The referendum for the voice is coming on the 14th of October 2023. For many Australians YES is the correct way to vote. This article explains why.

Reasons To Vote Yes

If you work for the government and you’re incompetent and embarrassed by the billions of dollars spent every year attempting to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians without significant improvement, then you should definitely be voting yes. No one wants to be held accountable for that sort of poor performance, what a pain in the ass that would be. Imagine the tediously long meetings you’d have to endure. Similarly if you don’t want to take responsibility for the billions of dollars squandered every year lining the pockets of wasteful bureaucrats and in policies that constantly stop, start, chop and change with no lasting benefit, then the voice is good for you. You need distractions to divert attention away from your ineffective government. You need more funding, more power and more bureaucracy to justify your job, feed your ego and cover for your incompetence. Plus outsourcing the responsibility of actually doing your job means you free up time to enjoy rubbing shoulders with powerful elites whilst watching your share market portfolio grow.

If you are an elected government official who is seeking re-election via a method that isn’t competence then supporting the voice is a good strategy. You earn the vote of Indigenous Australians, the oppressed, virtue signallers, bleeding hearts and social justice warriors, and all without having to deliver any real benefit. Even better, since the voice is permanently enshrined in the constitution, you can continue to pretend to help these permanently oppressed people and continue to earn votes in this way for your entire career. You can use the oppressed to endlessly justify your leadership.

If you’re a power mad tyrant then the voice is the policy for you. You get to divide the people by race, permanently label one group as the oppressed and then use their oppressed status to make an ethical case to exercise your brutal tyranny just like all the great genocidal dictators have done in the past.

If you are seeking unearned moral virtue then supporting the voice is a great way to go about it. It’s so easy. There’s no sacrifice, effort or personal responsibility involved. By simply announcing some words you get to publicly proclaim yourself as being on the side of the good. Compared to those primitive no voters you’ll be seen as a superior type of human. This seems to be a particularly attractive strategy used by the pathetically weak leadership of many large corporations and sporting entities in Australia. Why are extreme climate change alarmists, radical queer theory supporters, generic woke activists and weak narcissistic corporate elites all supporting the voice? They’re all seeking unearned moral virtue. There’s probably a nice dose of bitterness and resentment in the mix as well. The corporate elitists have the added incentive of advancing their own greedy agenda by aligning with policy makers.

If you’re an indigenous bureaucrat and likely to “wet your beak” if the voice is voted in, then voting yes is an excellent career strategy. The promotions will come rolling in. You can acquire more wealth and power and get the thrilling ego boost of forcefully imposing your views onto ordinary aboriginal people. Your bureaucracy will thrive.

If you are a lawyer then you’re definitely going to get your beak wet in the aftermath of the voice. The division, disputes, endless disagreements and unintended consequences will trigger a flurry of lucrative legal action that you can capitalise on. Vote yes and look forward to a prosperous future and early retirement. I’d suggest you start shopping for that luxury yacht right now because demand is about to skyrocket.

Reasons To Vote No

To give the appearance of a legitimate article we should cover both sides of the debate. Let’s go through reasons why you might vote no.

If you enjoy keeping your ideas coherent and consistent with basic logic and believe that’s the way to remain honest, sane and create a better society then you will oppose the voice. If the intent of the voice is to close the gap, then it is not required once the gap is closed. Therefore a permanent presence in the constitution doesn’t make sense. Even a politician should be able to understand this blatantly obvious flaw. I suppose it does make sense if some people have intentions for the voice that they are not disclosing.

If you’re a supporter of democracy then you might prefer to vote no. In a democracy policy should be developed from the bottom up. A government having meetings with a few powerful, like-minded friends (invites only) and then announcing a referendum is not an appropriate method of policy development in a democracy. Apart from the bureaucrats who developed it, and maybe some of their mates, few indigenous people were involved with or even knew about the voice before it was announced. And subsequent to the announcement indigenous elders have reported to the media that many ordinary aboriginal people feel disenfranchised, ignored and were still not sure what the voice entails, with many thinking it was a new season of a TV show or a John Farnham tour. For me personally, before the voice was announced, I knew of exactly zero individuals who were suggesting the need for constitutional change to tackle indigenous issues. People are deliberating the voice because the announcement has been made, not because there was a grassroots movement brewing prior to the announcement. If the government would simply do its job, talk to indigenous people, identify their problems, then together with them develop policies to help, and stick to those policies for as long as the people want them and for as long as they’re useful – that would simultaneously be democratic, effective and negate the need for racial preference to be permanently enshrined into the constitution.

A supporter of democracy may also be worried about how a constitutionally backed future government body would behave. Will it create an activist government that legislates policy without genuine democratic consent? Will it interfere with activities like economic policies, interest rate changes, distribution of welfare, building an emergency hospital during a pandemic or times of war? Will the elites who lead the voice behave democratically or will they prefer the use of power and authority? Will the voice be able to appropriately represent the incredible diversity of Indigenous Australians? Will voice elitists promote more division and segregation? Will separatism be reinforced? Will we have a nation within a nation? Will we have two separate legal systems? Will they purposely perpetuate the gap because they need the gap to maintain power and funding? If any of these outcomes concern you a no vote would be best.

If you want to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians and / or waste less of your tax money then a no vote is prudent. We already waste billions of dollars every year on policies that don’t deliver. A significant reason for the waste is too much bureaucracy and a top down approach to policy development. Assuming we live in a universe where basic logic can be applied, an already bloated, top heavy and ineffective government will not become more effective by becoming more bloated and top heavy. I have not seen a single shred of evidence to suggest that yet another government department, even if it has a cool name like “the voice”, will improve outcomes. I’d suggest an appropriate strategy would be reducing bureaucracy, reducing layers, reducing the diffusion of responsibility, decentralising authority, providing more local autonomy and refocusing on the proper democratic process. Rather than a quantum leap to constitutional change, an attempt should be made to reform existing policies, to cut out the dead wood and to improve what’s left. Reform should be the first step in the process of improvement. However it’s not as showy as constitutional change and requires an ability to listen and a level of competence that may be lacking in current governments.

If you’re concerned about the ever increasing gap between ordinary Australians and the elite then you should vote no. Having an oppressed population and focusing on identity politics provides a distraction from issues that ordinary people care about. Governments can pretend to be busy addressing the high priority oppressed whilst wealth continues to concentrate at the top and opportunities for those at the bottom continue to deteriorate.

A supporter of competence should not support the voice. Racially divisive policies often lead to race, rather than competence, becoming the dominant factor in building organisations. Hard work and competence go unrewarded, corruption thrives. We have seen how this can lead to the deterioration of infrastructure, wealth and living standards in other countries that have pursued this path.

If you are a principled person and you deplore racism and division no matter what virtue signalling form they take, then a no vote would be consistent with your principles. Similarly if you value equality of citizenship rather than having your constitutional rights dependant on your ancestry, then you should oppose the voice.

If you think virtue signalling has a negative impact on society because it gives tyrants, narcissistic elites, incompetent politicians and activists a tool to pretend to be on the side of the good whilst their actions suggest otherwise, then you should vote no to the voice. If you’d like to replace apologies, rambles about diversity and inclusion, welcome to countries, changing the names of things, reconciliations, representations, recognitions and referendums with actually improving the lives of ordinary Indigenous Australians then opposition to the voice will help achieve that goal.

If you are worried about living a meaningless life, being a puppet for noisy activists rather than speaking your truth, then you should vote no. Your conscience and self respect will remain intact, enabling you to forge ahead with your ambitions to live a meaningful life.

If you think the best way for people to become strong and thrive is for them to attempt to take on more responsibility, to get themselves in order and to be self organised, rather than be victims and have the government organise them, then you should vote no to the voice. You may think that permanently labelling people as oppressed, to keep them permanently in a state of victimhood, might actually work against their ability to thrive. You might even think that it is only evil tyrants who would suggest to permanently classify people as oppressed, as a way to earn votes and ethically justify the acquisition of more power and control. When responsibility is not adopted at the individual level usually that responsibility is taken by tyrants. Responsibility is valuable because it can be used to attain power. When something of value is left lying around, thieves tend to steal it.

There will be many more unintended consequences of the voice, too many to try to predict. Changing complicated systems results in unintended consequences. What makes it worse is that for this particular experiment, even if the unintended consequences are terribly destructive, the policy can’t be repealed. Who will benefit? Who will lose? Will it promote corruption? Will state governments and / or corporations start colluding with the voice to earn their backing? Will there be repeated high court challenges? Will the voice become a bureaucratic nightmare for every piece of legislation? Will the scope of the voice become unlimited? How will we fund it? What will we sacrifice to fund it? Will government debt spiral out of control? Will the problem of welfare dependency be exacerbated? Will it promote radicalism? Will everything become about race? Will maths and science be labelled as white supremacist ideology like it already has in the USA? Will all police be labelled as racist and subsequently defunded with the corresponding anarchy and murder that follows, just like USA? Will censorship spiral out of control? Will personal freedom be destroyed? Will it give disproportionate power to people to be able to tell you what to do with your own land that you paid for? Will they start being motivated by bitterness and resentment? Will they start stealing your property? How do we ensure that power does not become too concentrated at the top? What happens if a power mad tyrant inherits the power in the future? If any of this concerns you then I’d suggest voting no.

Final Thoughts

It’s clear that for many people, particularly those in positions of power or those wanting unearned moral virtue, the voice will provide great benefit, and therefore a yes vote should ensue. Other people might prefer to vote no but they are the type of human whose opinion should be disregarded. They’re probably racist bigots.

If you’re hell bent on changing the constitution then how about campaigning for changes that have been organically conceived at ground level, changes I’ve actually heard people talk about rather than changes that were invented by an authoritarian bureaucracy? How about we ban government enforced medical treatment? How about we ban corporations from being able to bribe governments and regulatory bodies through lobbying? How about we ban politicians from being able to immediately move into highly lucrative corporate roles? How about we protect free speech so that the current government’s crusade against free speech can be stopped? There’s more grassroots support for these changes than there is for the bureaucratically manufactured voice. But if you just want to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians then constitutional change is not required.

Every citizen of Australia should have a voice. This is the basis of democracy. If it isn’t working we should find out why. Perhaps for aboriginal people they don’t need “the voice”, they need a government with ears. Ears that actually listen.

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