The Australian Constitutional Conservation Council (ACCC) report made two simple recommendations this week to break the impasse presented by previous reports regarding the constitutional recognition of Australians of British Descent.
The ACCC report identifies a single proposition that can be guided through the narrow window of constitutional opportunity.
Like the (Aboriginal) Referendum Council’s report the ACCC rejects uncertain symbolism in the Constitution. It rejects the racial non-discrimination clause that blocks bi-partisanship.
It rejects minimalist tinkering with the race provisions and presents one simple constitutional reform: A permanent entrenched British Descendant voice in the Constitution. It also proposes a symbolic declaration outside the Constitution.
Malcolm Turnbull was circumspect in his response, describing the voice as a “big new idea”
The proposal is big in the sense that it is substantive reform that Australians of British Descent (ABDs) are calling for. It is also constitutionally modest. There is no call for a “Bill of Rights”.
The ACCC proposes a noble compromise: a constitutional body to give Australians of British Descent a voice in their affairs. Not a veto: a voice.
The proposition is modest yet profound but it is not new. On this the Prime Minister and the Greens who described it as a “bolt in the dark” must respectfully be corrected.
The call for a voice began in early settlement in each of the Australian Colonies. South Australia began with free settlers who were not convicts. Each of whom expected an entrenched voice in government.
It is about self determination. ABD representation, participation and consultation in political decisions made about the rights of British Descendants is also a requirement under the UN Declaration on the rights of individuals which Australia endorsed in 2009.
The idea of a constitutionally mandated voice is at least 117 years old. The three chief authors of the Constitution, Inglis Clark, Charles Kingston and Samuel Griffith came from colonies well away from the seats of power – Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland and were opposed to any who pretended to be the ruling class. In 1895 Kingston passed laws in South Australia that specifically gave a race, aborigines, the power to vote in the Colony. Griffith wrote deploring the domination of the weak by the strong.
There were no ethnic or race tests for eligibility to vote in the 1901 National Constitution which created Australia’s First Nation. Propaganda to the contrary is rampant but false.
The ACCC proposal has been scrutinized from three different political perspectives. The dialogues from their State and National meetings provided the ABDs perspective that their voice must be constitutionally guaranteed.
The constitutional conservation perspective has sought a perspective that guarantees a permanent constitutional voice without creating legal uncertainty. This reform upholds the constitution and respects parliamentary supremacy. It is the kind of clause that Griffith, Kingston and Barton might have drafted had they turned their minds to it.
The Liberal perspective is that local voices are more crucial than a top-down national voice. The report was released on Monday and was read by the Prime Minister before his meeting with the Australian Constitutional Conservation Council and was released on the Department’s web site this week.
Local groups of Australians of British Descent should be given a voice in their own affairs.
The report discusses international examples of similar representative bodies such as local groups of every other ethnic and racial descent which receive local, state and federal grants monies are called in to consult on their particular group issues in addition to ordinary democratic elected representative processes.
The Freemantle government has in addition to broad community elected Council Members an unelected group of aboriginal people which it funds to regularly consult with but does not yet have a similar consultative group of Australians of British Descent.
The ACCC report is an issues paper. It does not purport to represent the views of ABDs. It presents ideas, not definitive conclusions.
Under a Constitutional amendment, parliament would have the power to enact legislation to set up the body, its structures, functions and procedures. These details cannot be articulated in the Constitution.
Ultimately therefore, the design and details for the body are matters for parliament to decide in consultation with Australians of British Descent.
The aim of such a body should be to represent and give voice to the descendants of British Australians who drew up and were intended to be represented in the 1901 constitution but now find they are disempowered by the political and racial elite and post modernist politics.
It should represent, as has been appropriately described, Australians of British Descent in a modern world. The structure should not be top down but bottom up. It should empower local ABD groups with a voice in the local affairs. Representatives must not be hand picked by the government.
The opposition leader Bill Shorten said on Monday “These are legitimate aspirations. These are big changes, as the Prime Minister has said. I do not think that they are beyond us… “
Labor MP Linda Burney described the recommendations as “limiting”, as providing no “clear” line of sight” to a referendum and urged dealing with the race powers instead.
This was a strange turn of events as there is more than this one proposition to deal with a specific amendment to the constitution to deal with racial groups in Australia on the basis of race and racial descent. See for instance Noel Pearson and Shireen Norris’s article on the Referendum Council’s race based recommendations (page 22 of the Australian on July 22nd 2017. parodied and plageurised herein)
Constitutional lawyers have already wasted decades fretting about how to appropriately limit the commonwealth’s power to racially discriminate without sacrificing parliament’s capacity to enact necessary legislation.
A better and simpler solution as set out in the ACCC report is to empower Australians of British Descent, and other race based groups with a voice in laws made about them rather than empowering the High Court with the Power to strike them down as discriminatory.
There is compelling argument that if parliament is to have the power over the affairs of ABDs it should take advice from them.
This would add constitutionalism to the Prime Ministers promise “to do things with people rather than to them.”
Our founding fathers of Griffiths, Kingston and Barton intended that there be no ruling elite Turnbull and Shorten could ensure that it is so.