A voice for the elites

The Indigenous Voice to parliament is often posited as providing representation and change for indigenous Australians. But, it risks creating yet another set of entrenched elites pretending to speak for everyone else.

There are at least 250 indigenous nations and nearly one million indigenous Australians. There are significant differences in the indigenous population across states. It is not clear or obvious that all 250 indigenous nations have similar interests or goals. It is not clear there is any alignment across states.

The fundamental problem is that Anthony Albanese and the ALP have not specified how The Voice will operate or how representatives will be chosen. Who will sit on The Voice? How many representatives will there be? How will they be chosen? Who knows? Anthony Albanese does not seem to.

Will The Voice represent all Indigenous Australians? Anthony Albanese has suggested that it might include 24 representatives. But, the composition is an issue. For example, are there electorates akin to the current House or Representatives? Are candidates chosen by state akin to the Senate? If so, how many representatives does each state get? Would it be dominated by the NSW and Queensland, which presumably face different issues to the Northern Territory?

The clear risk is that the Indigenous Voice becomes comprised of inner-city elites: Academics, advocates, and politicians who have little lived experience with, or in, regional communities. That is, The Voice risks entrenching already powerful voices. It gives an outsized say to precisely the people who already occupy positions of power at elite institutions.

An Elite-dominated Voice risks making things worse for regional communities. The Voice would allow vested interests to pretend to help regional communities. It creates a veneer of ‘progress’. But, in so doing, it enables vested interests to continue to ignore such communities. Ironically, this could worsen outcomes for regional and disenfranchised by papering over their concerns. It would simply create another body from which they are disenfranchised while pretending that they are not.

The Voice thus puts a fig leaf over regional concerns while entrenching and empowering vested interests. In short, The Voice makes things worse for regional, remote, and disenfranchised communities. But, it is even worse than that: The Voice also reinforces existing power dynamics, gives more power to vested interests, and allows people to pretend to have made real progress when in fact they have simply papered over very real problems.

It begs the question: Why should Australians vote for a proposal that makes things worse, further disenfranchises some communities while being a monumental power grab for elites and vested interests?