Agree, but perhaps overthinking it. Albanese is a woke idiot - if you wanted to improve the lot of our indigenous peoples, you wouldn't go for a constitutional change that lacked bipartisan support.

When (not if) The Voice goes down, Albo will totally own the setback, but Albo will totally blame everyone else, leaving the ABC and Guardian to lose their minds over "structural racism".

Mmm..Mercedes is going to be real happy!

I don't know who Mr. Malhotra regards as "you"; but I doubt that many Australians would be thinking 'what the hell is going on'. They might think 'what the hell happened' after it is too late.

Only the lunatic Left minority in this country seems to have anything to say. I doubt that the rest think about anything at all; the uniparty, soon to be one party, is what they got for themselves at the last election.

It's not over until the fat lady sings, and I am not at all sure that Australians will say NO to the Voice. I now doubt that any but a minority really cares. Not the Anglo Saxon variety anyway. We might have to rely on citizens who have come from less fortunate countries than Australia, and who can see that Australia is going down the hole that they thought they were escaping from.

Dinesh Malhotra could be one of those people we should be listening to.

Don’t vote for anything anywhere anytime!

Albanese has failed miserably but succeeded in dividing the Nation !

NO, NO, and NO again.

The Aboriginal industry has made a few people who know the system very rich, made many others wealthy while the ordinary family sits under a gum tree getting the dregs or nothing of the huge amounts expended. Aboriginal organizations have grown to make noise and look after themselves, to hell with anyone else. It will be more of the same or backwards if yes should get up. Seen it all over the last 60+ years.

There is already a Voice, an entire government agency already dedicated exclusively to giving indigenous people a voice in how they are governed. The National Indigenous Australian Agency, https://www.niaa.gov.au The Voice enshrined in Constitution assumes that all indigenous people who now suffer disadvantage will do so indefinitely into the future.Will this agency be dismantled if/when the Voice is up and running. Also, could it be sorted out as to who is and who isn't indigenous.

Divide the country? Sounds good!

"it is hardly about recognition; it is all about claiming ownership of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands."

Crocodile tears - now look who it is that presently claims ownership of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands?

Hands off, you thieves - this and every other land belongs to God alone!

What a nasty, trite, selective piece of fearmongering nonsense.

What the author studiously left out was the reason why a Voice in being called for.

"Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene
numbers. They should be our hope for the future.
These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.
We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country."

And now he is turning an advisory body into something that "will sink Australia to be ruled by two powers: the Voice and the Commonwealth"

Utterly ludicrous.

I spoke recently to an Indian gentlemen I know about how he thought the Indian community would be voting on the referendum. He said the majority he knew would be voting yes but there were a section who still had baggage from the caste system and spoke with derision about the measures in India to elevate the lot of the Dalits, and this was potentially playing out in their intention to vote no.

I wonder if that is a factor here?

It will do no such thing, given the no case will prevail.
Alan B.

And, what, Yuyutsu says.
Alan B.

I'm not big on Facebook memes but this one is spot on:-

The Voice has not divided the nation, it has exposed it.

This tirade of misinformation, lies and fearmongering is another classic example of just that.

Something to ponder about, I think I have now made my decision. I was on the fence and did wonder:
Why should the advisers/protagonists (Marcia Langton, Pat Dodson, Thomas Mayo) find their functionality only through the proposed Voice? Can't they advise the NIAA, Linda Burney, or the PM of their brilliant ideas to improve the lot of our indigenous people?
I think the author is correct in believing that there is much more behind this all. It will all turn into a lawyer's feast (mark Geoffrey Robertson's words, in trying to convince us to vote 'yes'), when he very cleverly said that the High Court of Australia is well equipped and robust... Robertson knows full well, what's coming should the Voice succeed. He is merely preempting how busy lawyers will get. It will still be the few who will make heaps of money and everyday Australians may end-up having to pay double taxes to own a piece of land in Australia.

The Voice will be a 110% open invitation for outside activist forces to make their move into Australia. Would that be worse than having Labor/Green ? Remember what South Africa went through ?

Looks like the Yellow Peril virus has infected the No case for the Voice, just as the "fears" of the Yellow Peril drove the NO Chinese case for the Constitution.

The 2023 NO case & The Yellow Peril of C19

RISKY - The Chinese will swamp us. So many of them in China

UNKOWN - They are heathens and they look so weird

DIVISIVE - They drive down wages. (Lie)
PERMANENT - They're a threat to unprotected white women! (The stain on the crimson thread, eh!)

Not a lot has changed. Decide on NO, then manufacture the reasons - big lies out of fragments of truth

yeah and Mabo took everyones backyards

Chek & mikk,
Remember the old adage 'it won't happen overnight but it will happen'. Guess what, it's on the move in Rural Australia but you wouldn't be affected yet by it in the concrete warren. Are you aware of how many working stations have already been bought back with your Taxes ?
There's no word if these stations are still working though ! Someone please enlighten us.
I'm damn sure you are fully aware of how this is progressing but standard Woke instant gratification mentality can not comprehend the workings of falsehood & deceit !
The reparation rhetoric by Mayo et al says it all. And, you are trying to veil it by frivolously referring to as all hot air !

I've still got my backyard. Has anyone lost theirs?

Poor buggers. The High Court Mabo judgment cannot be upset. So the lie of terra nullius is in plain sight. Incumbent then upon the rearguard to find fig leaves every time. Howard's Ten-Point Plan to nobble the Native Title Act. And now the No case to protect the sacred race-purity driven Constitution.

Yes, change takes time. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. And as Chairman Mao said, Power comes from the barrel of the gun. Our forbears did a lot better though. We gave them diseases and we poisoned their water holes. And now 230 years later we are going to deny them a voice, a gentle petition, compared with William Cooper's Petition to King George VI in 1937.

Have we not the slightest empathy or sense of moral rectitude?

The High Court Mabo judgment was about the Torres Strait islanders which is an entirely different culture & land tenure than the Australian Aborigine. The judgement was not intended to & should never have been applied to the mainland.

The level of scarification in the people & culture of the islanders has no resemblance to the nomadic hunter gather culture of the mainland.

Well, Hasbeen.

My reading is that Mabo blew up the lie of terra nullius, which is central to our nation's founding.

So not even the crafty Howard could overturn the Native Title Act.

Mabo ended up involving terra nullius but that's not what that case was originally all about !
There was never any question about terra nullius on those islands !

Have we not the slightest empathy or sense of moral rectitude?
Chek,
I have witnessed it but as usual the academic social engineering crowd heavily aided by incompetent & corrupt bureaudroids (now the Voice Team) throw in that proverbial spanner & the blame falls onto those who needed the goodwill & those who offered it were deemed the rednecks & racists !

.

Dinesh Malhotra’s article reminds me of Bertrand Russell’s 1933 essay “The Triumph of Stupidity” in which he observes :

« One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision »
.

It was inspired by W. B. Yeats’ 1920 poem “The Second Coming” in which he writes :

« The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity »

.

Banjo Paterson,
Please don't start doing a Foxy, surely you're better than that !

Let's talk.
200 plus years ago 'Australia' was invaded and a new group took control.
Whether or not we think it was justified is of absolutely no consequence.
Like many other things in history, it happened.
It cannot be changed now.
The people involved in it are all long gone.
No one alive today has any responsibility for the actions of ancestors.
We don't need to 'right any wrong' they did.
And consequently we don't have any obligation to any of their descendants.
Do those few persons really believe that the rest of us are going to give them extended largesse, for no good reason?
It is about time they accepted the truth.
Their ancestors should have accepted it over 200 years ago.
Their only logical way forward was to accept the new order of things.
Then we would not be having this continuing discord.

I agree with Ipso Fatso that biological ancestry should not be a basis for privilege.

We ought to respect different lifestyles and those who choose them, rather than those who chose to forsake the lifestyle of their ancestors and blended with the dominant culture.

Those of different lifestyles ought to be heard, regardless of their biological ancestry:

It is well for aboriginals who follow their culture to have special privileges, but then everyone who so wishes ought to be able to convert into an aboriginal and follow that lifestyle.

Interesting how the rules change when dealing with entitlements.

In Europe it's one set of rules, in the US it's another, and so on.

Human people evolve, do-nothing & blamer people don't !