Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.
Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.
Why would context be important here? Institutionally it is a bad idea, even if an indigenous population ten times as big would’ve been mistreated ten times worse. The hard question would be: How would anything happening in the past improve this specific policy proposal?
It seems very lacking on a legitimacy level, appears to be functionally questionable and has evidently led to increased polarization prior to even being enacted.
I like that it’s very prosaic and well crafted. I don’t like that they fail to make the case how past and current tragedies relate to the specific proposal. There’s also no evidence, benchmarking or any other kind of reference indicating the expected performance of their proposed setup. I’ve yet to find a paper outlining how the “voice” is actually supposed to work.
That’s cool. Why didn’t they do two proposals, one with the acknowledgement the other one with the suspicious institution?
It’s asking for the creation of a permanent advisory body. Are we on the same page here?
I do think representation and inclusion matter a lot and, as said, I’d strongly oppose this advisory body. Do you think it’s a black and white issue? One needs to like this specific thing or be a bad person?
I don’t think that is a productive take on this referendum. There are certainly many loving and caring people on all sides of this referendum.