In the same week that Adam Goodes was named Australian of the Year,
Andrew Bolt has warned us against becoming a nation divided by apartheid. Four days after another contentious Australia/Invasion/Survival Day has passed - four days we have spent wondering whether the selection of an indigenous AFL player and anti-racism campaigner was just window-dressing or a genuine move towards reconciliation again, and also wondering exactly what powers ‘Australian of the Year’ has and what sway they might have with the public let alone politicians – four days later, rabid right-wing columnist and erstwhile Abbott-fancier Andrew Bolt has foretold the coming of doom that will be apartheid Australia if we should choose to change our constitution to recognise the First Australians.
This will not be a take-down piece on Andrew Bolt as I am a nobody and despite the hysterical fear-mongering hate-pieces he likes to churn out, lots of people read him. (Also, his writing is all over the place, suggesting he is somewhat unhinged and therefore not a fair target. He described himself as indigenous, which isn’t grammatically, semantically or technically incorrect but he knows darn well he’s not an aborigine, he just chose to play funny buggers with his words. In claiming to be indigenous Mr Bolt is simply claiming to have been born here. Actually, I’d like to see him claim to be aboriginal, but he can’t – the key difference being that ab origine from Latin means literally ‘from the beginning’. Also, Mr Bolt is finding it terribly hard to maintain his biases, appearing shocked and outraged that this latest affront to his freedom and dignity – i.e. changing the constitution – should come “most incredibly” from Prime Minister Tony Abbott. “A Liberal”!!! His shock is palpable, but he soldiers on valiantly. It’s very entertaining when not sick-making.)
Anyway. As I said, this is not about Andrew Bolt. It’s about his central point – should we change the constitution to recognise Australia’s first inhabitants – its indigenous peoples? He says no, and as I read his piece I thought he might be right.
Anyone can tell you I am a lefty greenie tree-hugger with social justice on my mind and compassion in my heart. (I don’t have a lot of compassion for Andrew Bolt, but that’s beside the point.) I usually, admittedly often quite unthinkingly, take the leftist view of any given agenda item and give it my support. Climate change, gay marriage, immigration, racism, welfare, homelessness, disability support, you name it I’m a bleeding heart little-‘l’ liberal. So if someone says to me, “we should change the constitution to recognise the First Australians”, I’m in. Done deal. Except.
I have to admit I’m confused. I trust that this is what indigenous people want, because organisations have been formed to campaign for public awareness and education to achieve it, and some very intelligent, passionate and proactive people are fronting the campaign. I’m just trying to work out why they would want it, and what they will gain from it.
As an ordinary Australian who is not a lawyer or a politician, I probably have about as much knowledge of our constitution as you do. I know it’s there, I know it’s different to that of the US in that we have not articulated a Bill of Rights within it (thank God – I’m looking at you, Second Amendment), and it basically lays out how the legislature, the executive and the judiciary are all supposed to get along.
So because this is ALL I knew, I went and read the constitution.
I studied a couple of law subjects once upon a time, so I was ready to be confused and bamboozled by the manner in which it was written (much like you are, reading this). Most of the document describes the powers of the House, the senate, the executive branch and so on, how they are separate but (theoretically) part of a working whole. And there were some definitions and caveats, such as how to make a change to the constitution.
I remember former PM John Howard trying to alter the constitution a few years back. There was a referendum some people thought was about whether we should become a republic, and others thought was about inserting a preamble, which amongst other interesting and not too bad ideas, included the phrase
honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation's first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country
I think nobody really got the hang of either question, and the Australian people returned a big fat ‘no’ to both. Afterwards, I think most voters were pretty sure the two items should not have been tackled on the one page, but I’m no expert in this area.
Anyway, reading the constitution, I was looking for two things: any place that mentioned indigenous people, and any place that mentioned me.
Like I said, I’m an ordinary person. I ignore the Constitution pretty much every other day of my life. I can’t quote by heart anything it says, or imagine any way in which I would bring it up in conversation (“So, how’s the Constitution treating you?”). My feeble and flawed initial reasoning was that if indigenous people wish to have recognition in the constitution, then I, as a descendant of European settlers, must already have some recognition in there that they haven’t. Yes, it was flawed and feeble, but I went looking anyway.
I imagine most legal documents are like this. It’s not so much what they include, but what they exclude. Not what they mention but how it gets mentioned, so that some bits are clear and others have loopholes.
The closest I got to getting a mention in the Constitution is as follows:
To be an elector (voter) for the Senate, I have to meet the guidelines for being an elector of the House of Representatives. (Scroll to House of Representatives: Qualification of Electors). To be an elector for the House of Representatives I should be “that which is prescribed by the law of the State as the qualification of electors of the more numerous House of Parliament of the State”. In short, state rules apply to voting. Pass the buck to Victoria. If I can vote there, I can vote federally. Ok.
As much as I searched, there was no hard verbiage mentioning me or people like me in any definite way in the Constitution, just the overriding statement that
the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania… have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established.
I am a person of Victoria; therefore I’m covered. That’s me done, and my right to have a say is laid out by strict rules in a Constitution that has statutory directives for the governance of my country by the very representatives I can vote for, badmouth and be disappointed in. Check.
Now, to the race of people who were here before me, before my forebears, before any whitefellas, Frenchies, Dutchies or Portuguese: the peoples who have lived here for about 40,000 years. Indigenous people.
Here we have some stuff that was said, but was removed:
In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.
Not being counted means not being represented and not voting. Essentially, not being. But you knew that.
Apart from this abhorrent article that was repealed in 1967, there is no other mention of “natives” in the document that I can find. From this we must determine, and Andrew Bolt would want you to determine, that the constitution applies to all of us living in the federated states of Australia, treated equally under the law. He wishes for us all to be united under the Constitution, and accuses the reconciliation movement of seeking to tear us apart by treating indigenous people differently to “the rest”. In principle, this seems comparatively sane for him, which is why it warrants closer inspection.
Andrew Bolt goes on to list the many ways that reconciliation is just whinging: first there was saying “sorry”, then there was the “act of recognition”, and that none of it is enough if “race industry professionals” (I kid you not, his words exactly) keep campaigning for more, more, more (quite frankly I’m surprised he didn’t bring up 1967 and Mabo).
But back to why I’m confused (apart from looking at myself and wondering why Andrew Bolt is making sense in any tiny part of his ridiculous hyperbolic article). If we change the constitution, are we setting indigenous people apart from us?
In Bolt’s article, Tony Abbott is quoted as vowing that any changes to the Constitution would not have any practical effect in courts, as was feared also with both Mabo and the Apology. I can only imagine that any change would take the form of something like John Howard’s proposed preamble, but then, I don’t really know, and I don’t think anyone does yet, with a draft not due until September. So why would indigenous Australians bother with an amorphous, purely symbolic gesture enshrined in a document that already represents everyone, all of us, under the law?
Here’s what I think:
Indigenous people, Aboriginal people, lived here for a very long time before we did. They may have come from parts of Asia either overland or by canoe, but that was over 40,000 years ago so I think we can safely say they were the original inhabitants of this continent.
They are one of the world’s oldest living cultures.
They are not one people, but many. They have their own nations, their own laws, own customs and societal structure.
They were shot, dispossessed, enslaved, exploited, criminalised, marginalised, relocated, raped and had their children taken away from them.
They were not part of the consultation process for the original constitution. They were not represented by it until the constitution was 67 years old.
Most legal agreements entered into with white people cheated indigenous people of their land, the land of their nation, the land of their ancestors.
In a little over 220 years they have gone from sole occupants to a minority group with a life expectancy gap of 17 years compared to other Australians (a gap comparable to that of developing countries), higher incidence of chronic disease, higher rates of communicable diseases, and amongst many other horrifying statistics, are three times more likely to be hospitalised for self-harm.
They are not (Queen) Victorian. They are not
Queenslanders. Nor from New South
Wales.
They are Minjambuta (Vic), Yolgnu (NT), Warki (SA), Laia (QLD), Kulin (Vic again) and countless other indigenous nations from all the anglicised states and territories we newcomers have divided this country into willynilly.
They need to be mentioned in the constitution because they are NOT like us – they have their own histories that do not include crowned heads of Europe, the fall of Rome and Captain Cook “discovering” Australia. We are only beginning to understand, respect and appreciate the first Australians, even though they have always lived amongst us. And until we know who they are, until we RECOGNISE them for who they are, how can we reconcile with them in any real sense? We ignore them as we ignore the constitution.
What they should be asking for is not some symbolic piece of writing in a document most Australians don’t look at – they should be asking for sovereignty over the whole damn place. They should be demanding that the Constitution be rewritten to include treaties with all the indigenous nations to truly reconcile white and black Australia.
But they are not. They are asking for recognition, and when you are trying to reconcile with a wronged party, you listen to what they want. This is what they want: ALL that they want. Until we all eventually come to see, in a more distant and enlightened age, that they are entitled to so much more.
Andrew Bolt believes that constitutionally enshrining the fact of indigenous people’s existence in Australia before white settlers is divisive and racist.
I’m so relieved to know that I don’t agree with him, as it is actually only a tiny step in the right direction.
See also
www.reconciliation.org.au and
www.recognise.org.au
