The Voice to Parliament is already dividing us

and I suspect it will only get worse. (For those of you who do not live in Downunder this is the proposed "Voice to Parliament" being put forward by the current government. It will be in the form of a referendum by which the Constitution will be changed to provide a direct means for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to influence all aspects of government.)

Middle Cat took me to the chemist yesterday and then on to the supermarket. In the chemist I saw someone I know very well. We have always been on opposite sides of the political fence I suppose - her views are widely considered to be extremely left wing.  She looked at me and, as she walked past, she muttered, "I didn't think you were a b.... f... racist."

Er....I hope I'm not - but I do have reservations, strong reservations about the Voice to Parliament. The reasons for my reservations are complex but one of the main reasons is this - I believe it is racist. No good can come of giving one group in the community immense power over another group because of "race". What is more the idea of "race" has not even been fully addressed. 

In the supermarket someone else, kindly passing over the milk I needed, sighed and said, "Had any further thoughts on this Voice thing Cat? M....and A.... (her children) are all for it but I think they need more information about how it might work."

Ah yes, "more information". I think we all need more information, more actual and accurate information. I doubt we are going to get it. If we did I suspect the result would be a resounding "No". At present the "Yes" campaign is carefully skirting all that. The national broadcaster's ten "facts" on their "Conversation" page avoided any discussion. It was solely aimed at encouraging people to vote "Yes".

Over and over again I wish the government had done what seems to me to be sensible. If they had split the question in two and asked if people wanted (a) to recognise there were inhabitants here before white settlement and (b) whether they approved of a Voice to Parliament then they would almost certainly have had a resounding "Yes" to (a). They might not have got (b) up but (a) would have been there.

Linda Burney is wrong when she says this is about "closing the gap". It will widen it. It is not about whether there is clean drinking water in remote communities. It is about power - power for a few. The idea that they will care about clean drinking water is nonsense. Clean drinking water could have been provided years ago. It has never been seen as a priority. If remote communities had said, "We want rainwater tanks" various governments would have provided them as they have provided so much else. 

Yes, I can actually say this about rainwater tanks. When we moved to one remote location there was a small rainwater tank attached to the larger of the two classrooms at the school. Everyone, and I mean everyone, treated that resource with respect. The Senior Cat went a step further. He contacted the Public Buildings Department and asked for a rain water tank to be attached to the newly built school house and another to the other classroom. That meant there was no need for us to drink the very brackish water from a source almost two hundred kilometres away.  We didn't need to disguise the taste with "cordial".  Oh yes, we had to wait for it to rain and fill the tanks but it did rain eventually as it would rain eventually in remote communities.  The issue is that people have to want to use rainwater and use it in preference to cordial and soft drinks.

Changing that is not going to be brought about by a Voice to Parliament. The ability to do that is already there.