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Bonus: Josh's Thoughts on The Voice · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, I'm going to try to do this,
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try to talk about something that is full of so many landmines, it seems full hearty
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to try and not get cancelled in doing so.
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Australia is about to go to the polls for a referendum to change the constitution to
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recognise First Nations Australians and to give First Nations representatives a body,
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a formal chamber that would be an advisory body that would give its opinion on issues that
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are relevant to Indigenous Australians and advise Parliament on its opinions.
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This is a referendum to change the constitution, these don't happen very often, it's a big
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deal and a lot of people have a lot of questions, a lot of people have a lot of passionate
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beliefs, I want to do my best to in a cool and calm way go through some of the issues
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and tease them out as best I can, mindful of the fact that you won't agree with me on
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everything and that of course some things that I say will be able to be taken out of context
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and could do me, but when doing a call out for ask me anything questions, I got a bunch
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of questions about what my position is on the voice, one listener named James said
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among other things, I have a family with three children and quite frankly I'm sick to
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death of hearing the same thing over and over at every concert, play, small gathering,
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anything.
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He's talking about welcomes to country where white folk will tend to start every single
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gathering in Australia by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land, and James
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says the constant guilt trip is nauseating, he says what about adding to the acknowledgement
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that no one is alive that had anything to do with the grievances and acknowledgement
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of the truth, perhaps he writes, and acknowledgement that no one ought to feel guilty at all, perhaps
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we should just know that we shouldn't feel guilty but if that is the case then perhaps
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we shouldn't have to keep being reminded of these things, I don't know anyone who's
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ignorant of the truth of the claim that Indigenous Australians will hear first writes James,
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and for a very long time before Captain Cook arrived that is after all what Indigenous
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means.
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The thing is, he says you can't say it's a good thing because by all admissions things
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haven't improved for the cohort of Indigenous people that we're all still concerned about,
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in my opinion if the voice gets through then all the current dogma related to the Indigenous
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issue should be scrapped, and it makes sense from the point of view that everyone who's
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advocating for the yes vote claims that this is just the start of real change including
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yourself, he says of me.
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The thing is if I want to have religion shoved in my face I go to church, I don't respect
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people's beliefs, I respect people unless they give me a reason not to, it gives me the
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shits because I agree with so much you have to say Josh but honestly I don't think you
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give this topic the full zaps, and you're probably right, James.
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A lot of people are talking about how divisive this debate is, I'm seeing a tremendous amount
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of virtue signaling, Adam Hills, the Australian comedian who has a popular comedy show in
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the UK, tweeted the other day, I shouldn't be surprised by the amount of personal abuse
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being thrown at those of us who support the yes vote, but I am racist, ableist, body
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shaming, all of it, just for supporting a voice, perhaps it's happening on both sides,
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it's not going to stop me though.
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Oh the courage, oh the courage Adam, the sheer bravery, it's interesting because you know
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a friend of mine was talking to me and making the point that he hasn't seen any no posters.
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You drive around the inner west of Sydney and every block has houses festooned with yes
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posters, yes banners, yes flyers, yes flags.
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You don't see the nose, is that because they're ashamed of their position, is it because
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they're secretly racist?
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Or is it because contrary to what Adam Hills might think, it's probably in most polite society
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in Australia, a lot easier to be on the yes side than the no side?
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Who is likely to get a breakthrough their window or have the front of their house spray-painted
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with offensive graffiti?
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Someone who puts a yes banner up or someone who puts a no banner up?
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If all the hate were coming from these terrible racists in the no camp against these innocent
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victims who are simply for justice, wouldn't you see more no posters, I mean at least one
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or two?
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So maybe let's take a breath and step off our high horses and stop virtue signaling to
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each other about how everyone's being so divisive, I can't believe the slurs that I'm receiving
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but I'm going to keep on fighting anyway because I believe in what is right.
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These are complicated issues, they're important issues, they have to do with constitutional
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law, not your feelings, Mr. Hills.
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So let's just start by giving some context.
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In 2008, the federal government established a framework called closing the gap, which
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was a national effort to address indigenous disadvantage, basically close the gap between
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the outcomes for indigenous Australians and for non-indigenous Australians.
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10 years later, they did a snapshot to see how well we're doing and some of these statistics
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will just give you an understanding of the disparities that we're talking about.
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So let's look at year 12 attainment, in other words, graduating high school all the way
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through.
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Only about two thirds of indigenous Australians, age 20 to 24, have graduated high school
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in 2018 to 19, two thirds.
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And the indigenous employment rate is less than 50% in 2018 compared to 75% for non-indigenous
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Australians.
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On the metric of life expectancy, life expectancy at birth for indigenous males is almost
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nine years less than non-indigenous males, for females almost eight years less than non-indigenous
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females, that's from 2015 to 2017.
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For mortality, the indigenous child mortality rate is twice the rate of non-indigenous
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children.
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In early childhood education, the proportion of indigenous four-year-olds who are enrolled
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in preschool is 86% versus 91% for non-indigenous children.
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In terms of school attendance, the majority of indigenous students only attended school
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for an average of just over four days a week in 2019.
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And school attendance rates haven't improved over the past five years for indigenous
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children at all, that's speaking from the perspective of 2019.
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And in literacy and numeracy, in 2018, about one in four to one in five indigenous students
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are below the national minimum standards in numeracy and literacy.
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So along a bunch of metrics, something's not working.
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And the feeling has been from indigenous leaders that having a forum in which leaders
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can gather, debate, and offer solutions to parliament is going to be better than the
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current ad hoc system, which sort of swings from policy to policy as Australian governments
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get elected in and out of power.
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Let's go all the way back to 1788 when this landmass was invaded or settled, depending
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on what term you want to use.
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There's an uncomfortable truth that has to be acknowledged, which is that there was
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a kind of irreconcilable clash that was always going to happen between the imperial world
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that was being driven by the enlightenment and the scientific revolution and the expansionist
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ideologies of empire and deeply traditional societies.
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First nations Australians are the oldest continuous civilization on the planet.
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They'd been here for over 60,000 years.
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The British Empire at the time was the most technologically sophisticated civilization
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on the planet.
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The First Nations people and the Torres Strait Islanders at the time, if you look through
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the prism of a kind of imperial scientific revolution, technological progress lens were
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pre-Bronsage.
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Now, I'm not saying that as a slight, I'm not saying that to demean the achievements
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of that civilization in existing on a landmass this harsh for tens of thousands of years,
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but putting on the glasses of a European explorer and thinking about history in what is now
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considered to be a fairly old-fashioned way where you progress from this to this to this
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to this to this, to Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and so on.
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First nations Australians were not using metals, they weren't smelting things, they weren't
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using coal, they weren't using agriculture, they didn't have built structures.
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They had societies that were sophisticated in their own ways, that endured far longer
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than we've been able to prove our societies to endure so far.
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And none of this is a justification for colonisation and genocide, but it is a recognition that
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we're starting from a baseline of fundamentally incompatible civilizations.
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One highly technologically sophisticated expansionist empire and the other a deeply
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traditional civilisation or rather set of civilisations really because there were so many
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across this massive landmass with a deep connection to the land, but no way of incorporating
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European ideas about progress and technology into the worldview of the people who were
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on this landmass for tens of thousands of years.
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So you get off to the races with a very tricky situation, there are horrendous examples of
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genocide, there are centuries of dispossession, it was only in 1967 that First Nations Australians
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were even counted in the census and regarded as citizens, as humans essentially.
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There were decades in which the enlightened notion of their white overlords was to literally
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steal the children away from First Nations families and house them in nice proper families
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with white people in order to essentially ethnically cleanse First Nations people and breed them
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out of the country, because of course we all know that they couldn't possibly be responsible
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for the proper upbringing of their own children.
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And if you have children or if you have a parent, all of us do, just imagine what that's
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like for officers of the state to come to your door and just take your kids, never to be
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heard from again.
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And this is not ancient history, this is not 1788, this is well within the living memory
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of many First Nations people today.
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So fast forward to 2023, the sense I get from James who asks me that question and from
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many people who are frustrated with the current conversation around First Nations issues is
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a sense that we're being expected to bear this guilt for things that we didn't do.
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And we're being expected I think the claim goes to claim that all the problems that face
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Indigenous Australians are a direct consequence of racism.
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And you'll sometimes hear people say well what about domestic violence in Indigenous communities?
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What about alcoholism in Indigenous communities?
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What about the breakdown of the family in Indigenous communities?
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What about deadbeat dads who abandon their wives and their kids in Indigenous communities?
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What about the higher rates of crime from Indigenous young people?
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I invite you to consider that that whole question is a bit of a distraction because those things
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will only be improved if the majority of First Nations leaders who are not perpetrators
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of domestic violence or alcoholism or family breakdown or crime and who have no time
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for such things and want to solve them are empowered to act.
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And the argument for the voice is those people don't currently have a useful forum in
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which to act, hence a voice to parliament.
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Nobody alive today is guilty of what happened in the past but we are beneficiaries of it.
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That's just a fact.
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Life is easier for non-Indigenous Australians than it is for Indigenous Australians if you
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hold all other metrics equal as we've just heard from most statistics in the closing
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the gap report.
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So let's assume that probably the vast majority of Australians who are basically not overt
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racists that don't think white people are superior to First Nations people are on board
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with the idea that something needs to change and that more needs to be done on the ground
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to help the conditions of Indigenous Australians.
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That leaves us with a set of criticisms of this idea of a body to parliament, a voice
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to parliament and constitutional recognition that leaves it with a set of other criticisms
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about whether it's the best way to achieve an improvement in those metrics.
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Let's just take a few of those criticisms, the main ones, one by one.
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One is that this whole proposal is anti-democratic, that whatever problems First Nations people
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face, it's wrong to elevate them on the basis of their race.
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We're supposed to be in a egalitarian society.
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Everyone is supposed to be equal, we're supposed to aspire towards a level playing field.
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It gives them too much say.
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The counterpoint to that is that the body would not be binding in its decisions, it can't
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hold parliament to account, it's advisory, parliament is free to ignore it, parliament
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is free to cut its funding, parliament is free to reduce the number of people who sit
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in this body, we the people of Australia through parliament have total freedom in perpetuity
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to do whatever we want to this body, except for abolish it, because it would be in the
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constitution.
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Now, if you know me, you know that I oppose the cleaving up of society into a bunch of
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warring tribal factions all scrabbling for some larger share of a finite pie, I think
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that mindset has given us the worst examples of human suffering, and the division of
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Martin Luther King and Gandhi and Mandela is one of universalism of comedy between races,
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of equality.
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But you do have to acknowledge if you don't want to breach that principle in the construction
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of an indigenous voice to parliament, you do have to acknowledge that there needs to
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be some alternative mechanism for redressing these very, very stubborn wrongs, or you have
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to say that those wrongs aren't worth, that the price you would pay to redress those
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wrongs through this mechanism is too high, too unigualitarian.
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The criticism is that the whole proposal is a bit too vague, we're being asked to vote
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on whether or not we want to establish a body, we don't know how many people are going
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to be on the body, we don't know how they're going to be chosen, we don't know what they're
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going to be paid, all of that is valid, but it's a bit of a catch 22.
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If the government came out of the gate and said this is exactly what the body is going
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to look like, this is how many people, this is how they're going to be selected, this
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is what they're going to be paid, then we would now be all down in the weeds having squabbles
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and bickering little arguments about why this person, you know, why we're paying them
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this much or that much.
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So if you give too much detail, then you get bogged down, if you give too little detail,
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you get criticized for giving too little detail.
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We'll sort it out is sort of the answer of the advocates of the voice, presumably these
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people on this body, there's not going to be a million of them and they're not going
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to be owning a million dollars a year and there's not going to be one of them earning
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one dollar a year, there's going to be something in between those two.
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And that will be changeable by every successive government.
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So the decisions are not binding, which undermines the critique that it's an anti-democratic institution.
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It is perhaps vague but flexible as a result, you wouldn't want to write into the constitution
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exactly what it's going to look like and then never be able to change it.
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And that brings us to a final criticism, which is why do this with a constitutional change?
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Why not just legislate this in parliament so that if it doesn't work, you can always undo
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it.
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If it becomes a corrupt and unrepresented body, you can abolish it.
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Well the advocates of the voice say that's precisely why because you don't want governments
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to have the option of abolishing it.
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They can reform it, they can fire everyone in it, they can change the number of people,
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they can ignore it, they can just refuse to take its advice, they're not obligated to
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do so.
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But the idea of putting it into the constitution is so that it can't be scrapped so that
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we as a people have to make it work somehow.
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The last criticism is one I hear interestingly from Australia's migrant communities, which
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goes along the lines, if I thought we were a melting pot, I thought that we were a place
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where you can come from anywhere around the world and you'll be treated equally.
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What do I as, for example, a first generation Chinese shopkeeper or a Korean corner store
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owner or an Iranian engineer, why do I only get the normal democratic process, but there's
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this one group of people who gets this special voice beyond the democratic process.
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First nations people can already vote, first nations people can already run for parliament
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and get elected as indeed they do.
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Why do they have to have this special body?
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That's an argument that if any is going to doom the referendum I think is the likeliest
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two.
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I haven't heard a great argument against it except to say, sure it is somewhat anti-igualitarian
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and that is the price that we have to pay for our failure over the past 200 plus years
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to figure out how to truly include First Nations Australians in the achievement of the Australian
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dream.
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There is this one community that on so many metrics is falling behind and unless you believe
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that they're genetically inferior or uniquely prone to crime, to violence, to alcoholism,
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to family dysfunction, then you have to concede that something about the way that we've
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said everything up has been pernicious to them.
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You don't have to bear guilt, you don't have to accept accusations that you're racist,
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but for 60,000 years they didn't suffer from these setbacks and now they do.
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Sure, life before the arrival of Europeans was not a golden age of pleasure and plenty as
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some rose-tinted glasses First Nations activists might have you believe where there was no crime
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and no violence.
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As I said at the start, this was a hyper-civilizational clash between the most advanced civilization
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in the world and one that according to the crude metrics of progress didn't have any of
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the yardsticks of modern, sophisticated, developed civilization according to the European
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outlook.
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And so there is that clash.
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It was not sophisticated scientific research to one of the vaccines, there was no surgery
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and there was no modern justice system.
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But none of that is an excuse for the failure of this country to address a systematic falling
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behind of the people who've been here for 60,000 years.
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Now I'm not saying that the voice to parliament is the right way to solve these problems.
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I'm saying that quibbling over the details of this particular body, of how many people
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it'll have, of what it'll cost, of why it should go into the constitution instead of
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be legislated, of whether it's anti-democratic, of whether or not people alive today should
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be guilty for what happened in the past, of whether or not all problems that ale First
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Nations Australians are caused by the white men.
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All those questions are a distraction from the deeper question, which really to me is,
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is the status quo acceptable?
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Is the status quo acceptable?
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If it's not, let's talk about another plausible forum in which a level playing field might
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be achieved.
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And if you're, if you can see that the status quo is unacceptable and you do not have another
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forum in which a level playing field can be achieved, then I don't see how you have
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a coherent argument against the voice.
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Again, this is not a perfect solution.
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What is?
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I'm not saying I'm going to vote yes and I'm not saying I'm going to vote no.
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I'm trying to address and disentangle some of the concerns that people have, some of
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the misconceptions that people have, and take the heat and posturing out of this issue
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so you can make a reasoned and informed choice.
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You do not have to blame every woe of Indigenous Australians onto the shoulders of the white
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man to believe that the status quo is broken.
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Something needs to change and here is an opportunity to try something out.
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So I hope that's somewhat useful in articulating my thinking about the position we find ourselves
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in.
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Again, nothing I've said should be interpreted as being a partisan political position one
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way or another.
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I've tried to hue to the facts.
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I've tried not to engage in Adam Hill's style posturing about hostility and the last thing
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I would say is I invite you to do the same.
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Like don't judge the other side, no matter how passionate you are.
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I got a text message on my radio show from a listener who said that she is systematically
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unfriending everybody on Facebook who is intending to vote no or who is criticizing
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any of her, yes, posts.
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That way lies civil war.
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That way lies barbarism.
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I mean, you know, if you oppose the cleaving up of society into tribes, what's good for
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the goose is good for the gander and however much you might object to the racialization
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of political and cultural solutions in the formation of a body to represent a particular
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set of communities, you would also have to object to an equally or perhaps more tribalistic
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reaction to that proposal, whether in favor of it or against it by claiming that anyone
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who doesn't agree with your particular solution is so beyond the pale that you don't want
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to see what they have to say about anything else on social media, you don't want to see
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photos of their grandchildren because they're just that wrong.
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Quit it with the virtue signalling, quit it with the posturing, quit it with the demonizing
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of the other side.
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We're all Australians, let's come together, let's figure this out.
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You can vote no, you can vote yes, either way, God bless, I'll speak to you next week.