Grattan on Friday: As the anniversary of the Voice vote nears, the high costs of Albanese’s misjudgement are clear

Source: CommonwealthGrant

2 Comments

  1. “We would by now have had the Voice operating, giving advice and feedback on policy and programs. Yes, it would have been subject to the risk of abolition by a later government, but that would not have been inevitable.“ 

    This notion that the voice was there to ‘give advice’, as though what the Albanese government needed was some extra ideas on how to go about their Indigenous affairs is just such a naive take. Given that the government could have still implemented a non constitutional voice, and that they didn’t, the conclusion must be drawn that ‘advice’ was never the target. 

    The push for the voice was for one reason and one reason only—to secure a treaty at a federal level. Doesn’t take a mastermind to work it out, Noel person said it himself much prior to the 2022 election of Albanese.

  2. >Just think where we might be if they – Albanese, the Voice leaders – had taken another tack. If Albanese had said to those leaders, “Constitutional change is extraordinarily hard – it’s likely beyond my political sway to deliver you all you want.” And if the leaders had said, “We’ll settle for a legislated Voice in this term, and a referendum confined to recognition.”

    He probably did. It’s no secret that constitutional changes are hard to do. The indigenous leaders wanted to try anyway so he backed them. Albo spent a heap of political capital trying to do the right thing by our indigenous population and Australia rejected it. It is what it is, and I think it’s a pointless exercise to try and analyse it and assign blame at this stage.

    Future indigenous leaders will want to analyse it in the future in order to try again, but the political capital has been spent and it’s likely not going to be relevant again for a while.

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