The defeated Indigenous Voice referendum is being put down to a variety of reasons. Would Australians have voted Yes if there wasn’t a cost of living crisis? Would the nation have acted more generously if many of its denizens were not struggling to pay the rent and their mortgages? The drums of inflation have been beating loudly for a couple of years now and the RBA’s interest rate increases have only made things more difficult in the short term. Has the very idea of helping others sounded the alarm inside the hip pocket concerns of everyday Australians?
Australia Voted No Thanks To Right Wing Money & Politicians
The Trump style American No vote campaign, orchestrated with Advance Australia big business money and the faces of hard right conservative politicians, played every fear mongering card in the deck. Aboriginals were going to take people’s property from them, taxes were going to be raised to fund excessive spending on them, the United Nations was taking over Australia, and the damage to our constitution would cause irreparable problems forever. Black tee-shirts with a big No to Division emblazoned upon them were everywhere. Text messages were sent en masse along with recorded phone messages warning of the impending dangers posed by the Voice. All of this amid a cost of living crisis, where ordinary Australians were worried about money. Would Australians have voted Yes if….?
Never A Good Time To Deal With Aboriginal Recognition & Treaty
In Australian political circles, it seems, there is never a good time to deal with the Aboriginal questions of recognition, reparations, and treaty. Bob Hawke wouldn’t risk the political blowback back in the 1980s when he was PM. The Libs wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole at any time, just ask Malcolm Turnbull. Anthony Albanese is an unlikely PM; and he had a go at it and now they are scribbling his political obituary. Australia is a racist nation and it was born out of the forceful taking of a land inhabited by hundreds of First Nations. Massacres by poisonings and gunfire were a feature of this process for a hundred years and then some. These things have been covered up and downplayed by vested interests over decades. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap and then hidden away in obscurity. The native police and settlers killed hundreds of thousands of Aboriginals. They cleared the land so good honest hard working white people could raise animals and farm the land.
“The government has ruled out any further pursuit of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and will switch its full focus back to the cost of living and national security, after the comprehensive defeat of the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to parliament. With the loss inflicting the most serious blow on Anthony Albanese since he became prime minister, factional bosses assured his position was safe and senior ministers were quick to say everyone in Labor owned the outcome.”
Most Australians Don’t Know Any First Nations People
Only 1 in 6 Australians have any regular contact with Indigenous Aussies, according to the research. Most white Australians don’t have any First Nations friends or meaningful interaction with an Indigenous person. Making up just 4% of the nation’s population it is all too uncommon for white Australia to hear it from the horse’s mouth when it comes to what it is like to be an Aboriginal. Thus, they get it second or third hand from social media and traditional news sources. It is therefore very easy to believe lies and mistruths about the other – the dark skinned other. Indigenous spokespeople share that experiences of white Australians avoiding them on public transport are all too common. Many white Aussies will cross the street to avoid contact, especially if they are alone and away from their usual haunts. Racial suspicion is the default position for many white Australians.
We Do Know That Wealth & Opportunity Evades Most Indigenous Aussies
Most of us in this country know that there is a substantial gap in wealth and opportunity between whites and Indigenous Australians. Closing the gap has been a political slogan for some time now bandied about by supposedly well meaning politicians. During the Voice referendum campaign, No proponents loudly questioned the amount of money being spent on Aboriginal Affairs. Everyday Australians were encouraged to see it as wasteful and largely ineffective. It is very easy to be cynical about things but much harder to find solutions. The No campaign produced no solutions, zero, zilch, nix and none. They were all about casting aspersions rather than providing anything constructive on the matter. I always feel compelled to ask the white suburban No voters what they have done personally to help Aboriginal people in this country. If they are so certain about stopping them from having a voice on matters affecting them – what are they going to do instead. People bitching and complaining about government invariably are takers and rarely ever givers.
Australia has become a nation of hip pocket prophets, since the John Howard years. It is me, me, me and more me! Nothing else matters.
Cost Of Living Crisis & Skyrocketing Residential Rents
The cost of living crisis has followed on directly from a global pandemic. Inflation has resulted and I see this as the corporate world feasting on the largesse of governments who did their economic best to help out their citizens via direct payments. Companies in Australia have recorded record profit results whilst many of us are struggling to make ends meet. Landlords in the residential property sector are raking it in due to a shortage of rental stocks around the nation. Most MPs in the Australian parliament are property owners and landlords. Australia has embarked upon record migration intakes at the same time that there is not enough housing to go around. This boosts the economic productivity of the nation in terms of growth but worsens the housing crisis. Would Australians have voted Yes if there wasn’t a cost of living crisis? We will never know. There never seems a good time in the minds of our politicians to do something about our disgraceful birth.
Australia is the only new world nation that has not recognised its First Nations people via a treaty or some such constitutional acknowledgement. It is now the 21C and we still refuse to do the right thing by the original inhabitants and their remaining progeny.
Downward Envy Is Being Considered As A Possible Olympic Sport For Australians
Do ordinary Australians blame Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for their economic dysfunctionality? The No campaign was happy to point the finger at the financial drain. Did they cynically exploit ordinary Australians economic concerns during a cost of living crisis? Was this in their Trumpian playbook stratagem? Whitestone Strategic – the name says it all really. It was acceptable to everyday Australians to refute the special constitutional treatment requested by our First Nations people.
Downward envy is a very popular pursuit in the land of Oz, where white Australia prefers to take out their frustrations on those further down the wealth ladder rather than take on the top end of town. The top end of town funded the No campaign. Record profits for Qantas, for the Commonwealth Bank (CBA), for government coffers, for Woolworths, for Coles, for Ampol, for the gas company cartels, for residential landlords, and for many in Corporate Australia. Don’t forget the big 4 consultancy firms and their profits over the last decade with PwC, KPMG, Ey, and Deloitte. These friends of the Coalition have earned billions of dollars whilst our own public service was gutted according to neoliberal ideals of good governance and the trickle down effect. This is where insider mates get rich while you and I get shafted. Remember how privatising the utilities was going to mean cheaper bills and better service? Funnily nobody mentions this anymore, wonder why? Taxing big tech and the global corporates with the help of PwC. Woops they purposely shared these confidential tax strategies with those very same corporates to help them avoid paying billions of dollars to Australian tax coffers. Gee that doesn’t sound right. Will anyone actually be prosecuted for such a serious transgression? Don’t hold your breath. Meanwhile, Australia votes down a modest proposal to recognise First Nations people via an advisory voice to parliament on issues directly affecting them in the constitution.
Flint hearted suburban Australians had nothing in the compassion bank to give Indigenous folk, it seems.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom.
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