The Voice Will Shift the Blame for Poor Outcomes to Aboriginals. By Bill Hayton.
Despite its compassion-soaked wrapping, the Voice is one of the most cunningly cynical government ploys on offer.
Amid a jumble of undergraduate platitudes, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent address to the Voice Working Group contains an interesting line:
…you get better practical outcomes when you get buy in, when you get engagement, when you get direct involvement by people who are impacted.
Sounds reasonable. However, Mr Albanese conveniently failed to mention that you also get to shift blame.
After decades of throwing unlimited money at Aboriginal affairs for returns no different from those that the passage of time alone would be expected to produce, it is clear that things need to be done differently. …
It is also appalling that modern governments have allowed themselves to be so cowed by their fear of being accused of racism that they now meekly accept blame for every problem — no matter how unfair or unreasonable that may be. The only thing that years of political cowardice has achieved is to ensure that all blame, always, for everything, is somehow laid at the feet of ‘colonialist’ governments. It would be naïve to think that politicians of all stripes do not want a way out of that mess, even if they will never admit it. …
Supporters of the Voice are trying to promote the belief that it will somehow, in ways that are nebulously defined (if defined at all), uplift the nation on a cloud of buzz words. Some may even genuinely believe that. Yet it is hardly a secret that troubles like addiction, homelessness, unemployment, and community disorder occur in ‘mainstream’ communities, too. Most people have enough sense to recognise that today’s problems are about more than colonialist governments and historical dispossession, and are far from racially specific.
If the majority of Australians support a Voice to Parliament when it comes to referendum time, it may very well reflect nothing more than widespread frustration at how white Australia is the constant whipping boy. The Voice presents a unique political opportunity to break this pattern, by shifting the focus for Aboriginal affairs onto Aboriginal Australians themselves. This is why it is utterly diabolical.
There could be no quicker way for governments to escape from always being cast as the villain than to make ‘following Aboriginal wishes’ their scapegoat. It is only too easy to see the Voice paving the way for a country where Aboriginal Australians are viewed as chiefly responsible for the perceived or actual waste of public money on schemes that deliver little real change. …
But activist excuses will wear thin indeed when, thanks to the Voice, Aboriginal people are widely seen by the public as the ones who design and approve policies that fail. Is this really what Aboriginal Australians want?
IQ researchers say that Australian Aboriginals have about the lowest average IQ of any ethnic group. Information about Aboriginal IQs have been severely suppressed for decades now — strictly forbidden.
Low aboriginal IQ explains their weak societal and economic performance. If you wanted to get the bottom of it, you would match Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians by IQ and study the differences in group outcomes. I”ll bet most (though not all) of the differences would disappear. That is, equally bright non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal Australians would have broadly similar outcomes (especially after welfare).
This is primarily an ideological problem of the ruling class, and aboriginals themselves tend to be the victims of the refusal of our ruling class to face reality.
(Better not pass this article on — very unsafe for work in the current political environment.)
