No one is under the illusion that enshrining a clause in a constitution can be a silver bullet, at a stroke definitively ending historic wrongs. It is a point much debated in Ireland in a variety of contexts. And now in Australia the government has announced a referendum for October 14th on enshrining in the constitution the status of the indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and establishing a consultative forum in parliament to hear their voice – a proposal appropriately referred to simply as “The Voice”.
In giving expression to a wrong in a form of institutionalised apology, a community can go at least some way symbolically to embracing the marginalised and hearing that voice so long denied.
Prior to a 1967 constitutional referendum, Aboriginal people were explicitly denied citizenship. And today, while they make up about 3 per cent of Australians, they account for 32 per cent of the prison population. Unemployment rates are about three times the rate of non-indigenous people, while average life expectancy is eight years lower than the national average. Poverty, discrimination and prejudice remain rife.
The referendum, an election promise from Labour premier Anthony Albanese, is a risky and divisive project. Recent polls show that the No vote has a small but significant lead, while of the 44 referendums in the country’s history, only eight have been carried.
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Failure would be deeply demoralising to the Aboriginal community, akin, one of it leaders Thomas Mayo says, to “Australia officially dismissing our very existence.”
The campaign has opened old racial and colonial faultlines. Opponents argue that The Voice would make Australia less equal by giving Aboriginal people special rights, while Aboriginal critics oppose it as toothless.
However, just as the same-sex marriage referendum ultimately reflected above all a profound cultural shift in a new, tolerant, inclusive Ireland, Australia’s poll will ask a similar question of its people.