Commonwealth authority. There is a power in the Constitution for the Commonwealth to prevent a state discriminating against other states about railways, but only on the advice of the Inter-State Commission. His government resurrected the commission. That lasted only a few years.
The second significant word in the Voice amendment is the reference to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island. That was the word used when the discussion on constitutional recognition began. “Peoples” is also the word used in the United Nations resolution that has guided similar debates throughout the world.Along the way in Australia, some participants in the debate changed “peoples” to “nations”.
The special status of our First Peoples has long been recognised in many ways, such as with former prime minister, which was also decried at the time as not good enough. That special status is manifest most clearly in the recognition of land rights as part of our common law by the High Court in the 1992 Mabo judgment – a decision reinforced by acts of all our parliaments.
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