Post referendum policy options: perhaps we should blame ourselves

This earthly world, where, to do harm

Is often laudable; to do good, sometime

Accounted dangerous folly

Macbeth, Act four, Scene two.

 

In the wake of last week’s referendum defeat, Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli announced via an op ed in the Courier Mail last Thursday that he was withdrawing his support for a treaty in Queensland (link here) and if returned to government would repeal the Path to Treaty Act 2023 (link here) legislation which the Opposition had previously supported. That legislation establishes a pathway to a treaty or treaties. Section 5 of the Act sets down the main purposes of the Act:

The main purposes of this Act are to—

(a) establish the First Nations Treaty Institute to— (i) develop and provide a framework for Aboriginal peoples, Torres Strait Islander peoples and the State to enter into treaty negotiations; and (ii) support Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples to participate in treaty negotiations; and

(b) provide for the establishment of the Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry to inquire into, and report on, the impacts of colonisation on Aboriginal peoples, Torres Strait Islander peoples and the history of Queensland.

 

Following the passage of the legislation, the Queensland Labor Government issued a statement (link here) where the Premier stated:

“[This legislation] furthers the commitment made between the Queensland Government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and non-Indigenous Queenslanders on 16 August 2022, and paves the way for truth-telling and healing, and treaty preparations to begin… All Queenslanders will benefit from a reconciled Queensland, and we are committed to working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples towards reconciliation, truth-telling and healing, and reframing the relationship.” [Emphasis added]

 

In the period since the Act was passed, there has to date been no indication of substantive progress in appointing the Institute members. Meanwhile an interim body continues to operate (link here and link here).

 

According to Opposition Leader David Crisafulli, a treaty would only create further division. Within 24 hours, the Queensland Premier was expressing her own reservations regarding her Government’s legislation establishing a path towards a treaty, stating that a treaty would require bipartisan support (link here). The Australian (link here $) in an article headed ‘Palaszczuk to give up on treaty’, reports that the Government had ‘moved to abandon laws – passed this year with the support of the LNP – enabling treaty deals and reparations for up to 150 groups…. [at a press conference] Ms Palaszczuk would only commit to going ahead with truth-telling hearings, due to begin early next year’. In an article in today’s Australian (Local voice on cards for remote island; Link here $) the Premier is quoted as stating that she personally supported treaty deals but they would not progress without bipartisan support:

It’s a long process, so the truth-telling is three to five years. The treaties will come afterwards and that is for subsequent governments.

 

Ben Smee’s analysis in the Guardian (link here) points to the political calculus behind the Opposition’s policy shift, and the Government’s response, and observes how the Government’s preparedness to buckle to pressure both diminishes trust and encourages further provocation. What he doesn’t emphasise however is the deeper and longstanding reinforcement of distrust and disenchantment amongst Indigenous Queenslanders that will inevitably follow.

 

In NSW, the Labor Government is reassessing its own policy settings in relation to establishing a state wide Voice (link here). The Australian today (link here $) is citing the NSW Premier as indicating his government was not planning to take a position on a possible treaty before the next state election:

All we’re promising is to start that dialogue…I can’t promise quick changes, but I have promised dialogue.

 

In The Conversation Michelle Grattan laid out a succinct assessment, arguing that despite the Government’s good intentions, the pursuit of the perfect over the good has delivered nothing:

…the Voice is dead and reconciliation is, at least for the moment, a wasteland …. Albanese was well motivated, but a great deal of harm has been done. (link here)

 

In the light of the developments in Queensland and perhaps NSW, this assessment is looking accurate.

 

Grattan goes on to say:

Albanese says he is waiting to be advised by Indigenous people on where to from now. When the government said in the campaign it had no plan B, that seems to have been the case. It has not yet clarified its post-referendum position on treaty and truth telling.

 

The Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles did state on the ABC Insiders program the day after the referendum that the Uluru Statement for the Heart (which addresses treaty and truth telling) continues to be part of the Government’s agenda. I subsequently saw reports that these comments were being tracked back and downplayed. The Government is now stating that it is waiting to hear from Indigenous people on their views on how to proceed before outlining its position. Grattan’s assessment is likely correct.

 

The referendum campaign, and in particular its result, were clearly epic failures; and since he came to office, the Prime Minister had been central to each of the strategic and tactical decisions taken along the pathway to that result. Implicit in Michelle Grattan’s critique is to lay responsibility for the consequences of the outcome with the Government and in particular the Prime Minister, and clearly, in terms of day-to-day politics in Australia, that is where accountability must reside.

 

Yet an analytic focus that sees the world purely through the lens of its impact on quotidian politics is to my mind fundamentally inadequate. Such a focus is infused with an innate contemporaneousness that over-emphasises what politicians and political actors say rather than what they do, and adopts the perspective promulgated by political actors across the political spectrum that implicitly frames political and policy debate and discussion as ephemeral and never final. This is particularly the case in relation to Indigenous policy, because Indigenous interests lack the innate influence of more powerful interest groups and tend to focus on the perfect over the good (perhaps because that is how to best obtain and sustain support within extremely heterogeneous Indigenous constituencies). The result is that there is a dearth of sustained focus on specific policy proposals in public policy discourse on First Nations related issues, and instead an over-emphasis on vague and inchoate high level aspirations such as ‘treaty’ or ‘truth-telling’. These are perfectly legitimate and adequate political tactics, but entirely inadequate as a guide to policy development.

 

To take a random example, the absence of sustained pressure for the provision of core funding for PBCs in the native title space astounds me (link here).  Both governments and First Nations advocacy groups are happy to engage in policy discussions about complex and high level issues that are continuously swathed in process, discussion and review, but never lead to final decisions or progress. Yet simple and comparatively inexpensive reforms that would make an appreciable difference to First Nations negotiating power are ignored by both governments and First Nations advocates.

 

In the case of the Voice, this presentism in most public discourse ignores the history and wider factors that led to the referendum result, and under-values the consequences and implications for the future of today’s decisions and actions by actors on all sides of the debate. At the risk of over-simplifying my argument, the public debate leading to, and beyond the referendum is taking place in the realm of ideology and ‘the vibe’ rather than in terms of substantive argument and exchange of views designed to persuade. The processes established by governments over the past six years have been consistent with the longstanding approach by governments of promising the world, raising expectations, but failing to deliver. This is essentially Michelle Grattan’s argument. Going forward, there is every likelihood of more of the same.

 

In these circumstances, we can blame governments. The Queensland Government’s ‘commitments’ on Treaty appear to be not worth the paper a treaty would be written on. Both the Queensland and NSWE Governments appear determined to kick the treaty can down the road, again. Federally, the previous LNP Government established a seemingly never-ending set of slow moving processes and reviews to ‘develop’ a Voice, along with a series of shifting and politically convenient policy rationales (e.g. support for regional voices) yet never took action to either legislate the Voice or to put it to a referendum. The Albanese Government pursued the ‘perfect’, a high risk all or nothing strategy without a ‘plan B’, hiding behind the rationale that this is what First Nations wanted — a rationale it has doubled down on post referendum.

 

This is not the first time that the expectations of First Nations have been raised and then razed, although in this case it was the Australian electorate that delivered the coup de grace, and not the executive government. Governments deserve enormous criticism for raising expectations time after time, year after year, and when they change policy direction, for razing whatever institutional infrastructure exists to the ground, and forcing Indigenous citizens to start afresh. The sorry history of Indigenous advisory bodies to Commonwealth governments are just one case in point.

 

However, perhaps those who make it their business to criticise governments for their poor or non-existent performance (for example bloggers such as myself) and policy think tanks, leaders and advocates, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, should look more carefully at their own complicity in this all so predictable danse macabre. A dance which involves governments and oppositions alike, avowing, pledging, promising, making commitments, raising expectations, baulking, shifting course, penultimately ‘kicking decisions down the road’, and only when cornered, coming clean and announcing that what had been a commitment was in fact just an ephemeral thought bubble. We know what politicians are like. We know they are prone when deemed necessary to deceive, delude, dissemble and divert. Yet how is it that we fail to call governments out when they are so clearly focussed more on raising expectations than on delivering. Perhaps it is time to blame ourselves?

 

Why might we deserve to be blamed?

 

Reasons abound. For allowing debates to proceed untethered to reality. For allowing ideology to permeate our thinking, marginalising pragmatic incremental gains. For allowing political actors — whether politicians or advocates — to commit to or support outcomes (or targets, or processes) without undertaking the requisite intellectual work to specify the strategy, and without articulating how policy proposals and promises will be funded and by whom. For readers who would like an extended list (focussed on the vexed issue of closing the gap), I refer you to my submissions to the current Productivity Commission review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (link here).

 

My fundamental point is that the threat of political accountability is patently ineffective, and —even when delivered decisively at an election — is not adequate to ensure constructive policy outcomes in the Indigenous policy domain. Power — its necessity, its benefits and uses, its excesses, and its costs — pervades our systems of democratic policymaking. Yet left unchecked, power degrades and corrupts our institutions, our systems of governance, and ultimately our way of life. The paradox we confront is that power is both necessary and ubiquitous, and insidiously avoids all attempts at constraint and regulation. It flows through our institutions like water through rubble. The challenge is to devise ways to check its most egregious excesses. One obvious way is to build and sustain a robust culture of ‘speaking truth to power’, where debate is welcomed, and the contest of rigorous argument between alternative views is valued. Promoting and engaging in constructive debate is a responsibility that falls on us all; but is easier said than done.

 

Too often we baulk at the threshold, as engagement is hard work. The Indigenous policy domain is not just about policies that impact First Nations citizens. It is also about the sort of nation we wish to be, and this requires all Australians to develop and express ideas (which flow into actions) about the place of Indigenous citizens within our nation’s fabric and institutions. To my mind, it is a mistake to think that non-Indigenous citizens have no role to play in shaping our nations policies in relation to the place of First Nations citizens within our polity. Bernard Keane in Crikey adopts the diametrically oppositive view in his article titled The job of non-Indigenous Australians now is to… shut up (link here).

 

It is particularly a mistake for governments to abandon the responsibilities they took on upon being elected, namely to make decisions in the general public interest, and to implicitly claim that it is for First Nations interests to set out the policy agenda to be pursued. The obverse of this assertion is that it would also be a mistake for Indigenous leaders and advocates to be taken in by such rhetoric, and to allow themselves to once again be misled and ultimately to be disappointed. To be clear, it is both necessary and important that governments and policymakers listen to, consider, and hopefully take on board where they can Indigenous views; but this does not justify governments abandoning their overarching responsibilities for the policy choices necessary to advance the public interest, and it certainly does not justify governments hiding behind rhetorical nonsense — views that they do not in fact believe — in order to avoid making difficult policy decisions.

 

Creating a culture of robust and respectful debate on public policy, and particularly Indigenous policy, where different views can be raised and discussed is an important task that we as a nation appear to have allowed to lapse. The restitution of such a broad-based culture of debate and discussion is important if we value a free and fair future for our children and their children. Unfortunately, for too many of us (including me), taking concrete steps towards the establishment of such a culture too often seems like dangerous folly

 

24 October 2023