Indigenous voice 'will paralyse parliament'
By Paige Taylor 20 April 2023 The Australian
A former Supreme Court judge predicts the Indigenous voice will paralyse the Australian parliament and "in many cases the approval of the advisory body will have to be obtained before a bill can be enacted".
Nicholas Hasluck KC, who retired from the West Australian Supreme Court in 2010, describes the proposal to entrench the Indigenous voice in the constitution as contrary to democratic ideals.
Mr. Hasluck has long been well known in legal and political circles because of his judicial career and because he is the son of the late Sir Paul Hasluck, a minister in the Menzies government who later became governor general of Australia. In 2001, the Federal seat of Hasluck was created and named in honour of Sir Paul and his wife Dame Alexandra Hasluck, an author.
In his written submission to the joint select committee inquiry into the voice, Mr Hasluck criticises one of the justifications offered for the advisory body offered by Anthony Albanese. Mr Albanese has said consulting Indigenous people about matters that affect them is good manners.
"To say, as some have said in recent months, that the voice should be enshrined simply as a matter of ‘good manners’ is a shallow and misleading line of argument," Mr Hasluck writes in his submission to the voice Senate inquiry.
"It confuses the matters in issue by suggesting that people who vote against the voice lack the decency usually associated with good manners.
"An emotive plea of this kind seeks to shame people into voting for the voice. A profound change to the structure of government by constitutional amendments should only be made in response to well reasoned debate on both sides of the question."
Mr Hasluck says the proposal to make "a profound and essentially irreversible change to the structure of government by vesting an influential advisory privilege in a section of the community defined by race is contrary to democratic ideals reflected in the Constitution, a document underpinned by conventions referable to the rule of law and the notion that all citizens, high and low, are to be treated equally".
"As a matter of principle, the voice should be rejected on the grounds that our democracy is built on the foundation of all Australian citizens having equal civic rights, all being able to vote for, stand for and serve in either of the two chambers of our national parliament," Mr Hasluck writes.
"A constitutionally enshrined body defined by race, as to which only Indigenous Australians can vote for or serve in, is inconsistent with this fundamental principle."
Mr Hasluck said the voice would almost certainly become a lightning rod for protracted debate about a vast array of current issues.
Original article here