Rallying after Referendum

Since the Indigenous Voice referendum went down in October I’ve been waiting for some positive political movement. As the saying goes, success has many fathers, failure is an orphan, but I reckon PM Albo should shoulder much of the blame. No matter how much advice he got, he had leadership of this project: the final wording of the referendum was in my opinion doomed to failure, and that was his call. 

As marketing research manager for Qantas back in the day, my job was to oversee customer and consumer surveys, and I certainly wouldn’t have approved wrapping two distinct questions into one. Clearly Indigenous recognition would have got up, and the Voice was going to be more difficult to pass, so why not allow punters to answer each question separately? Combined they both went down. Bad survey design and practice!

I was initially expecting Albo and his cabinet colleagues to announce Plan B after the referendum was lost, and was astonished that nothing was forthcoming. Governments don’t get mourning periods for failed political initiatives. The months of hot debate about indigenous affairs through the long referendum process had in fact created a publicly sympathetic environment for following up with reforms in administration, representation or any relevant area of government. That was a valuable window of opportunity that would eventually close with the passage of time.

Meanwhile I was also waiting for some aboriginal leadership beyond mourning, to pick up the cudgels again and suggest their own preferred Plan B for better representation to government. After all, a national body already exists, known as the Coalition of Peaks, with around 80 member indigenous organisations.

Why don’t they themselves claim a bigger role in government decision-making affecting all Indigenous peoples, and in effect become the putative Voice. They don’t need all our permissions and constitutional approval to make that happen.

Now we learn that Pat Turner, chairperson of the Coalition of Peaks, did suggest in a letter to Albo soon after the referendum defeat, a neat alternative to trying to legislate the Voice, which may be politically fraught: by making changes to the Commonwealth Public Service Act to oblige bureaucrats to consult Indigenous representatives on relevant matters.

In addition, we already have a National Agreement on Closing the Gap with a Joint Council comprised of all Australian governments, which is only three years old. The Productivity Commission has provided a dashboard of Implementation Trackers (their words, not mine) to closely flow progress on the designated 17 socio-economic outcome areas. So, we already have the mechanisms to seriously and more effectively tackle indigenous disadvantage.

Why don’t all Indigenous leaders, including Federal minister Burney, ex minister Wyatt, and all other political players of whatever persuasion (Pearson, Price, Langton, Calma, etc.) back an urgent and wholehearted push to get those mechanisms working properly, and use the representative bodies that exist, while implementing Turner’s sensible suggestion? 

What is Albo waiting for, and why don’t any of those Indigenous leaders get cracking with their public support for any next steps? I’m not sure you get the luxury of extended mourning for a political process, which the referendum was. All eggs in one basket was risky, and rather naive.

P.S. And just to clarify my own role in the referendum, for which I organised a postal vote whilst in Europe, I voted FOR, despite my forebodings. Because of the vibe!