With the Voice to Parliament Referendum date announced to be October 14 2023, this thread will run in the lead up to the date for general discussions/queries regarding the Voice to Parliament.

The Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

Past Discussions

Here are some previous posts in this community regarding the referendum:

Common Misinformation

  • “The Uluru Statement from the Heart is 26 Pages not 1” - not true

Government Information

Amendments to this post

If you would like to see some other articles or posts linked here please let me know and I’ll try to add it as soon as possible.

  1. Added the proposed constitutional amendment (31/08/2023)
  2. Added Common Misinformation section (01/07/2023)

Discussion / Rules

Please follow the rules in the sidebar and for aussie.zone in general. Anything deemed to be misinformation or with malicious intent will be removed at moderators’ discretion. This is a safe space to discuss your opinion on the voice or ask general questions.

Please continue posting news articles as separate posts but consider adding a link to this post to encourage discussion.

  • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Which makes the voice completely irrelevant. When the LNP are in power the voice will be 1 spot held by some white idiot like Barnaby Joyce or Scomo. If One Nation ever got in power the voice would be some white racist saying that the indigenous people want to all be shipped off to the middle of the country and left alone in a fenced area with no contact with the rest of the country.

    • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      It doesn’t matter its still a step in the right direction.

      Besides its just asking to be heard and that’s it, the voice doesn’t have the power to make any rules or changes. So it really doesn’t matter.

      What does matter if it it’s voted down now it will never comr back meaning one nations people will have no chance at a well legislated voice in the future.

      So if your argument is no because its not set up well enough thats shit, because we need to crawl before running.

      • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        This doesn’t make your voice heard any more than any of the existing indigenous advisory boards. It just gives you one more voice to be ignored, and to be used as a political tool by the government of the time. LNP get in and make some cronie the single person in the voice who makes recommendations that harm indigenous people - how does that help you?

        Your argument is basically “it’s better than nothing and will lead to more”. My argument is that it is nothing, and if it goes through it will be pointed at for decades as a way to go “look we gave them a voice, we don’t need to do any more”.

        • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Sorry mate this is kind of absurd.

          When new legislation is passed by government, yes there is (rightly) much debate between elected representatives around exactly how that legislation should work.

          Once legislation is passed there is rarely much meaningful change beyond incremental improvements / adaptions.

          You’re suggesting that every newly elected government will just discard legislation from the previous government. If this were likely, every new government would have been doing it with every contentious issue throughout our history.

          • samson@aussie.zone
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            This isn’t much of a thing in this country but it’s not impossible. Fear radicalisation and trivial legislation. Not an argument against the voice though.

    • samson@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Untrue. The high court would have something to say about an aboriginal voice being composed of non Aboriginals.

      • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Would they? There’s nothing in the proposed constituational amendment that says that the body has to be made up of indigenous people and indigenous people only.

        • samson@aussie.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Constitutional interpretation relies on all sources used to draft the document. Intentions must be gathered as this is a founding document, therefore all Acts spring forth from it. Explanatory documents, the Uluru statement itself, and documents by the referendum working group all support the idea of the A&TSIVoice being for ATSI people only.

            • samson@aussie.zone
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              What’s your point? This is the reason we have the courts. We could write into infinity the processes and procedure of a voice but the other bodies are free to determine those for themselves, we are leaving this to Parliament so that the voice can change according to need and times.

              • Whirlybird@aussie.zone
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                we are leaving this to Parliament so that the voice can change according to need and times.

                Should there ever be a need or a time when the Indigenous voice isn’t entirely made up of indigenous people? If not, why not protect that in the constitution?

                • samson@aussie.zone
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Because there are functional problems to this issue. The representative portion may be, but their might be other public servants who aren’t aboriginal and may be excluded if mentioned in the constitution. If you insert functional requirements into the constitution to enable such things you remove the ability to change the Voice’s functions as mentioned before. Legal interpretations suggest that a voice would have to be comprised of ATSI people regardless.