Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney names four priorities for the proposed Voice to Parliament in a speech to the National Press Club, after growing pressure to detail how it would benefit First Nations people.
@UnfortunateDoorHinge@Ilandar eh, the flaws are really that the Voice is essentially toothless and is subject to the whims of the government of the day.
But at least it’s a step towards something. It’s a formal acknowledgement that the aboriginal people are part of and is represented by and in the government.
So, yeah, I’m pretty unimpressed by the execution since it’s essentially a blank piece of paper that says “IOU one bureaucratic body”. But the end result is the formal inclusion of aboriginal peoples into the Australian constitution, which has been sorely lacking.
If it was anything more than an advisory body no one would ever get it to pass a referendum. If they skipped the constitution by legislating something with more teeth than it currently is the Coalition would spend now until election time campaigning against it about how it was “forced” on people instead of it being a referendum.
@PostAndRun yeah, I get that argument and see the point… I just think it needed _something_ so that a government can’t just gut it completely and claim that they’re still listening because there’s a token body…
Anyway, getting something on the books is better than having absolutely nothing.
Yeah, sort of agreed on the toothless comment. I was big on the Voice when I first heard about it, and I’m still for it, but I’m a lot more pessimistic about its strength now. Maybe it’ll make more sense when the whole Uluru Statement is established.
@UnfortunateDoorHinge @Ilandar eh, the flaws are really that the Voice is essentially toothless and is subject to the whims of the government of the day.
But at least it’s a step towards something. It’s a formal acknowledgement that the aboriginal people are part of and is represented by and in the government.
So, yeah, I’m pretty unimpressed by the execution since it’s essentially a blank piece of paper that says “IOU one bureaucratic body”. But the end result is the formal inclusion of aboriginal peoples into the Australian constitution, which has been sorely lacking.
If it was anything more than an advisory body no one would ever get it to pass a referendum. If they skipped the constitution by legislating something with more teeth than it currently is the Coalition would spend now until election time campaigning against it about how it was “forced” on people instead of it being a referendum.
@PostAndRun yeah, I get that argument and see the point… I just think it needed _something_ so that a government can’t just gut it completely and claim that they’re still listening because there’s a token body…
Anyway, getting something on the books is better than having absolutely nothing.
Yeah, sort of agreed on the toothless comment. I was big on the Voice when I first heard about it, and I’m still for it, but I’m a lot more pessimistic about its strength now. Maybe it’ll make more sense when the whole Uluru Statement is established.