Wheeler's wisdom: Voice proposal lacks detail and could divide Australia

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 150 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages were spoken in 2021, but only 9.5 per cent reported speaking an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language.

At 30 June 2021, there were 983,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people, now 3.8 per cent of the total Australian population, having increased by 25 per cent between censuses.

These figures tell us that 84.7 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people did not live in remote areas. In fact 41.1 per cent live in major cities.

Education is up, with 49 per cent of ATSI people aged 25-34 having a certificate III level or above qualification in 2018-19, and 3,708 had a postgraduate degree level qualification in 2016, up from 682 in 2001.

Why then is the government supporting a move towards separatism when very many Aboriginal people are urban and a successful part of mainstream society? These figures show that the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people already enjoy the facilities and privileges that other Australians expect.

Thomas Mayo sits on the board of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition which leads the Yes23 campaign. His signature is on the Uluru Statement, which Anthony Albanese has promised to implement in full.

Mayo describes the Voice as a campaign tool to "punish politicians", "abolish colonialist institutions" and "pay the rent, pay reparations and compensation".

His time as the Maritime Union of Australia national Indigenous officer would equip him well to enforce the Voice's demands.

Mayo told a Communist conference that "there is nothing that we can do that is more powerful than building a First Nations' Voice, a black institution, a black political force to be reckoned with.

"We understand as unionists that you don't make an agreement with the boss without building power first, without building representative structures any more than a Communist Party or any other political party can function without structure and elected representation."

Marcia Langton's demanding tone probably comes from her involvement during the 1970s with the Socialist Workers Party.

Read the Yoorrook Commission's report from Victoria's Indigenous 'truth-telling' body. Victorian Indigenous leader Ian Hunter said some of the demands made in the report would result in an "apartheid" system with "one rule for blackfellas and another for everyone else".

According to The Australian, Yoorrook called for "decision-making power, authority, control and resources" in both child protection and criminal justice to be transferred to Indigenous Victorians. They want detention for children under 16 to be abolished, and so on.

Premier Daniel Andrews thinks the state's Koori Court has been a "stunning success". Ian Hunter cited the case of 22-year-old Alisha Fagan, who last month was sentenced by the court to two-and-a-half years' jail with a non-parole period of six months over the death of 69-year-old grandfather Sedat Hassan.

Fagan was a suspended learner driver on four sets of bail for driving offences. She had been drinking, and was speeding 28km/h over the limit in a residential street.

Hunter asked that if we were going to have a traditional sentencing situation, would the grandfather's family have had the right to spear her (Fagan)?

Then there was WA's new Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021, rapidly dropped when polling for the Yes vote collapsed. Well-publicised incidents probably helped, like two major tree planting events in the state being cancelled after an Aboriginal corporation demanded $2.5 million for approval.

This WA Act would have given local Aboriginal corporations (which didn't then exist) absolute control over many farming operations. Socialism gone mad!

The Voice is much more than a modest request to include Aboriginal people in the Constitution. As Albanese himself said, it would be a brave government that would not accept the Voice's advice.