Electing the "Voice" to parliament

will not be a simple matter.

If we vote for a Voice to parliament for aboriginal people they will be the  people who decide who represents them - or will they? It sounds very democratic - but is it? These are questions which need to be considered.

As pointed out earlier aboriginals have had voting rights for many years. In this state both aboriginal men and women had the right to vote in 1895. My paternal great-grandmother, a woman I dearly wish I had met, was doing her best to see that at least the aboriginal men voted in the state elections from the early 1900's on. She apparently went out there armed with the necessary documents and informed them of their rights and responsibilities and then saw to it that they did vote. Aboriginals have been voting for well over a century. Why then should this be any different? 

The first problem perhaps is that, despite the law, only about 80% of identifiable aboriginals (as opposed to those who self-identify) are on the electoral roll.  There are some complex reasons for this. It was in my lifetime that the last group of aborigines in the desert country made contact with the "white" community. Even now there are groups which live in relative isolation from everyone else. These people have the right to vote but compliance is often quite low. When they do vote research suggests they do as they are told to do. There are stories of voting papers being filled in for them, often because their levels of literacy are low and the concept of voting for someone they have never met to represent them in a faraway place is completely foreign to them.

It could be argued that representation for these groups will be a good thing - except of course they already have representation like everyone else through their members of parliament. But how will likely representatives be able to put themselves or have others put them up for election? How will they get information out to these communities? In short how will the process ensure that the people who get elected actually do represent the needs and interests of the people they are supposed to represent? 

Of course we can say the same to some extent of any election but the Voice is supposed to be something more than that. We are being told it will be an "advisory" group that will much more closely represent what aboriginal people need and want. Will it actually be that?

The answer to that has to be almost certainly no. One reason ATSIC failed is that it was supposed to do this and failed. (Another was corruption and internal mismanagement.) It failed because there is no single aboriginal culture. It failed because there are vast differences between the needs of aboriginals living in remote communities and those living in urban areas. It failed for many reasons just relating to such diversity. The idea that a Voice can speak for all aboriginal people is unrealistic. It is unrealistic even if only because not all people who are aboriginal or who identify as aboriginal recognise one another as being aboriginal. If better educated urban aboriginals try to make decisions on behalf of their less well educated and less well informed remote "brothers and sisters" will the Voice work as intended?  We are being told the Voice is a voice for all aboriginal people but is it?  It is a question which needs to be addressed before any vote because failure this time could have far more serious consequences than before.