Nats in blunder over Voice

Nationals Leader David Littleproud made an astounding error of fact in his arguments against the Voice yesterday.

But in doing so he inadvertently made one of the strongest arguments in favour of the Voice so far.

He said: “I think there’s a way in which we can articulate that our great country is founded on a key tenet that all 26 million Australians are equal and that we all have an equal voice in this parliament through the 226 members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.”

That is just simply not true. The great Founding Fathers in whom the conservatives have vested such wisdom that the Constitution should not be changed did not give all Australians an equal voice in the Parliament.

They specifically gave the people of the smaller colonies which were to become states a greater voice in the Parliament than those from the larger colonies.

Each original state was granted a minimum of five Members of the House of Representatives, irrespective of their population. To this day the people living in the five Tasmanian electorates get a greater voice: one MP for every 108,000 voters, compared to one for 175,000 in other states.

The Constitution also gave each state an equal number of Senators, now increased to 12. It means that Tasmania has one senator for every 45,000 people whereas NSW has one senator for every 668,000. South Australians get one senator for every 146,000 people. 

This is simply not equal, and the leader of a major political party and MP for seven years should know as much.

Ironically, Littleproud was rejecting Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s notion of the Voice “re-racialising” the Australian Constitution by making Indigenous people “more equal” than everyone else. It was a leaf from the US far right’s manual of political fear-mongering.

The Founding Fathers were right to give the smaller states greater representation in our constitutional compact because otherwise they would be put upon, ignored, or exploited. Without it, Tasmania would be even worse off. Remember, Senator Brian Harradine extracting special deals for Tasmania. Jackie Lambie is still at it. South Australian senators got special arrangements for their state, as have Western Australian senators.

If Littleproud wants an equal voice in the Parliament for all Australians, Tasmania should lose two members of the House of Representatives and lose 11 senators. South Australia should lose 10 senators. To be consistent Littleproud should be either advocating that or acknowledging that in the Australian constitutional compact there is a deliberate recognition that smaller entities require greater representation.

But the Founding Fathers specifically excluded one of those smaller entities – the First Nations or Indigenous people. The Constitution stated they were not to be counted in the censuses which determined representation in the Parliament.

That was partly rectified by the 1967 referendum. But there was still no recognition and no mechanism to prevent Indigenous people being ignored or mistreated, even if they got to vote in their state of residence. And the poor treatment continues to this day.

The logic of the Constitution calls for that recognition as does a sense of fairness and a practical need to do something about entrenched Indigenous inequality that might work when all else has failed: listening. People in the small states should especially support that. Or agree to hand back their extra senators.

Yesterday that unequal Senate passed the referendum Bill. There is no going back now and no altering the wording. Nor should there be. This is what the vast majority of Indigenous people want and have asked for after long and wide consultation and numerous opinion polls.

Despite No increasing in nationwide polls; despite Dutton’s campaign tricks borrowed from the US far right; despite the widespread ignorance of and misunderstanding about our Constitution (even at the highest level of party leadership); and despite only eight of 44 referendums being passed; I still think that Australians will do the fair thing and vote Yes. Nearly all the past successful referendums and plebiscites were on issues of fairness one way or the other.

And if anyone thinks there is not enough information about the referendum the following is a link to a completely factual, dispassionate, and thorough research paper prepared for all Members of Parliament and available to the public: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillsdgs%2F9174583%22 

0 0 0 0 0 0 

What was the ABC management thinking by making political editor Andrew Probyn “redundant” along with 100 others shortly after getting guaranteed five-year funding from the Government?

Even if the organisation was so cash-strapped it had to cut back, it picked the wrong areas – the arts and politics.

The ABC would do well to take a cue from the conservative “Yellow Pages” doctrine. That doctrine, which came out of Indiana in the US in the 1980s, suggests that if a service can be found in the Yellow Pages the government should not be doing it.

Usually, it is just an excuse for privatisation and outsourcing which have been thoroughly discredited recently with cases of profiteering and conflict of interest.

But in the case of the ABC the doctrine could apply. I do not suggest that the ABC should be privatised, because the private sector simply does not provide fair and accurate news and commentary on matters of importance. 

Rather it emphasises the trivial and its idea of fairness and balance is to publish equal parts of information and misinformation, or even just misinformation for profit.

But private broadcasters do provide a slab of coverage in a more-than-adequate way and there is no need for the ABC to replicate it. I refer to sport. 

Commercial TV covers every groin and hamstring injury; every inarticulate grunting about “the boys” and now even “the girls” doing “the job”; and every major sporting event and more. If the ABC wanted to save money it could just stop covering routine sport. 

The commercials do it well, and it is difficult to insert bias or inaccuracy when Team A wins with X score against Team B with Y score.

The gap between Finance and the Weather can be better used. And spare us interviews with sportspeople on currents affairs programs.

Crispin Hull

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 20 June 2023.