A case for a Christian voice in the Constitution.
A modest yet profound way to conserve the Constitution.
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 Christian Australians.
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 Christian 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 Christian Australians are calling for. It is also constitutionally modest. There is no call for a “Bill of Rights” or an entrenchment of the “Ten Commandments”.
The ACCC proposes a noble compromise: a constitutional body to give Australian Christians 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 called described it as a “bolt in the dark” must respectfully be corrected.
The call for a voice goes back to early settlement in each of the Australian Colonies when it was taken for granted that settlers were in the majority Christians and were able to influence through ordinary democratic process the machinery of colonial governments.
In 2017 it is about self determination. Christian representation, participation and consultation in political decisions made about the rights of Australian Christians. It 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 special class of people by race, aborigines, the power to vote in the Colony. There was no need, until now, to give a class of people by religion special consideration Griffith wrote deploring the domination of the weak by the strong.
There were no ethnic or race or religious tests for eligibility to vote in the 1901 National Constitution which created Australia’s First Nation. Propaganda to the contrary is rampant but false.
Now Christians see the society that was largely established based on the tenets of their faith being disestablished. Safe Schools as a disguise to teach ethics which are anti-christian, homosexual marriage does the same. Laws are being put in place which actually prevent Christians from openly stating their doctrinal positions for fear of being charged with discrimination.
The ACCC proposal has been scrutinized from three different political perspectives. The dialogues from their State and National and local meetings provided a Christian 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 to perpetuate a Christian Ethic in Australia.
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.
Australian Christians should be given a voice in their own affairs.
The report discusses international examples of similar representative bodies such as local groups of other ethnic, religious and racial descent which receive local, state and federal grants monies and 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 Australian Christians.
The ACCC report is an issues paper. It does not purport to represent the views of all Australian Christians. It presents ideas, not definitive conclusions.
Under a Constitutional amendment, parliament would have the power to enact legislation to set up the Christian 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 Australian Christians.
The aim of such a body should be to represent and give voice to the descendants of Australian Christians 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, Australian Christians in a modern world.
The structure should not be top down but bottom up. It should empower local Christian 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 current 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 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 Australian Christians Descent, 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 Christians then 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.