The Fallacies of the “Voice”

For some unknown reason – most likely the slavish faddishness of the Western left – the term “First Nations” has suddenly come into vogue as the politically correct collective noun for Australian Aborigines.

It’s nonsense of course – even more than its original use in Canada. Whatever its merit there, the simple, unassailable fact is that there were no nations in Australia prior to 1 January, 1901. At best there were tribal bands, many of them no larger than an extended family group. Hundreds of them, across the length and breadth of the continent, speaking hundreds of languages that were mutually incomprehensible to people living more than a few tribes apart, and almost incessantly at war with one another.

This is why the inhabitants had no collective noun for the people living on the continent. Even the collective nouns that now refer to broad swathes, such as Koori, Noongar, Murri, etc, are modern inventions.

Small wonder that whites infatuated with what they imagine to be Aboriginal culture are so easily gulled into parroting swank like “First Nations”. And imagining that a unitary “Voice” can somehow “speak” for all Aboriginal Australians.

Many Aborigines are not so easily twitted.

Recently, I sat down to interview an Aboriginal Elder from South Australia for the ExCandidates podcast, of which I am a host. Her name is Kerry White, a former nurse and diabetes educator from the Narungga people. The aim of the interview was to determine her views regarding the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

It was a fascinating interview because it completely deconstructed many fundamental aspects of the current ‘narrative’ surrounding the Aboriginal people.

Including nonsense like “First Nations”, let alone “indigenous”.

Kerry quickly corrected my error and informed me that Aboriginal people prefer to be called Aborigines […]

Indigenous were “anyone native to Australia. Including flora and fauna. If you’re born in Australia, you’re Indigenous.”

As for “First Nations”:

“First Nations – that’s Canadian. We are not Canadian. We are Aboriginal. We are from Australia and the Torres Strait.”

So, how have such nostrums become so fashionable among the woke elite? Because the public debate is framed by elites in universities and the inner cities and employed in the industry of ‘indigenous activism’.

Kerry then went on to explain the divide between Aboriginal ‘mobs’ in rural/remote areas, compared to mobs in city areas.

“When it comes to Aboriginal people, we have two separate lots,” she began, educating us again. “We have a lot of Aboriginal mobs. Not tribes, not clans. Mobs. That’s an Aboriginal term. [The mobs] are divided into two. And that is rural and remote, and that is separate from the city-ites.”

To understand the division, one need only consider the vast gulf between the conspicuously white-looking, wealthy, inner-city Lidia Thorpe and Alice Springs-based Jacinta Price. The inner city types are too often drawn from a particularly odious class: the “box-tickers”.

Kerry went on to teach us another Aboriginal term – ‘tick-a-boxers’. These represented the people who claimed to be Aboriginal when it is clear they are not. Recent census data points to this.

Since the 1971 census, the number of people identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander has risen from 116,000 to over 800,000 – a 590 per cent increase. Even from 2016 to 2021, the national population increased by eight per cent, but the Indigenous population increased by 23 per cent […]

‘If you want to be Aboriginal, all you had to do is tick the box.’

It’s notable, then, that the “Voice” is explicitly framed as “Indigenous” and “First Nations”, not “Aboriginal”. It’s the triumph of the box-tickers.

For Kerry, her feelings on the Voice to Parliament are clear.

“It’s a no from me. I say no to the Voice. I don’t want it,” she replied pointedly.

“We, the Aboriginal people from rural and remote Australia do not want it.”

In fact, Kerry sees the “Voice” as a return to a shameful part of Australia’s past: the segregation of Aboriginal Australians.

‘They’re taking us back two hundred years.

‘You’re dividing the country again, it’s back to segregation. And frankly, it’s racist towards our White brothers and sisters that live in this land with us.’

Spectator Australia

And far from not having a “voice”, Kerry points out that Aboriginal Australians are already over-represented in parliament, with 4.9 per cent of MPs, for 3.2 per cent of the population (including the white box-tickers).

So, if Aborigines aren’t being heard, it’s because their elected representatives are apparently not doing their job.

Seeing the Gucci and Dior-swathed Linda Burney swanning about in private jets, finger-wagging Australians about the “Voice”, but falling conspicuously silent about the endemic violence in Aboriginal communities, Kerry seems to have a pretty good point.