A bill to alter the constitution and enable the Indigenous voice has passed the federal parliament ahead of Australia’s first referendum in 24 years to be held later in 2023.
The Senate passed the bill on Monday 52 votes to 19, confirming the wording of the constitutional change to be put to the Australian people. The draft legislation passed the lower house last month.
What a strange assumption to make. Why would Indigenous Australians be any different in this regard? This sounds like some flawed “white knows best” thinking.
Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. First Nations peoples have been forcibly assimilated into white society after having their sovereignty stripped through the process of colonialism.
These are contemporary modern issues too. Plenty of the rest of Australia have backwards beliefs on these issues. Our society has only made progress on these issues in the last decades. Other contemporary societies haven’t made any progress on these issues. (See the Middle East or Africa.)
I would like to take a moment to acknowledge this argument does lear close to white-supremacists white-society arguments. I don’t think race has anything to do with it. I think economics do. Prosperous societies become more liberal. Western society has just been the most prosperous society in the last few hundred years. Previous nonwestern societies have had periods of liberalism during prosperous times (see the Middle East). I think this is also an argument that giving sovereignty to non-prosperous regional communities is a bad idea.
Men and Women’s business is a thing in aboriginal lore. With “harsh punishment” if the rules are broken.
The elders of 70 aboriginal communities delivered a petition against gay marriage to the government.
Corporal (and capital) punishment was used in aboriginal lore.
Your “white knows best” comment reeks of moral relativism. And while I’m not a moral realist you’d be pushing shit uphill to win an argument against individual rights.