Mundine’s persuasive blow knocks out Pearson’s case (on Australian constitutional 'reform')

The Australian ^ | 11th June 2015 | Greg Sheridan

[naturalman1975]

Warren Mundine has made a magnificent and devastating intervention in the debate on a ­referendum for indigenous recognition in the Constitution. He has surely destroyed any prospect of the Noel Pearson model of constitutional change getting approved.

In describing Pearson’s proposal for a separate declaration on indigenous recognition, as well as the creation within the Constitution of a special indigenous body that must be consulted on all legislation that affects indigenous people, as the most radical ever proposed for a referendum, as very dangerous and as entering bizarre territory, Mundine has surely ensured this option is dead.

I write these words with something of a heavy heart for I have the greatest admiration for Pearson as a leader and an intellectual. But I agree with Mundine that Pearson’s proposals are dangerous, unpredictable in their consequences and offend basic liberal principles.

Mundine has offered a splendid, historic reassertion of basic liberalism in racial and constitutional matters. He did this in a conversation with my colleague Chris Kenny on Sky TV last Sunday night. With the honourable exception of The Australian, his historic comments have been grotesquely unreported. I would urge everyone to Google these comments and a sensible publisher could do the nation a great service by reproducing the transcript.

When asked about the idea of a special constitutional body to advise on legislation affecting Aborigines, Mundine magnificently declared: “I have a legislative body already. It’s called the NSW parliament, it’s called the commonwealth parliament. I get the chance to vote in elections for those parliaments that make decisions. We’ve had more Aborigines going into state and federal parliament than ever before.”

Mundine, the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, also said: “Either we’re all equal under the Constitution or we’re not.”

[naturalman1975]

There is a current movement in Australia to insert language into the Australian Constitution that specifically acknowledges indigenous Australians (aborigines/aboriginals/Koori) as the original inhabitants of this land. Some people (including, apparently, the generally conservative Prime Minister, Tony Abbott) believe this type of recognition would go some way towards healing historical damage done by historical discrimination since the beginning of European settlement in 1788.

There is no doubt that there has been deliberate and institutional racism in Australia at times during the last 227 years. And from 1901 (when the Australian constitution took effect when Australia federated as a single nation) until 1967 (when a Referendum altered part of the constitution) deliberate discrimination was literally part of the Constitution - Section 127 of the Constitution prevented indigenous Australians being counted in the census, and Section 51 prevented the Federal government from passing laws that specifically targeted indigenous Australians in a way that expressly endorsed the rights of state governments to do so. Amending the Constitution in Australia, requires a referendum and the 1967 referendum intended to remove this racial discrimination in the Constitution was the most successful in Australian history - over 90% of people (and in Australia voting is compulsory) voted to amend those provisions. We rejected the idea of legally and constitutonally enshrined racism, nearly 50 years ago.

But there are a couple of provisions that remain in the Constitution that are still considered problematic by those who believe in racial equality. In particular, the way Section 51 was amended in 1967 means that the Federal government does have the constitutional power to create laws that specifically target any particular race (the intent was to allow the government to pass 'beneficial' laws to address real problems, but there is nothing that constitutionally requires the laws to be beneficial) and Section 25 allows individual states the right to deny people the right to vote based on race (Section 25 was not amended in 1967, because it wasn't seen as necessary at the time as no state was using that power anymore (although Western Australia had used it until 1962 and Queensland until 1965). Amending the Constitution to address these two problems is, at least in my view, not a bad idea, and most people would support that - the problem is that this has opened the doors to those who want to argue that if we are going to have a Referendum anyway, maybe we should do more.

In particular, some indigenous groups want to enshrine special measures into the Constitution to give indigenous people special benefits - such as an elected indigenous assembly of some sort to either advise the government on laws concerning aboriginal people, or in more extreme cases, even a separate aboriginal Parliament.

Most conservatives (including myself) regard this as dangerous and simply wrong. We support the idea of aboriginal equality (and I've been part of supporting that since I was a schoolboy in 1967) but what some people are asking for is special treatment for indigenous people. But if conservatives speak against it, we find ourselves being accused of racism.

So it is really important that somebody like Warren Mundine who is one of our most prominent and successful indigenous leaders has himself come out to opposes these ideas.

"I have a legislative body already. It's called the N(ew) S(outh) W(ales) parliament, it's called the Commonwealth parliament. I get the chance to vote in elections for those parliaments that make decisions. We've had more Aborigines going into state and federal parliament than ever before."

Equal protection under the law.

We need more indigenous leaders like Warren Mundine. He's proud of his aboriginal heritage, but has never sought special treatment because of it. He's expressed his belief in equality for his people, by insisting he be treated as equal and standing up for his rights as an Australian. He worked very hard to get a decent education, then a decent job, then worked out how to work within Australia's existing political system to advance the cause of ensuring other indigenous people had their rights respected - not special rights, their rights as Australians. He became very successful, rising to be President of the Australian Labor Party (yes, he's left wing - nobody is perfect - although he left the ALP in 2012, pointing out that for all its left wing cant about equality, it had never had an aboriginal MP, while the conservative coalition the left derided as racist had had its first aboriginal member of Parliament forty years earlier - the ALP has since had an indigenous Senator elected to Parliament but only because of positive discrimination - indigenous MPs from the coalition have got there by winning preselection and election in contests that treat race as irrelevant - they are not there because they are aboriginal, but because they were chosen as the best person for the job).